Gingerly pressing the screen with his soil-covered finger, he said, “What is it?”
“You said you were coming home.” The frustration was clearly audible in her voice. “Where the hell are you?”
“I had an accident,” he said, thinking on his feet. “I had to put my clothes in the washer.”
“What? Why?”
“There was a tin of paint. I didn’t realise it was open, and it spilled on me.”
She sighed. “That won’t come out easily.”
“It’ll be fine. I chucked my clothes straight into the washer.”
“Well, can’t you find something else to wear? Some of your dad’s clothes? You can’t spend all night there; you’ve got work tomorrow.”
“Yeah, I’ll sort something out.” He looked over at the body on the floor. “I’ve just got a few things to do, and then I’ll be there, okay?”
“Yeah, okay. I can’t promise I’ll still be awake.”
“Don’t wait up. You go to bed.”
She hesitated, and then said, “All right. Be careful what you touch in that house. I dread to think what your father might have stashed away.”
A slight smile played over Rob’s lips. She didn’t know the half of it.
“See you later,” he said, and hung up.
He went upstairs to his father’s room and opened the wardrobe. The hangers mostly contained old jackets and coats, crammed together in the available space. Trying a chest of drawers by the bed, Rob found trousers and shirts, which he scattered over the bed.
One shirt in particular caught his attention; it was checkered red and black and looked exactly like the shirt he’d seen his father wearing over twenty years ago in the cellar. Surely it couldn’t be the same shirt.
But judging by his father’s hoarding ways and the fact that some of the other clothing on the bed looked at least twenty years old, it probably was.
This was the shirt his father had worn when he went out at night.
When he went hunting.
Rob touched the sleeve of the shirt with his fingertip. Last night, when he’d taken Daisy Riddle’s body to the old temple ruins, he’d experienced a heightened awareness. Every one of his senses had been dialled up to maximum, and he’d felt almost high. He knew it was the danger of the situation that had caused that, along with the chance of getting caught.
How must his father had felt when he’d hunted those girls and taken them off the streets? That had been infinitely more dangerous than dumping a corpse in a ruin.
Rob had to admit that, in some ways, he respected the old man.
Picking up the checkered shirt, he put it on and found a pair of jeans that had the right length in the leg but were too tight around the waist. He remedied that by leaving the top button undone. That made them fit snugly, if a little uncomfortably, around his belly.
Dressed in his father’s attire, he went downstairs and opened the front door before lifting the wrapped body over his shoulder and getting it into the Land Rover. He laid it across the back seat and used the seatbelts to keep it in place, the same as he’d done with Daisy Riddle’s body.
But, unlike Daisy Riddle, he couldn’t leave this girl in the chapel; there was bound to be a police presence there.
After getting his phone from the kitchen, and locking the front door of the house, he got in behind the wheel and considered where he could leave this one. Temple Well had been perfect because it was a sleepy little village but also popular with tourists because of the ruins. He’d known someone would stumble across the body soon after he’d left it there.
The Templar chapel wasn’t the only location in the village that attracted tourists; there was also a spring there that had once been considered sacred by the Romans. The village was named Temple Well because of the temple and the sacred spring.
There might be police stationed at the ruins, but they had no reason to interested in the spring, which he knew was on the other side of the village and tucked away in the woods.
It was perfect.
Nodding to himself, he started the engine and set off down the track that eventually led to the main road.
He put the radio on, and grinned when the song Wrapped Around Your Finger by The Police filled the car. The song was about an apprentice who becomes powerful and destroys his master, just like he was doing to his dad.
Staring into his own eyes in the rearview mirror, Rob told himself, “I’m tearing down his work, piece by piece.”
In the darkness, the image in the mirror seemed to flicker and change. Rob averted his eyes and concentrated on the road ahead.
He had thought, for one fleeting moment, that it hadn’t been his own face staring back at him, but his father’s.
Chapter 11
When Tony Sheridan woke up, he experienced a moment of panic. The room that slowly came into focus around him was unfamiliar. Sitting bolt upright in bed, he searched the area for something familiar—a technique he’d been taught in a mental health facility in Canada—and his eyes came to rest on his open suitcase, sitting on a chair by the window. Tony recalled sitting in that chair last night and looking out at the ruined chapel beyond the trees.
Remembering that he was in a B&B in Derbyshire, he got out of bed and went into the bathroom. He emerged forty-five minutes later, shaved, showered, and ready for breakfast. He hadn’t eaten anything last night, electing to spend the evening sitting in the chair by the window while making notes about the case. He’d written less than a page before weariness had crept over him and he’d been forced to crawl into bed.
Peeking through the curtains at the weather outside, and seeing a grey, drizzly view through the window, he dressed in corduroy trousers and a heavy, knitted green jumper before leaving the room and heading downstairs in search of something to eat.
The Chapel View Guest House was a large Victorian house that had been converted into a B&B sometime in the past half century. Its bedrooms—Tony wasn’t sure how many there were in the house—occupied the upper two floors, while the ground floor housed the kitchen, dining room, and a communal lounge.
The elderly couple that owned the establishment, whose names were George and Janet, had proudly shown the place off when he and DI Summers had checked in. And they were right to be proud; the guest house was neat and tidy, and well located with—as its name suggested—a view of the ruined Templar chapel.
When Tony reached the ground floor, the smell of toast and fried bacon greeted him like an old friend. Following his nose, he found the dining room.
Half a dozen small tables, with white cotton tablecloths, had been set along the walls of the long, but narrow, room. At one of these tables sat a man and a woman drinking coffee, their plates with the remnants of their breakfasts on the table between them.
At a table at the far end of the room sat DI Summers. She was also dressed for the inclement weather. Her attire consisted of boots, jeans, and a cream-coloured roll neck jumper.
She waved at him. He went over to her table, noting the lack of a plate in front of her.
“Not eaten yet?”
She shook her head. “I ordered some eggs on toast a minute ago. You can join me, if you like.”
“Thanks,” he said, pulling out the chair on the side of the table opposite to her and dropping into it. “How did you sleep?”
“Surprisingly well. I usually have trouble getting to sleep in strange places, but yesterday’s travelling must have caught up with me.”
“Same here. I barely had time to make a few notes before I found myself climbing into bed.”
Janet, the B&B owner, appeared next to the table with a pot of coffee in her hand. “Good morning,” she said to Tony. “Would you like a full English, or something else?”
“Full English, please.” His stomach rumbled at the prospect.
“And would you both like coffee?” She flipped over two upturned cups on the table and poised the pot over them.
He and Dani nodded, and the landlady poured o
ut the dark, steaming liquid. “I’ll just get some milk for you,” she said, before disappearing through a door that obviously led to the kitchen. Tony could hear food sizzling in a frying pan, and the mouth-watering smell of
She returned a moment later with a small, china milk jug that was decorated with a floral design. She set it on the table, along with a matching china dish that was laden with various packets of sugar and sweetener.
As Janet went back to the kitchen, Tony looked at Dani. “What do you think we should do today?”
She added milk to her coffee and said, “Well, Gallow said we should take an eagle’s eye view, so I was thinking we might go to Castleton, where it all started. Then we’ll have more of an idea of the distances involved, see the surrounding area, that sort of thing.”
He nodded. “Sounds good to me.”
She grimaced. “Does it? It doesn’t feel to me like we’re doing much.”
“Gallow said we should take an eagle’s eye view of everything, remember?”
“Which, in practical terms, amounts to not doing much.” She sighed, and looked out through the window, at the rain. “I wonder if he thinks I’m still finding my feet.”
He looked at her over the rim of his coffee cup as he blew on the drink to cool it down. “Are you still finding your feet?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s just Gallow; he seems to be handling me with kid gloves.”
“I’m sure that’s not the case, Dani,” he said, truthfully. “Taking an overview of what’s going on is an important part of the job. We’re not directly chasing down the killer, but we might find something useful that helps the investigation.”
“I suppose so,” she said.
Janet returned with two plates. She placed a full English in front of Tony, and two slices of toast, topped with scrambled eggs, on Dani’s side of the table.
“Is there anything else I can get you?” she asked.
“We’re fine, thanks,” Dani told her.
“Enjoy!” Janet went back to the kitchen.
Tony looked down at his plate and felt his stomach grumble in anticipation. The smell of bacon, fried bread, tomatoes, eggs, and black pudding assailed his senses as he picked up his knife and fork and tried to decide where to start.
Cutting into a rasher of bacon, he said, “You can’t be a hero all the time. Leave that to someone else this time.”
“I don’t want to be a hero,” she said. “It’s just that when I think of that poor girl dumped on that altar like a bag of kindling, I want the person who did it to be brought to justice.”
“And they will be.” He took a bite of fried bread, and decided he might have discovered heaven on earth, despite what it might do to his arteries.
Dani nodded. “I just want to be a part of it, that’s all.”
They ate in silence for a couple of minutes, during which time, Tony put himself mentally in Dani’s shoes. He didn’t try to psychoanalyse her, but he tried to empathise with her.
“Do you feel like you’re not part of the team?” he asked.
Her eyes had been focused on her breakfast. Now, she looked up at him. “What? What do you mean?”
“You’ve been out of action for a while, and the team has grown during that time. Perhaps you think it’s left you behind.”
Her shoulders lifted as she took a deep breath, then lowered again as she sighed. “Maybe. I don’t know. I just feel…disconnected. I don’t really know how to describe it.”
“It’s totally understandable,” he told her. “I felt the same way after spending a long time out of the game. You’ll soon get back into the swing of things.”
She gave him a thin smile. “I hope so.” She started to take another forkful of breakfast, but stopped, put her knife and fork down, and pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket. It was vibrating in her hand.
“It’s Battle,” she said to Tony, as she put the phone to her ear. “Morning, guv.”
Tony continued eating, trying not to eavesdrop on the conversation, but finding it difficult not to do so, since Dani was sitting only a few feet from him. He couldn’t hear the DCI’s voice on the other end of the line, but it sounded like he was giving Dani instructions.
Her end of the conversation was simply, “Yes,” and “Okay, we’ll be there right away.”
She ended the call and looked across the table at Tony. “We’ve got to go. A member of the public has just found another body.”
That surprised Tony. He’d wondered if more bodies might turn up but hadn’t reckoned on one materialising so soon. “In the chapel?”
Dani shook her head, pushing her chair back and standing up. “At a sacred well just outside the village.”
Leaving his unfinished breakfast, Tony got up and followed the to the dining room door.
Janet appeared from the kitchen, a worried look on her face. “Is everything all right? Only I noticed you haven’t finished your breakfasts.”
“Everything’s fine,” Dani said. “We have to go, that’s all. Can you tell us how to get to the well?”
“Of course,” Janet said, brightening. “Just go out the front door and turn left. It’s only a two-minute walk from here. You can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
“Breakfast was lovely,” Tony told the landlady as he stepped past her and followed Dani out of the room.
They went out into the rain and turned left, following the pavement past houses and the village’s few shops.
When they reached the end of the pavement—and the edge of the village—a green sign with white writing told them that the “Sacred Well” was a little farther along the road.
Keeping on the grassy verge, they trudged along the narrow, winding road until they came to an even narrower track that led through a hedgerow towards the woods. Three Derbyshire Police patrol cars, and two police vans, were parked in a small, circular parking area at the edge of the woods. Beyond the vehicles, a uniformed officer was stretching blue and white crime scene tape between the trees.
Another uniformed officer was talking to a white-haired man holding a lead. On the other end of the lead, a small, white poodle sniffed at the ground disinterestedly.
The ubiquitous dog walker, Tony thought to himself. The backbone of the British criminal justice system.
They showed their credentials to the officer with the crime scene tape, ducking under it as he waved them through. A dirt path cut through the trees to a clearing which was bustling with activity.
In the centre of the clearing sat a small dome-like structure made of rocks, with a roughly hewn square shaped opening. Tony presumed this was the well that had given the village half of its name.
A white tent had been erected by the side of the rock structure. As Tony and Dani approached it, a petite woman emerged, dressed in a white Tyvek suit with the hood pulled up and a mask over her face.
She pulled down the hood and removed the mask, revealing long brown hair pinned back into a ponytail, and a pretty face.
Tony found himself standing straighter and running a hand through his hair, wishing he’d taken more care while brushing it this morning. He hadn’t expected to be running out of the door before finishing breakfast. But then, he hadn’t expected to be meeting a woman like the one standing in front of him, either. Something about her stirred a sense of attraction in him that he hadn’t felt in a long time.
“Hello,” she said, removing her gloves. “I am Alina Dalca, the forensic anthropologist.” She had an Eastern European accent. “Are you DI Summers and Dr Sheridan? DCI Battle told me to be expecting you.”
“That’s us,” Dani said, shaking the anthropologist’s hand. “And, please, call me Dani.”
“You may call me Alina.”
“And I’m Tony,” he said, reaching out his right hand.
Alina shook it and looked at him with deep brown eyes. “Hello, Tony. Nice to meet you.”
“What do we have?” Dani asked, indicating the tent.
“Much lik
e the body from yesterday. Skeletal remains wrapped inside a sheet. There are also remnants of clothing. The skeleton is female, and I would say from the cranial sutures that she was less than twenty years old at the time of her death. It appears she has been buried for many years.”
“And she was beside the well when she was found?” Tony asked.
“Yes, where the tent is.”
Dani looked at him. “You have some thoughts about that?”
“Only that he wanted her to be found. He could just as easily have pushed her into the well, where it would take longer for her to be discovered. But he didn’t. He put here there, in plain sight.”
“Similar to Daisy Riddle,” Dani said. “Placed in full view, on the altar.”
“If he wanted them to remain hidden,” Alina offered, “he would leave them in the place they have been buried for all this time.”
Tony nodded. “So why now? Why is he revealing them to us all these years later?” He looked around the clearing, hoping to receive some flash of inspiration but instead drawing a blank.
“That is your department, Tony” Alina said, with a smile. “As for mine, I will try to find out who this girl is. One thing I have already checked is that she has both ankle bones. The one we found with Daisy Riddle does not belong to this skeleton.”
“So, there are more,” Dani said with a sigh. “He’s got the remains of at least one other victim hidden away somewhere.”
The anthropologist nodded. “It would seem so, yes.”
Dani nodded slowly and gazed at the sacred well, seemingly lost in thought. Tony wondered if she was weighing up the chances of finding the secret burial place and cracking the case. Perhaps she though that by doing so, she would earn her place on the team.
Not that she had anything to prove to anyone; she’d been the driving force in solving the case that had landed in their laps at Christmas. But Tony knew how the mind worked. DI Summers was wondering how she could reaffirm her place among the members of Murder Force.
She turned to Tony and said, “Come on, we need to get to Castleton.”
“All right.” To Alina, he said, “Thanks for your help. I’ll be in touch. I mean, we’ll be in touch.” Mentally reprimanding himself for acting like a flustered schoolboy, he followed Dani out of the clearing and back along the path through the woods.
Silence of the Bones: A Murder Force Crime Thriller Page 7