Skeleton Hill

6

Two days later the police were alerted to a man trying to break into cars in the small car park behind the stands at Bath racecourse. It wasn’t a race day so there weren’t many vehicles parked there – just a few belonging to staff.

‘Deal with it, will you?’ the sergeant on duty radioed to a patrol car in the city.

‘You want us to bring him in?’

‘You heard what I said.’ The modern police are knee deep in paper. Bringing in a suspect would indicate an intention of charging him and about two hours of filling in forms. ‘What we have is a call from a Major Swithin who noticed what was going on and reported it.’

PC Andy Sullivan, the driver, was thankful for the job. He’d been stuck all week with a new ‘oppo’ who thought silence was the eighth deadly sin. He already knew more than he needed about Denise Beal’s admiration for David Beckham. Even when he had the two-tone siren going she didn’t stop. She simply raised her voice.

The sight of Major Swithin did the trick. When they drove up the approach to the racecourse, Denise went silent in mid-sentence. The major was in the middle of the road waving a shotgun.

‘Doesn’t it fill you with confidence?’ Andy Sullivan said. He lowered the window and said, ‘I hope you have a certificate for that, sir.’

‘What? This? Of course.’ The major was probably closer to eighty than seventy, a short, stout, silver-haired man in a Barbour and flat cap. ‘Good thing I had it in the car. If you need some support arresting this scum, you can count on me.’

‘Right now, I’m counting on you to step off the road and put the gun on the path. Is it loaded?’

‘You can bet your life it is. I was a regular officer for thirty years. Served in six different war zones. I know about firearms.’

‘Then you know it’s illegal to have a loaded shotgun in a public place. Do as I say. Now!’

‘For the love of Mike!’ The major obeyed the instruction. ‘Anyone would think I was the criminal.’

‘Thank you, sir. Stand back, please.’ Sullivan stepped out of the car, retrieved the gun, opened the breech and removed two cartridges. ‘You are Major Swithin, I take it?’

‘Who else would I be, looking out for you? I wasn’t proposing to shoot you – or the car thief, come to that.’

‘What’s the gun for, then?’

‘In case I spot a fox. The Socialists stopped the hunt from destroying them, so it’s down to public-spirited people like me.’

Sullivan returned the gun and cartridges. ‘Keep the breech open and unloaded. This man you saw. Is he still in the car park?’ ‘I expect so.’

‘What exactly was he doing?’

‘Trying to steal a car.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘It was blatantly obvious. He was going from vehicle to vehicle trying the doors. A rough-looking herbert, unshaven, shabbily dressed.’

‘How long ago was this?’

‘Ten or fifteen minutes maximum. He won’t get far. My wife has him in her sights.’

‘Your wife? Is she armed as well?’

‘With the field-glasses. I left her observing him. She may have more to report by now. Shall I meet you in the car park?’

‘You’d better get in the car. How old is your wife?’

‘Does that have any bearing? She’s a senior citizen, and well capable of looking after herself.’

With the major in the back seat they drove off at speed while he continued to justify his actions. ‘These days John Citizen has to pitch in and help with law and order.’

‘Up to a point,’ Andy Sullivan said as they approached the lineup of cars in front of the turnstiles.

‘That’s Agnes looking out of the sun roof of my Land Rover.’

Agnes must have been standing on the seat, for she was very obvious, an elderly woman in a deerstalker peering through binoculars.

The police car drew up beside the ancient Land Rover. Major Swithin was the first out. ‘Any sign of the blighter, Agnes?’

The old lady lowered the glasses. ‘He’s gone in. I spotted him heading for the grandstand end. I think he knows we’re onto him.’

‘That is a possibility,’ Sullivan said, exchanging a look with his Beckham-obsessed colleague. She was still tongue-tied. ‘We’ll take over, then.’

‘You’re not proposing to go it alone?’ the major said in a shocked tone. ‘We’ll come with you.’

‘No, you won’t. You’ll stop here, the pair of you. I’ll need a witness statement from you.’

‘You’re mad.’

‘Not to say ungrateful,’ Agnes added.

Regardless, Sullivan walked away, heading for the open gates to the left of the turnstiles. ‘Wouldn’t you rather be in a job where the clients give no trouble, like grave-digging?’ he said to Denise Beal.

He should have known better than to ask Denise a rhetorical question.

‘Personally,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t enjoy digging graves, but I once had a part-time job doing a survey in Milsom Street, asking people questions about their favourite footballers, and, do you know, four out of every five – girls mostly, I must admit – nomin ated David Beckham, which gave me my opportunity because really I was only there to suggest they tried his new perfume. Isn’t it amazing how easily you can get people to talk? Have you noticed it yourself?’

‘I don’t have to try,’ he said.

And she proved it by going on some more about Beckham.

They faced the two grandstands along the finishing straight, the Premier – for the super-rich and sponsors – and the G & P – the Grandstand and Paddock – for those who prefer paying less. The whole complex had plenty of places where a fugitive from justice might hide. Sullivan’s gaze also took in some low buildings away to the right.

‘We’ll split up,’ he said. ‘You check the stands and I’ll do the stabling area over there.’ The stables were a good two hundred metres away.

‘What if I find him?’

‘Keep him talking till I arrive. That shouldn’t be any problem for you.’

‘Is he dangerous?’

‘Compared to that idiot with the shotgun, no.’

Few places are so bleak as a racecourse enclosure on a day of no racing. Denise Beal felt uneasy, for all Andy Sullivan’s confidence. Typical of him, the senior partner, to send her to the place where the suspect was last seen. She fingered the handle of her baton. This was only her second month in the police. Some of them at the station had said she was lucky getting picked for car patrol duty, hinting heavily that her good looks had worked the magic. Others had said Andy Sullivan was the lucky one. But he’d made very clear that he was indifferent to her. He seemed to resent being partnered by a woman. Up to now, though, he’d done everything by the book. The less experienced officer always gets the rough jobs.

She thought about her obligation to keep the suspect talking, and wondered if she could cope. What do you talk about when you have to do it? The weather? The cars he’s broken into?

A pigeon flew from a ledge so close to her face that she felt the rush of air. She gave a squeak of fright. Good thing macho PC Sullivan wasn’t there to hear it. Moving on, she came to an industrial-sized rubbish bin, easily large enough for a man to hide inside. She debated whether to lift the lid, and thought better of it and walked on. Andy Sullivan need never know. He’d sent her to the danger area so what did he expect? She took a wide berth rounding the corner of the Paddock Bar and was relieved to see no one crouching there.

From here she had a good view of the course.

Not a living soul.

Putting herself through an ordeal like this wasn’t why she’d joined. She’d pictured herself doing crowd control at a Spice Girls’ revival gig, escorting the stars and their spouses to the VIP seats.

All looked deserted in the stand area at the front, so she moved on and down some steps. To her left was a recessed area, probably one of the entrances to the Premier stand where the celebs went. She wondered if Becks had ever been here. Probably not. Bath wasn’t one of the fashionable racecourses.

Then she noticed a movement in the shadows.

A man was there.

Her heart thumped against her ribcage, but not because he looked like Becks.

He fitted the major’s description, rough-looking, unshaven, shabbily dressed. Probably in his mid-forties. Torn jacket with hood, mud-stained cord trousers and sandals. His feet hadn’t seen soap for a long time. He was leaning against the wall with arms folded, showing no reaction to her.

Denise knew where her duty lay. She looked ahead to see if by some miracle Andy was in sight, but he wasn’t. She could summon him by radio, but he’d have to run all the way back from the stables before he could come to her assistance.

She stepped up to the man and said, ‘Do you mind telling me what you’re doing here?’

He was silent for some time. Finally, without making eye contact, he said, ‘It’s a free country.’

She said, ‘You’re on private property here.’

‘If you say so.’ The voice was educated.

‘What’s your name?’

‘They call me Noddy.’

He’s sending me up, she thought. How do I handle this? ‘Noddy who?’

‘Just that. Noddy.’ His expression hadn’t altered. He seemed to be serious.

‘Are you local, Noddy?’

‘I must be, mustn’t I? I’ll be on my way, then.’

‘Hold on a second.’ She stared into the far distance. Still no Andy. ‘Were you in the car park just now?’

‘Which car park is that?’

‘Behind me. Not many cars there today, so it may not look like a car park, but someone like you was seen there.’

‘If you say so.’ That phrase again. It didn’t come across as defiance or evasion. This guy was passive to the point of resignation.

‘Have you been drinking, Noddy?’

He shook his head.

She said, ‘I’m trying to work out what you’re doing here.’

He spread his dirty hands. He didn’t appear to have an answer. Denise wondered if he was just some simple-minded guy unable to cope with modern life. And now she was stumped for another question.

She had a strong sense that no one would rush to congratulate her if she handcuffed Noddy and pulled him in. Even if he had been trying car doors it was probably because he was looking for food or drink. So she did what they’d advised at training school: used her initiative. ‘On your way, then. Sharpish. And stay away from cars.’

He nodded three times. Was that how he’d got his name? Then he shuffled off – towards the end Andy Sullivan would come from.

‘Not there,’ Denise said and pointed her thumb behind her, towards the golf course. ‘That’s your best your way out.’ Remembering the major and his wife, she added, ‘Don’t go through the car park.’

She moved on herself and eventually linked up with Andy Sullivan in the Grandstand and Paddock enclosure. He asked if she’d seen anyone and she shook her head. For all her compulsion to make conversation, she respected the old adage that all truths are not to be told.

‘No bad thing,’ Andy said. ‘Saves us some paperwork.’

‘The major won’t like it,’ Denise said.

‘I’m backing you to silence the major. Tell him about Posh and Becks.’

Lofty Peake phoned Diamond later in the week with his findings. ‘Your victim was about five six in height and probably under twenty, but not much under. Leaving some margin for error, I’d say she was seventeen to twenty-one. The epiphyses – those are the bony caps on the ends of the long bones – were not fully united, and that’s a pretty reliable test of age. Pity we don’t have the skull because you can tell a lot more from that.’

‘I doubt if we’ll find it now.’

‘Incidentally, the head was hacked off with some force, going by the state of the vertebrae.’

Diamond had a brief, vivid image. It wasn’t long since he’d eaten breakfast. ‘After death?’

‘Let’s hope so. I’ve no way of telling. She appears to have been a healthy individual. The skeleton was normal in development, with no evidence of earlier fractures.’

‘What about her build? Was she sturdy?’

‘No more than average.’

‘Now the critical question,’ Diamond said. ‘How long is it since she died? When we last spoke, you said up to twenty-five years.’

‘You know the answer, then.’

‘But you had only one bone to work from.’

‘Correct. Good, wasn’t I?’

‘You’re standing by the estimate?’

‘When it comes to telling the age, more bones don’t necessarily yield more information. As you know, I carried out extensive tests on the femur.’

‘Twenty-five years is a lot to work with.’

‘Now you’re asking another question.’

‘Am I?’

‘You want a time frame. The answer is – and this can only be an estimate based on observation – that the bones have been in the ground for more than ten years. No soft tissue remains and there’s some coarsening and discoloration that I would expect from the temperature changes of a series of summers and winters. Yet there are still traces of the candle-wax odour given out by the fat in the bone marrow, so these remains are not all that old.’

‘Between ten and twenty-five?’

‘Best I can do for you.’

‘You found the zip under the pelvis. Presumably it was a zip-fly from a pair of jeans. I’d expect someone of her age to be wearing jeans. All of the fabric had rotted away, I suppose?’

‘Completely. Nothing remained in the soil samples.’

‘The zip survived because it was metal. Wouldn’t she also have been wearing a belt?’

‘We didn’t find one. Not everyone wears one. They wear their jeans so tight that there’s really no need for a belt.’

‘If she’d had coins in her pockets, they could help.’

‘How? What could they tell you about her?’

It was Diamond’s turn to air some knowledge. ‘They show the year they were minted, don’t they? We could narrow that time frame.’

‘I’m with you now,’ Lofty said. ‘But no joy there. I checked with the crime scene people who were at the site and they found nothing else of interest. No coins, jewellery, belt buckle, shoes. Not even the hooks and eyes of a bra.’

Diamond could picture the look on Duckett’s charmless face as he announced he’d found nothing more. He thanked Lofty, put down the phone and went to look for Ingeborg. She was at her computer. He told her about the fifteen-year time frame. ‘We’re looking for a young woman aged seventeen to twenty-one who went missing between 1984 and 1999.’

She turned to look at him. ‘1987, guv.’

‘That isn’t what I said.’

‘That was the year of the great storm. October, 1987.’

‘Well?’

‘When so many trees came down. She was buried in the hollow left by a tree’s roots.’

She was bright. He wished he’d thought of that. ‘But can we be sure that tree came down then?’

She nodded. ‘I checked with the Lansdown Society.’

‘The what?’

‘There’s a society dedicated to keeping Lansdown unspoilt. I believe they’re a mix of landowners and wildlife enthusiasts. They monitor everything up there, all the activities.’

‘And they knew about that tree?’

‘As soon as I asked.’

He raised both thumbs. ‘So the time frame comes down to twelve years. You’re a star, Ingeborg. And now you can become a megastar by checking the missing persons register for those years.’

‘I already have, guv.’

‘You’ll get a medal at this rate.’

‘Not when you hear the result. I looked at all the local counties, made a list of missing girls under twenty-five, but I’m not confident she’s on it.’

‘Can you show me?’

She worked the keyboard and four names with brief details appeared on the screen.

‘Why so few? Hundreds of people go missing.’

‘We narrowed the criteria. These are all the search gave me.’

‘So what’s the problem with them?’

‘Look at the descriptions. The first girl, Margaret Edgar, was five foot eleven and Hayley Walters was only half an inch less. Gaye Brewster had broken her left arm and had it pinned some weeks before she disappeared. That would surely have been noticed by Mr Peake. Olivia Begg was about the height of our victim, but she went in for body piercings and nothing like that was found at the site.’

‘Those rings people wear in their…?’

‘Places I’d rather not mention.’

‘The killer could have removed them. He removed the head.’

‘True, but Olivia went missing only in 1999, at the margin of our time frame, and even that’s in doubt. There was an unconfirmed sighting of her in Thailand two years later. I doubt if she’s ours.’

Diamond exhaled, a long, resigned breath. ‘I’ve got to agree with you, Inge. They’re not serious candidates. When you think about it, plenty of young women of this age leave their families and friends and quite often it doesn’t get reported because no one is alarmed. It’s their choice. They hitch up with a pop star or go travelling or end up on the game. They don’t make the list of missing persons.’

She raked her hand through her long blonde hair and clutched it to the nape of her neck. ‘So what else can we do?’

‘Ask ourselves questions about the killer. Why choose to bury the body at Lansdown?’

After a moment’s reflection she said, ‘It’s remote. He wouldn’t be noticed if he picked his time to dig the grave.’

‘True.’

‘Where the tree was uprooted the soil would be looser to work with. He’d have a ready-made hole in the ground and he could use the soft earth to cover the corpse.’

‘You’re right about that. It was buried quite deep, not the proverbial six feet under, but all of three.’

‘Deep enough.’

He nodded. ‘Most murderers don’t appreciate the difficulty of digging a grave in unsuitable ground. The body found in a shallow grave is a cliché of the trade.’

‘So he chose his spot wisely, but he’d still have to transport the body there.’

‘Well, the ground slopes down a bit, but you could drive across the field in, say, a four by four.’

‘This is looking like someone who knows Lansdown well.’

‘Either that, or he got lucky,’ Diamond said. ‘The body was undiscovered for at least ten years and probably several more. It was deep enough to avoid the interest of foxes and dogs for a long time.’

‘It was a dog that found the bone in the end,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Yes, and I wonder why, after so long. Had something happened to disturb the grave?’

‘Dogs do go digging.’

‘Not that deep. Miss Hibbert didn’t say anything about the dog burrowing. She seemed to suggest he found it near the surface.’

‘What are we saying, guv? Some person was digging there? Why would they do that?’

Out of nowhere he became confessional. ‘When I was about eleven we used to make camps in the woods and smoke our fathers’ cigarettes and look at girlie magazines.’

Ingeborg didn’t really want this insight into his misspent youth and couldn’t see how it impacted on the investigation.

‘The space under the root system would make a good camp if you dug into it,’ he said.

‘Not my scene,’ she said, with a mental image of the adult Diamond sitting in the mud reading soft porn. ‘But I see what you’re getting at.’

‘Do kids still do that – make camps?’

‘I expect so – but I doubt if they’d choose Lansdown. It’s a long way from habitation.’

‘The crime scene people found some ringpulls.’

‘Adults?’

‘You might have a picnic there on a warm day.’

‘But you wouldn’t go digging for bones.’

His thoughts went back to something John Wigfull had told him. ‘A few weeks ago they re-enacted a Civil War battle up there. Grown-ups playing soldiers. If you were defending a stretch of ground and needed to dig in you’d be glad of a position like that.’

‘It wasn’t the Western Front,’ Ingeborg said. ‘The Civil War was all about man to man fighting, not trenches.’

‘You’d need to store your supplies somewhere. You’d look for an obvious place like that, partly sheltered. I reckon they’re the people who disturbed the grave. If they unearthed a femur in the heat of battle they’re not going to give it much attention. That could be how it came to the surface.’

‘Does it matter?’

He didn’t answer that. He was on a roll. Thanks to John Wigfull, he could air his second-hand knowledge with impunity. ‘Most weekends in the summer there’s a muster somewhere. That’s what they call it, a muster. The Sealed Knot came to Lansdown this year and they’ve been before, but not every year. Obviously they had a major muster in 1993, the anniversary.’

‘Of the Battle of Lansdown?’

‘Three hundred and fifty years on.’ He paused, as if to weigh the evidence. ‘We’re looking for a killer who buried his victim in the hole left by the tree. Depth, soft earth to cover her with. She’s been buried at least ten years. I’m thinking about 1993, right in the middle of our time frame.’