The Calling Of The Grave

'Cooperate how?'

Terry hesitated, as though he didn't entirely believe it himself. 'He's going to take us to the other graves.'

Chapter 4

The prison van bumped along the narrow road. Police cars and motorbikes flanked it front and back, blue lights flashing. The procession made its way past the grassed-over ruins of an old waterwheel, one of the remnants of the tin mines Wainwright had told me about, and pulled up near where a helicopter stood on a patch of clear moor, its rotors turning idly. The doors of the police cars opened and armed officers climbed out, the snub shapes of their guns gleaming dully in the early morning drizzle. Now the front doors of the prison van opened as well. Two guards climbed out and went to the rear. The clusters of uniforms there obscured what they were doing, but a moment later the doors swung open.

A man stepped out of the back. The police and prison guards quickly formed a tight cordon around him, screening him from clear view. But the big, shaved head was clearly visible, standing out like a white football in the centre of the encircling figures. He was bustled across the moorland to the waiting helicopter, hunched over as the two guards hurried him beneath the whirling rotor blades. He climbed into the cabin clumsily, as though unused to the exercise. As he pulled himself up he slipped, going down on one knee. Hands reached out from inside the helicopter, grabbing his arm to steady him. For a second he could be fully seen, shapeless and doughy inside the prison-issue jacket.

Then he was inside. One of the guards followed him aboard and the door slammed shut. The rotors picked up speed as the other guard retreated back towards the prison van, clutching his hat to his head as the downdraught from the blades rippled the grass. The helicopter lifted from the ground, tilting slightly as it turned, and then it was angling away across the moor, shrinking until it was little more than a black speck against the grey sky.

Terry lowered the binoculars as the sound of its rotors diminished. 'Well, what did you think?'

I shrugged, hands stuck deep into the pockets of my coat. My breath steamed in the fine drizzle. 'Fine, apart from when he slipped. Where did you find him?'

'The double? He's some slaphead PC from HQ. Nothing like Monk when you see him up close, but he's the best we could do.' Terry gnawed at his lip. 'The guns were my idea.'

'I wondered about that.'

He gave me a look. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

'It seems a lot of trouble to go to, that's all.'

'That's the price of a free press. This way they get something to photograph and we can get on with the job without the bastards getting in the way.'

I couldn't blame him for sounding disgruntled. Even though it was supposedly a secret, word had inevitably leaked out about Monk's involvement in the search. Keeping the press off open moorland would have been impossible, so the decoy would distract their attention while the real business was under way. Finding a grave out here would be hard enough without journalists trampling all over the moor.

'Looks like something's happening,' Terry said, staring through the binoculars.

About a mile away a line of cars and vans was racing across another road in the direction the helicopter had taken. Terry gave a grunt of satisfaction.

'Good riddance.' He glanced at his watch. 'Come on. The real thing should be here soon.'

It had taken two days to finalize all the necessary paperwork and arrangements for Monk's temporary release. I'd spent most of that time in the mortuary. Cleaned of the thick coating of peat, the full extent of the young woman's injuries was shockingly apparent. There seemed hardly any part of her skeleton that wasn't damaged: in places only the decaying tendons and soft tissue held the bones together. It was the sort of trauma you'd expect from a car crash, not something inflicted by a human being.

'The post-mortem wasn't able to establish a definitive cause of death,' Pirie told me, apparently unperturbed. 'There are any number of injuries that could have been responsible. Many of the internal organs and soft tissues are ruptured, the hyoid bone is broken and there are fractures to several cervical vertebrae. The damage to the thoracic cavity would almost certainly have proved fatal, as the splintered ribs penetrated the heart and lungs. In fact, the injuries suffered by this young lady are so severe that shock alone would probably have killed her.'

Young lady sounded curiously old-fashioned. Prim, almost. For some reason it made me warm to the odd pathologist. 'But…?' I prompted.

I was rewarded with a thin smile. 'As I said yesterday, skeletal trauma is more your field than mine, Dr Hunter. I can't rule out strangulation, but the blows to her head were so forceful that her vertebrae and hyoid would probably have broken anyway. The attack must have been quite frenzied.'

'How do the injuries compare with Angela Carson's?'

I'd only been given a copy of the earlier post-mortem report that morning. I hadn't had a chance to read it fully, but the similarity of their injuries seemed undeniable.

'The soft tissue was too degraded to distinguish any signs of sexual assault, unfortunately. I'd hoped the peat might have preserved it adequately, but the physical trauma and shallowness of the grave worked against us. A pity.' He sniffed regretfully. 'The Carson girl also suffered mainly facial and cranial trauma, although nowhere near so severe as this. But as I understand it in that instance Monk was interrupted by the police, which perhaps explains why these injuries are so much more… pronounced.'

They were that, all right. Against the dull silver backdrop of the examination table, the features barely looked human. The front of her skull had been crushed in like a dropped egg, while the remaining skin and soft tissue of the face were pulped into the fragmented bones of the cheeks and nasal cavity.

'I believe psychologists claim this sort of facial disfigurement is an expression of the killer's sense of guilt. Eradicating their victim's accusing gaze. Isn't that the accepted explanation?'

'Something like that,' I agreed. 'But I can't see Jerome Monk as the remorseful type.'

'Quite. In which case he either has a truly terrifying temper, or he disfigures his victims for pleasure.' He looked at me over the tops of his half-moon glasses. 'Frankly, I'm not sure which is the most disturbing.'

Neither was I. A fraction of the force used would still have been fatal. Whoever this was, she hadn't just been beaten to death: she'd been pulverized. It was overkill in a very literal sense.

I'd expected the pathologist to leave me to work with an assistant, but he stayed to help with the grisly task of cleaning the remains: first cutting away the soft tissue then helping me disarticulate the skeleton so it could be soaked in detergent. It was a necessary part of my work but not one I enjoyed. Especially not when the victim was little more than a girl, and I'd a daughter myself.

But Pirie showed no such qualms. 'I'm always keen to learn new skills,' he said, delicately teasing a tendon away from its connected bone. 'Although I accept that these days that probably puts me in a minority.'

It took me a second to realize he'd been making a joke.

In the end, confirming that the dead woman was Tina Williams was relatively straightforward. The clothes and jewellery the body was buried in matched those the nineteen-year-old was last seen wearing when she'd disappeared from Okehampton, a market town on the northern edge of Dartmoor, and dental records confirmed her identity beyond doubt. Although the jaw and mandible were shattered and the front teeth broken, enough remained to provide a positive ID. The attack had been extensive but not methodical. Either Monk didn't realize his victim could be identified from her dental records, or he didn't care.