Dazed, you stand there as other people crowd round the body, jostling you aside until it’s screened from view. It doesn’t matter. You’ve already seen what you were meant to.
All that night you lie awake, trying to recall every detail. You feel breathless and shaken, on the verge of something immense. You know you’ve been given a glimpse of something momentous, something both everyday and profound. Except that for some reason the woman’s face, the eyes that seemed to burn into yours, now maddeningly elude you. You want—no, you need—to see that moment again in order to understand what happened. But memory isn’t up to the task, any more than it was when you stared into your grandfather’s casket. It’s too subjective; too unreliable. Something this important demands a more clinical approach.
More permanent.
Next day, withdrawing every cent of your college savings, you buy your first camera.
CHAPTER 6
DAWN WAS JUST a pale band on the horizon when we set off for the cemetery. The sky was still dark, but the stars were slowly disappearing as they were overtaken by the new day. The landscape on either side of the highway was starting to take form, emerging from the darkness like a photograph in a developing tray. Beyond the stores and fast food restaurants, the dark bulk of the mountains rose up as though to emphasize the flimsiness of the man-made facade.
Tom drove in silence. For once he wasn’t playing any of his jazz CDs, though whether that was because of the early hour or a reflection of his mood I wasn’t sure. He’d picked me up from the hotel, but after a wan smile he’d said little. No one looks their best at that time of day, but there was a greyness to his face that seemed to have nothing to do with lack of sleep.
You probably don’t look so good yourself. I’d lain awake into the early hours the night before, apprehensive about what lay ahead. Yet it was hardly my first exhumation, and certainly not the worst.
Years before I’d worked on a mass war grave in Bosnia where entire families had been buried. This wouldn’t be anything like that, and I knew Tom was doing me a favour in asking me along. By rights I should have jumped at the chance to take part in a US investigation.
So why wasn’t I more enthusiastic?
Where I’d once felt confidence and certainty, now there were only doubts. All my energy, the focus I used to take for granted, seemed to have bled out of me on to the floor of my hallway the year before. And if I felt like this now, what would it be like when I was back in the UK, working on a murder inquiry by myself?
The truth was I didn’t know.
The eastern horizon was streaked with gold as Tom turned off the highway. We were heading for the suburbs on the eastern fringe of Knoxville, an area I wasn’t familiar with. The neighbourhood was a poor one: streets of paint-peeling houses with overgrown and junk-filled front yards. The reflective eyes of a cat gleamed in our headlights as it broke off from eating something in the gutter to glare at us warily as we drove past.
‘Not far now,’ Tom said, breaking the silence.
After another mile or so the houses began to give way to scrubland, and not long after that we came to the cemetery. It was screened from the road by pine trees and a tall, pale brick wall. A wrought-iron sign proclaimed Steeple Hill Cemetery and Funeral Home in an arch above the gates. Cresting it was a stylized angel, its head piously bowed. Even in the half-light I could see that the metal was rusted, its paint flaking.
We drove through the open gates. Gravestones marched along in rows on either side, most of them overgrown and unkempt. They were set against a backdrop of darkly oppressive pine woods, and up ahead I could make out the outline of what must have been the funeral home itself: a low, industrial-looking building topped with a squat steeple.
Off to one side a cluster of parked vehicles announced our destination. We parked by them and climbed out. I shoved my hands in my pockets, shivering in the early morning chill. Mist hung over the dew-silvered grass as we made our way towards the centre of activity.
Screens had been erected in front of the grave, but at that time of day there was no one to see it anyway. A small excavator chugged and juddered as it lifted out another scoop of raw earth, clods dripping from the shovel as it deposited the soil on a growing pile. The air smelled of loam and diesel fumes, but the grave had been almost dug out, a gaping black wound in the turf.
Gardner and Jacobsen stood among a handful of officials and workmen who waited as the excavator cleared another load of earth. Standing slightly apart from them was Hicks. The pathologist’s bald head protruded from an oversized mackintosh that made the resemblance to a turtle more striking than ever. His presence was little more than a formality, since the body would almost certainly be handed over to Tom for examination.
It was obvious from his face that he wasn’t happy about it.
Another man stood nearby. He was tall and smartly dressed, wearing a camel hair coat over a sombre black suit and tie. He watched the excavator’s progress with an expression that could have been either aloof or bored. When he noticed us he seemed to become more alert, his gaze fixed on Tom as we approached.
‘Tom,’ Gardner said. The TBI agent’s eyes were pouched and bloodshot. By contrast Jacobsen looked as fresh as though she’d had nine hours’ undisturbed sleep, her belted mac crisp and immaculate.
Tom smiled but said nothing. Slight as the hill was, I could see that he’d been winded by the short walk up from the car. Hicks gave him a jaundiced look but didn’t offer any greeting. Ignoring me altogether, he took a grubby handkerchief from his pocket and loudly blew his nose.
Gardner indicated the tall man in the camel hair coat. ‘This is Eliot York. He’s the owner of Steeple Hill. He helped organize the exhumation.’
‘Always glad to assist.’ York hurried forward to shake Tom’s hand. ‘Dr Lieberman, it’s an honour, sir.’
The reek of his cologne cut through even the diesel fumes from the excavator. I’d have put him in his late forties, but it was hard to tell. He was a big, fleshy man, with the sort of unlined features that seem to grow heavier instead of ageing. But his dark hair had a matt look that suggested it was dyed, and when he turned I saw it had been carefully brushed to conceal a bald spot on his crown.
I noticed that Tom detached his hand as soon as possible before introducing me. ‘This is my colleague, Dr Hunter. He’s visiting us from the UK.’
York offered me a perfunctory greeting. Up close the cuffs of the camel hair coat were worn and frayed, and from what I could see of it underneath, his black suit needed cleaning. Judging by the bloodied nicks and tufts of missed whiskers he’d shaved either hurriedly or with a blunt razor. And even his eye-wateringly strong cologne couldn’t disguise the cigarette breath or the yellow nicotine stains on his fingers.
He was already turning back to Tom before he’d even released my hand. ‘I’ve heard a lot about your work, Dr Lieberman. And your facility, of course.’
‘Thank you, but it isn’t exactly “my” facility.’
‘No, of course. A credit to Tennessee, though, all the same.’ He gave an unctuous smile. ‘Not that I’d compare my, ah, vocation to yours, but in my own small way, I like to think I’m also carrying out a public service. Not always pleasant, but a necessary one, all the same.’
Tom’s smile never wavered. ‘Quite. So you carried out this burial?’
York inclined his head. ‘We had that honour, sir, although I’m afraid I can’t recollect much in this particular instance. We carry out so many, you understand. Steeple Hill provides a fully comprehensive funeral service, including both cremation and interment in this beautiful setting.’ He gestured around the unkempt grounds as though they were a stately park. ‘My father founded the company in 1958, and we’ve been serving the bereaved ever since. Our motto is “Dignity and comfort,” and I like to think we uphold that.’