The Dead Place

18

Fry had expected dense undergrowth, a thick covering of trees on a steep slope, to make the location inaccessible. But the new site was just above the tree line. There were plenty of rocks, though — thousands of them scattered across the hillside in both directions, clustering downwards as far as she could see. There was no pattern to the rocks, no logic to the way they’d tumbled and come to rest. Many had weathered over the years into smooth, hunched shapes. They covered the hillside like a vast flock of deformed sheep lying asleep or dead in the cold shadows of the north- facing slope.

Yes, there were certainly a lot of rocks. Even so, it seemed incredible that a body could have lain here unnoticed for so long.

She looked around for the crime scene manager. Wayne Abbott was there, already watching her. When Fry gestured, he came towards her slowly, picking his way among the stones.

‘Yes, it’s north-facing,’ he said, as if reading her thoughts. ‘There will never be enough sun on this slope to show details from a distance. If you were standing across the other side of the valley there, you could look for as long as you like, but see nothing unless it moved. These rocks must create all kinds of deceptive shapes, and a lot of interplay of shadows. Very misleading to the eye.’

‘And would nobody ever walk across the slope itself?’

‘Not unless you had a particular reason to. It’s difficult going, as you can see. You’d break an ankle very easily.’

‘So how the hell did the killer get the body down here?’

‘He didn’t carry it, that’s for sure.’

Abbott was sweating inside his scene suit, though the weather was cool. Fry could see two trickles of perspiration starting at his temples and clinging to the black bristles on his jawline. She wasn’t sure why she disliked him so much. She could only explain it as an instinctive reaction. Wayne Abbott certainly wouldn’t have been her choice for a supervisor. But he had the qualifications and experience, so here he was.

The CSM pointed up the slope to where the rocks formed a fissured cliff.

‘I’d imagine there are two possibilities. One, the victim fell from the cliff up there. Or was pushed, as I’m sure you were about to suggest. If that was the case, we should find structural damage to the bones. But the second possibility is that the victim might have come to this spot — voluntarily or otherwise — while still alive.’

‘And died right here?’

Abbott laughed. ‘In either scenario, the victim died right here. The question is how they died, and why.’

‘That’s two questions,’ said Fry.

But he took no notice. ‘Did they die suddenly, or slowly?’ he said. ‘Accidentally or deliberately? By misadventure, or … with assistance?’

‘Are you planning to give us the answers, Wayne? Or do you just like asking rhetorical questions?’

‘I suppose you think you know all the answers yourself, Sergeant?’

‘No,’ said Fry. ‘But I do know what the questions are, thanks all the same. By the way, the smallest trace evidence from this location might be crucial, so …’

‘No, don’t tell me — you want us to go over the scene with a fine tooth-comb.’ Abbott wiped the sweat from his face. ‘Well, I’ve got news for you lot in CID. We don’t get issued with tooth-combs any more, fine or otherwise.’

‘OK, OK. Just do your best, will you?’

Abbott began to walk away. ‘Do our best? Gosh, I’d never have thought of that.’

Ben Cooper was crouching among the weathered stones, staring at a damp patch of soil. He was out of sight, and he wasn’t sorry. He couldn’t hear details of the conversation between Fry and Abbott, but he recognized Fry’s tone of voice even at this distance. Her rising irritation wasn’t directed at him for once, and he was happy to keep it that way for a while.

Unfortunately, it didn’t take Fry long to find him.

‘Jesus, everybody thinks they’re an expert, don’t they?’ she said.

‘Well, that’s what they are, Diane. PhDs with specializations in skeletal biology or human genetics. You’ve got to respect their knowledge.’

‘I don’t mean the scientists, Ben. I mean the bloody SOCOs.’

‘Oh.’

Fry looked around, breathing deeply. ‘What are those buildings across the valley?’

Cooper had already checked. But perhaps it wouldn’t do for him to look too much like an expert.

‘According to the map, the nearest place to us is Fox House Farm, and the one further over is Hunger House. But it doesn’t look as though either of them has been used as a farm for a long time. Most of the buildings have been demolished, and the land around them is planted with mature trees.’

‘Hunger House? What sort of name is that?’

‘A hunger house was a building where cattle were kept before slaughter. The old custom was to starve animals for a while before they were killed.’

Fry said nothing to that. She didn’t need to. Her views on the barbarities of rural life were well known.

‘They’re on the Alder Hall estate,’ said Cooper. ‘I suppose they were tenant farms at some time, but the landowner must have decided to evict his tenants and plant woodland. Timber was more profitable, I expect. That plantation is marked on the map as Corunna Wood.’

‘Corunna? Who was he? Another local hobgoblin?’

‘I think it’s a town in Spain where there was a famous battle.’

Fry’s expression told him he might be showing off too much knowledge again. But she steered rapidly away from history as a topic.

‘What are you looking at down there, anyway?’

‘This stone,’ said Cooper. ‘It hasn’t been in this position long.’

‘How do you know?’

‘The grass is still green underneath. It bleaches and dies after a few days if it’s covered over like this.’

‘How many days?’

‘I couldn’t say.’

‘You’re good on observation, Ben, but you always seem to fall down on details.’

‘I’m not Sherlock Holmes,’ said Cooper. ‘We need to ask an expert.’

‘An expert in dead grass — why not?’ Then Fry sighed. ‘A hunger house. God, what next?’

A team from Sheffield University were unloading equipment — shovels and trowels, wire mesh screens for sifting bone fragments from the soil, evidence bags, tape measures and orange markers. One of the students had already used a video camera to record the position of the remains from every angle before the team approached it.

The forensic anthropology group from the university provided services to many police forces in excavating and analysing skeletal remains. Some of the team had even worked for the United Nations, investigating mass graves.

Under the supervision of the forensic anthropologist, the team began sieving soil from around the remains. They would be trying to locate fragments of bone, personal items, anything that had been dropped or didn’t belong in the area.

Cooper stood looking down at the tangle of bone and vegetation, half concealed under the edge of a rock. There was no skull visible, but it could be further down, of course. Until the remains were separated from the earth and plant growth, it was impossible to judge the position of the body, or whether it was intact. Some items had already been photographed, bagged and tagged, and he picked up a bag containing a bone. It felt strangely light in his hand.

‘Ben, what do you think the “flesh eater” is?’ said Fry, breaking into his thoughts.

Cooper waved a hand around the dale. ‘Perhaps Professor Robertson was right when he talked about limestone, Diane. This whole area is limestone. The entire landscape could be the flesh eater.’

Fry nodded. ‘It’s a possibility.’

‘What do you bet some of the bones are missing from this body, too?’ said Cooper.

‘You think the killer might have taken trophies?’

‘I don’t know. But if we find them in his possession, it’s fairly conclusive evidence, isn’t it? He does seem to be a very careful killer. Meticulous, even. My feeling is that he won’t have made many mistakes, if any.’

Around the place where the body had lain and decomposed were patches of earth stained different shades. They marked where the victim’s body fluids had drained out.

Cooper felt a surge of anger, thinking of Audrey Steele lying out in the open in just this way, abandoned to the elements. And now here was another body waiting for a face and a name, another identity to be reconstructed from almost nothing.

But there wouldn’t be much more achieved tonight. It would soon be dark, and the activity around him was aimed at securing the scene for the night, ready for an early start in the morning. A vehicle manoeuvring in the woods already had its headlights on.

Then Cooper saw a movement on the opposite hillside. A figure was walking along the skyline, dark and indistinct against the grey cloud. Maybe there was a public footpath up there, he wasn’t sure. The figure kept moving, but Cooper was certain the eyes were turned towards Litton Foot and the unusual activity below. That would be natural, of course. Any passer-by would be curious. But wouldn’t it be more natural to stop and look, to puzzle for a while over the white scene suits and the police Land Rover reversing over the ridge? This walker did none of those things, but scanned the area efficiently in a few seconds, before vanishing behind a rocky outcrop.

Fry had seen the figure, too. ‘He’d be miles away before we could get to him,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you were thinking.’

‘When I saw him, I was wondering if the killer came back here to check on progress,’ said Cooper. ‘And what about the smell?’

‘There was no one here to smell it, Ben.’

‘I suppose not.’

He studied the hillside again. In an open location like this, the scent would have travelled. What were those gases produced by decomposition? Hydrogen sulphide and methane? They’d have drifted away from their source on any available air currents, forming cones and pools of scent, like invisible markers of death in the landscape. Depending on the weather, the smell might have lingered for days, or weeks. But wind and rain would have dissipated it quickly, so that anyone passing within a few yards of the remains might have noticed nothing. What a pity this wasn’t dog-walking country.

Then Cooper frowned and looked back down the hill towards Litton Foot. Tom Jarvis’s house wasn’t visible from here. It was in the bottom of the dale, and the woods were thick in between. But Jarvis’s dogs had run in those woods before the new fence had gone up, hadn’t they?

Or rather, one of his dogs had.

Then one of the SOCOs called Cooper over to the edge of a patch of bracken a few feet from the location of the remains. ‘Look at this — ’

‘What have you found?’

‘See for yourself. But don’t get too close.’

Cooper moved a little nearer. ‘It’s a gin trap,’ he said.

‘It looks a bit rusty. I don’t suppose it’s in working order.’

‘It’s meant to look like that.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You’re supposed to let a trap develop a coating of rust to disguise it. It gives the steel a neutral smell, so as not to put animals on the alert.’

The trap was fixed into position with a chain and metal stake, and a band of spring steel was anchored to the base at one end. Fry walked over to see what was happening as Cooper pointed to the steel plate at the other end.

‘See, only the trigger plate is galvanized,’ he said. ‘That needs to be thin to keep its weight down. And the catch is made from brass to prevent it rusting to the foot plate. But everything else is rusted over. That’s just the way you want it.’

‘How do you know so much about traps?’ asked Fry. ‘They’re illegal, aren’t they?’

Cooper shrugged. ‘You learn this kind of thing by osmosis when you grow up in the countryside.’

‘So you understand how it works?’

‘It’s very simple. To set the trap, you compress this spring, which allows the jaws to open, and a catch closes over them. When you release the spring again, the upward pressure of the jaws holds the trigger plate in position, see? An animal comes along and steps on the plate, releasing the catch. The spring snaps the jaws shut on its leg. The whole thing happens in about a twentieth of a second.’

Fry flinched. ‘It’s barbaric.’

‘That’s why it’s illegal.’

‘Obviously, that doesn’t stop people using them. How does an animal get out of the trap?’

‘It doesn’t. Once the jaws close, they’re locked in position by the collar. They can’t just be forced open — you have to depress the spring again. Animals don’t know that, and they’re not physically capable of it anyway. That’s why they sometimes end up chewing their own legs off to escape.’

‘I don’t suppose there’s any way of identifying the owner of this thing?’

But Cooper shook his head. ‘There might be fingerprints, I suppose. But this is quite an old trap. See — it has a bow spring. That type tends to lose its springiness when it’s left set for long periods, or if it gets too corroded. Trap manufacturers dropped it years ago in favour of coil springs.’

He hunted on the ground until he found a stick.

‘What are you doing?’ asked Fry.

‘Setting the trap off. It’ll be safer. Somebody is bound to get their hand in it, otherwise.’

Cooper pressed on the trigger plate with the end of the stick. Instantly the jaws snapped shut, biting deep into the wood and shredding the bark.

‘Jesus,’ said Fry.

Though Cooper tugged on the stick again, the trap stayed firmly attached to the ground.

‘Nice, isn’t it? And now your prey is helpless, all you have to do is come along at your convenience and finish it off. The trap was probably left by a farmer or gamekeeper with a fox problem.’

Fry nodded, accepting the explanation. But Cooper looked again at his shredded stick and the size of the trap.

‘Unless, of course, it was intended for bigger prey than a fox.’

‘OK, when you’ve all finished messing around over there, you might want to see this — ’

They turned to find Wayne Abbott regarding them with a sour expression. He was holding a couple of evidence bags containing what Cooper immediately recognized as sections of bone, stained brown and splintered at the ends.

‘Just as a non-expert opinion, I have to admit that these should put paid to the accidental fall theory,’ said Abbott.

‘What is it?’ asked Fry.

They gathered round him as he held up the bags. ‘Here, and here … Do you see the marks on the sheath of the bone? They’re quite clear. I’d say that it’s only the vegetation that was holding this body together at all. Not too long ago, someone dismantled it. And they were using a very sharp knife. They took the skin right off the bone.’

That evening, the news from Edendale crown court was that Micky Ellis had been given the mandatory life sentence, with a tariff of fifteen years. He’d be out in ten, or less. The CPS had called to say they were pleased with the result.

But Diane Fry didn’t feel like celebrating. Instead, she spent some time listening to the tapes before she went home. Soon, she’d know them by heart.

What she really wanted was to be able to recognize the caller’s voice if she heard it. Despite the distortion, there ought to be some characteristic feature of the phrasing or intonation that would identify him, if only she could produce a suspect for comparison. The application of intelligence shouldrefine the primeval urge. The pretentiousness alone should be a giveaway. Who spoke like that, unless they’d been given a script to read? Inside everyperson, the evil Thanatos fights an endless battle withEros. Who’d ever heard of Thanatos, for heaven’s sake?

Fry looked around the office and noticed Ben Cooper hadn’t left yet. He’d taken a personal call a few minutes ago, and he was looking a bit subdued.

‘Are you all right, Ben?’ she called. ‘Why haven’t you gone home?’

Cooper looked up, unable to hide an expression of surprise. Too absorbed in his own concerns to be aware of her as usual, she supposed.

‘I’m not in a hurry,’ he said. ‘I’m going to the hospital first to visit my mother, and visiting time doesn’t start for a while yet. Did I mention she was in hospital?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said Fry vaguely. Maybe he had, but she wasn’t sure. ‘How is she?’

‘That was my brother on the phone. He says the doctors think it wasn’t just a fall. It looks as though she had a minor stroke.’

‘I’m sorry. But only a minor one?’

‘The trouble with one stroke is that another is often close behind.’

Fry could see he was worried, but she didn’t know what to say to him. Cooper wouldn’t welcome any interest from her in his personal life — especially after what she’d said to him about his interference in her life, when he’d secretly schemed to reunite her with her sister. Whatever she said now, he would only consider it intrusive and hypocritical.

She cast around for something neutral to say that wouldn’t make things worse.

‘Well, don’t hang around the office,’ she said. ‘We can manage without you for a while, you know. Go and get things sorted out, if you can.’

She didn’t think Cooper was going to respond. But then he got up slowly.

‘I’ll see you in the morning, Diane.’

Fry put her headphones back on and returned to her tapes. Half an hour had passed before it occurred to her to wonder what Cooper would do after he’d visited his sick mother.

It might happen in the next few hours. We couldsynchronize our watches and count down the minutes.What a chance to record the ticking away of a life, tofollow it through to that last, perfect moment, whenexistence becomes nothing, when the spirit parts withthe physical. The end is always so close … I can smellit right now, can’t you?

But Cooper had given himself a job to do that night. While he’d been waiting for visiting time to come round at the hospital, he’d driven to the big DIY store on the retail park and bought himself a flat-pack shelving unit. It was something he’d been meaning to do for months. Well, he certainly needed something to distract his mind, to prevent the phrase ‘recurrent stroke’ from slipping so often into his thoughts, spoken softly and accompanied by a meaningful look or a sympathetic nod at the unspoken implication.

Tonight, his mother had been conscious and lucid, though her right side was partially paralysed and her sight impaired. For some time now, she’d been losing her colour and she was paler than he could ever remember her. Looking at her in the hospital bed, it had seemed no surprise to Cooper that the blood had failed to reach the left side of her brain. Matt was right, of course, that she wasn’t all that old — still in her sixties, after all. But tonight she’d seemed much older.

Randy’s ear pricked up, and a second later the doorbell rang. At this time of the evening, Cooper always assumed that it was somebody ringing the wrong bell. They usually wanted his neighbour in the flat upstairs or his landlady next door.

But when he reluctantly got up and went to answer the bell, it was Gavin Murfin he found standing on his doorstep.

‘Ben, you know it’s mad,’ said Murfin fifteen minutes later. ‘They want to get rid of people like me using tenure, but at the same time they can’t get anybody else to come into CID. There’s no waiting list any more. When did we last have a new DC in this division?’

‘I can’t remember.’

They’d walked to Cooper’s local, the Hanging Gate, a pub sitting in its own little yard off High Street. At least Gavin had insisted on buying the drinks.

‘There are vacancies in every section station,’ said Murfin. ‘The only way we can get people into CID is if they transfer for the sake of promotion. They come straight in at senior level from uniform, and they have no idea what detective work is all about.’

‘Why don’t you take it up with the Federation?’ said Cooper.

‘Dogberry and his mates? What use are they?’

Cooper smiled at the reference to the Police Federation’s cartoon character. He knew Murfin was right, about some of it at least.

‘And that’s not to mention Dad’s Army,’ said Murfin. ‘Talk about short-term measures. The geriatric brigade won’t last for ever, and there’s no one to take their place. You can’t create an experienced detective out of thin air.’

Murfin drank silently for a while. ‘I was thinking about what you were saying, Ben. About Hell.’

‘It was nothing, Gavin.’

‘But it’s obvious, isn’t it? Hell is us. If there really is a Hell waiting for me when I kick the bucket, that’s what it’ll be. Just me. Me, messing myself up for the rest of eternity.’

Cooper stared at Murfin open-mouthed.

Murfin nodded. ‘You know, don’t you, Ben? Who needs a demon with a pitchfork, eh?’

‘Have you talked to Diane about how you feel?’

‘What? Why would I talk to her?’

‘She’s your DS.’

‘I’d rather talk to the Yorkshire Ripper. We’d have more empathy.’ Murfin suddenly looked tired. ‘Sorry, Ben. But sometimes I lose my sense of humour, like.’

‘I understand. Do you want another drink?’

But Murfin drained his glass. ‘No, thanks. I’m sorry to have bothered you, Ben. I’ll go home now.’

‘Will you be OK?’

‘I’m fine. Hey — what about that date of yours? What happened?’

‘I put it off. There’s too much happening this week.’

‘Pity. Won’t she mind?’

‘No,’ said Cooper. ‘She’ll understand.’

He waited with Murfin until a taxi came to take him home, and then walked back to his flat. Once away from the town centre, the streets were very quiet. Cooper knew that he’d have to face up to his own death some time. Like most people, he’d always thought he could avoid it for ever. And perhaps he’d read too many stories in which people didn’t actually die. Instead, they passed away, breathed their last, or were no more. In polite conversation, death was skated over rapidly, like thin ice.

Sometimes, he could sense that thin ice beneath his feet, and he didn’t want to look down. There was too much dark water lying just below the surface.

MY JOURNAL OF THE DEAD, PHASE THREE

So here is the reality. People change shape when theydie. The muscles go slack, and gravity drags down theskin. It sinks into the cheeks and pools in the eye sockets.Our flesh forms new contours, like a tide going out andexposing submerged islands. The body cools, our extremitiesshrivel. Blood settles towards to the ground as theearth begins to draw us closer. Then the skin discoloursfrom red to purple, from green to black. Our final transformationis a Technicolor performance.

When the heart stops pumping blood and the cellshave no oxygen, we say a person is dead. Well, the brainmight die, but the body doesn’t — not really. Our intestinesare packed with micro-organisms, digestiveenzymes and bacteria, and they don’t die with the cells.When there’s nothing left for those enzymes to digest,what do our organs do? They start to digest themselves.In the end, we are our own flesh eaters.

Ah, decomposition. The classic two-act play. But thefinal act is drawn out too long. There’s a weatheringaway of the flesh from the bones, bit by bit, shred byshred. A peck of a beak, the nibble of an insect, a slowdisintegration. There’s no grand finale, no great denouement.There’s no bang in our ending, you see; there’sbarely a whimper. Only a cry in the night that goesunheard.