by Helen Phifer
‘Doctor Adams.’
‘This is the Force Incident Manager. We have a serious problem. Someone’s found a body in a grave that shouldn’t be there.’
She shook her head. When didn’t the police have a problem?
‘What’s the address? I’ll be there as soon as I can.’
As she listened, she grabbed a pen off the windowsill and was about to scribble the details down on the back of her hand when she stopped: there was no need. She knew this address well, although she hadn’t been there for quite some time.
As she said goodbye and ended the call, a loud shout behind her made her jump. Turning around she saw that Phil was now towering over one of the newbies who was lying on the gym mat clutching at his stomach and groaning. She smiled to herself. She’d been there before many times. It hurt like hell when you winded yourself by landing heavily in an unexpected move. That guy wouldn’t forget that in a hurry, or the laughter coming from the others around him. It would make or break him; he’d either get up and start again to prove he wasn’t a pushover, or he’d hide at the back until the self-defence class was finished. She hoped he stuck it out; he looked as if he needed all the help he could get.
She grabbed her water bottle and car keys from the window ledge, turning to wave at Phil, who nodded in return. He was a nice guy and he worked her hard now, but he’d taken his time and never pushed her too far in the early days when she’d plucked up the courage to walk in and sign herself up to join the class. He never asked questions and she never told him why she was there, although he probably recognised her from the newspapers. Everyone did, eventually, even though she’d cut her long, blonde hair and asked the hairdresser to turn it ash grey to make herself look older and blend in. Now it seemed everyone wanted to be grey. The only time in her life she’d been a leader in the fashion world, she chuckled to herself.
As she left the church hall she scanned the car park, making sure there was no one around. It made her angry that she was now so aware and conscious about her safety. Only a few years ago it would never have entered her head: she’d always been so sure of herself. She clicked the fob and the lights on her black BMW X1 blinked in response: not too flashy but it had made her feel safe when she’d taken it for a test drive. It was solid, yet fast if she needed it to be. Climbing in, habit made her turn her head and check the back seat was empty; the constant fear that someone might be hiding in it sometimes made living her life impossible. Breathing out a sigh of relief at the sight of her gym bag and empty coffee cup, she started the car. The cemetery was less than ten minutes away.
Three
Detective Sergeant Josh Walker got out of the unmarked Ford Focus and stared at the sight in front of him with his mouth open. He turned to his colleague, Detective Constable Sam Thomas, pointed to the dirt-covered coffin dangling mid-air and whispered, ‘Well there’s something you don’t see every day.’ She shook her head, speechless. Josh lifted his hand, waving at Claire and Carl, the two CSIs who’d had the privilege of documenting what should have been a straightforward grave exhumation. Claire waved back, while Carl nodded and pointed at his protective suit. Josh realised he was telling him to get suited and booted, so he walked around to the boot of the car where he kept a supply of the essentials needed to enter a serious crime scene. Sam followed and the pair of them began to open the plastic packets and dress in the protective clothing.
Josh tugged on some protective shoe covers along with a pair of rubber gloves and headed towards the scene that had been cordoned off with blue and white crime scene tape. He ducked under it, turning to see if Sam was behind him, but she was still by the car, talking to someone on her phone. He smiled to himself: she was a little too squeamish sometimes for this job, but as they had been the only two left in the office, he’d had no choice but to bring her along.
‘So tell me how a body can end up in a grave underneath a coffin. Are you sure it didn’t fall out of it?’ Josh said, catching up with Carl and walking alongside him towards the grave.
Carl rolled his eyes at him. ‘Yes, I’m bloody sure. What do you take me for, Josh? I’m not an idiot; the coffin is new. It’s rock solid. There’s no way she’s come out of there.’
Josh walked along the metal plates that had been put down along the grass verge to lead a path to the open grave without contaminating the scene. ‘Maybe the rain washed the body from another grave into this one? That storm was terrible; it poured for days.’
‘And maybe you watch too many horror films, Josh. There’s no way that’s happened, it’s impossible.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because the grave has four solid walls. It didn’t give way when it was dug out and the coffin removed. It’s a perfect, oblong hole in the ground. The only way it got there was because someone put it there.’
Josh had reached the gravesite. Stepping forward he peered down into the grave.
‘Bollocks, I hate it when you’re right, Carl.’
Carl laughed. ‘I know you do, but it doesn’t take a hotshot DS to figure this one out. Sorry to take away some of your glory. You do, however, have a chance to redeem yourself. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who the body belongs to and how it got there.’
Josh felt the beginning of a headache set in. Jodie was going to go mad; friends of hers were celebrating their wedding anniversary, and they were supposed to be going to the meal tonight. This was going to be a long one. There was no way he was going to be clocking off work on time. Unzipping his suit, he reached inside his trouser pocket to find his phone. He’d better ring her now and get it over with: there was no point making her wait until last minute. He stared down at the partially buried body; his eyes widened as he felt his stomach churn. The victim was a girl, judging by the torn tights and the lurid green nail varnish he could see on the two fingers that were sticking through the soil. From what he could make out of her somewhat crushed face, she didn’t look much older than nineteen or twenty. Around the same age as his younger sister. He shuddered; too young to be dead. Questions he couldn’t answer were flowing through his mind, the most pressing, who are you, and how the hell did you get down there?
‘What’s wrong?’ Jodie’s voice shouted down the mobile clamped to his ear and he pulled the phone away a little, so she didn’t deafen him.
‘Nothing’s wrong.’
‘You only ever ring me during the day if you’re going to be late home or if you want something. So, what’s wrong?’
He paused for a moment wondering if she was right. Did he only ever ring when it was bad news? He stepped away from the grave. It didn’t seem right to have his angry wife shouting at him in front of the dead. It felt somehow disrespectful.
‘Something’s come up. I’m not going to be home on time.’
‘I bloody knew it, always the same with you, Josh.’
‘I’m sorry, but this is important.’
‘Everything is important, except for me that is.’
He cringed, hoping no one else could hear her. ‘I’m sorry, Jodie, go to dinner without me. If I can get away I will, but don’t wait for me.’ The line went dead, and his heart sank. Things had been getting worse lately. She’d never truly understand, but with recent cuts in the department he was on call more than he was off duty; she only stopped complaining for a moment when his wages went into the bank. One day he’d pluck up the courage to confront her: he was running out of reasons why they were still together. They had nothing in common any more; he knew he needed to sort it out because there was no way he was spending the rest of his life living like this. If there was one thing dealing with murders and sudden deaths had taught him, it was that you only get one shot at living and you should really make the most of it.
Sam, who had finally plucked up the courage to take a look at the scene, walked towards him. ‘Everything okay, boss?’
‘Yes, thanks. Let’s get this sorted. We need a pathologist. We’ll probably need an anthropologist as well, but we’ll wait and see wh
at Doctor Adams suggests. Do you know if she’s been called out?’
Sam nodded. ‘Control messaged whilst you were on the phone to say she was on her way.’
‘Good, that’s good.’ Josh felt his stomach unclench a little knowing it was Beth who would be attending. She was the best forensic pathologist he’d ever worked with and a good friend. She was also a professional of the highest standards which made his life a little bit easier. There was nothing else he could do apart from speak to the witnesses whilst he waited for her. The scene was hers; she would dictate what needed to be done and by whom.
A large raindrop landed on his face as he walked towards the two men standing next to the private ambulance, both wearing high-vis safety vests. The older of the two had no colour in his face and looked as if he could do with a shot of brandy for the shock. Josh felt bad for him; it must have been terrible enough having to exhume a grave without the added extra surprise of finding another body in there. Looking up at the rapidly darkening sky he felt more drops of rain fall on his head. It was about to lash it down. He heard Carl and Claire shouting as they ran towards the CSI van, and he hoped they had a tent in there to cover the grave or they were liable to lose any trace evidence.
Different scenarios were playing through Josh’s mind, but the only one that made sense was the one that told him this wasn’t an accident. Whoever this girl was, she had been put there intentionally, seemingly by someone who’d thought she wouldn’t be found. He had to hand it to them, it was clever; hiding a body in a grave which had already been dug for someone else was sick and twisted, but brilliant in its own terrible way.
Four
Beth stared at the huge, rusted cast iron gates that sealed off the east side of Fell View Cemetery as she pulled up and a police officer checked her ID.
‘Afternoon, ma’am, they’re up on the hill near the church. A bright yellow digger truck with a coffin dangling from it: you can’t miss it.’
She tried her best not to let the small smile which played across her lips turn into a smirk: dark humour was prevalent throughout the police and her own medical profession.
‘Thank you. Can you tell me if the duty DS is here yet?’
She nodded. ‘Yep, he turned up thirty minutes ago.’
Beth smiled again, driving through the imposing Victorian gateway into the cemetery. It was one of the most breathtaking places to visit in the Lake District and was often filled with tourists. Not today though: they’d all have been ushered out. The windscreen wipers swished the heavy rain off the glass, giving her a clear view for a second before it was covered again. She looked around; nature was fighting a battle against the council to take control of the grounds and from this perspective it seemed that nature was winning. The Gothic monuments and crumbling gravestones from this side looked like something out of a horror film; they were in desperate need of renovation and repair. Long, overgrown grass and weeds hid the faded names on the majority of the graves making them hard to read. Before she’d become such a recluse she’d spent many hours wandering around the area. There was something so calming about a walk through this part of the cemetery. It was like stepping back in time and history, looking at names and wondering what the people were like, what sort of lives they had led before their deaths. Centre stage was a sunken circular row of mausoleums owned by the area’s wealthiest families. Last time she’d walked around, it had been sealed off because of the state of disrepair they were in. This part of the cemetery was closed off for public burials and pretty much everything else until the council and the volunteers who had decided they wanted to take control of it came to an amicable agreement about maintaining it.
She carried on driving up the hill to the newer part of the graveyard, which was where the good citizens of Windermere and the surrounding villages were laid to rest. The boarded-up chapel, which had never been consecrated, served only as a funerary chapel. It had never been used as a place of worship and sat at the peak of the hill, surrounded by much smaller, modern graves than the ones she’d just passed. As she rounded the bend she muttered: ‘Holy shit’. The dangling coffin against the backdrop of the grey, ominous clouds was certainly a sight to behold. Near to the digger was the private ambulance belonging to the undertakers, a police van with ‘CSI’ emblazoned across the side and a group of people standing around, huddled under umbrellas. On the opposite side of the church, along the main thoroughfare, were a couple of unmarked police cars, a police van and a huge carrier van which no doubt held the search team. She parked behind the carrier, got out and went around to the boot of her car so she could get dressed into her crime scene uniform.
‘Hi, Beth.’
Looking up, she smiled. ‘Josh, how are you?’
‘Could be better, I’m glad you’re on call.’
‘I was about to say the same thing; I don’t think I could cope with your colleague and his continual grumbling about everything.’
‘You mean you don’t like working with Sherlock? But he’s such a good bloke.’
‘No, I don’t like working with DS Holmes. He’s about as funny as a corpse.’
Josh began to laugh. ‘Nah, neither do I. He’s such a miserable git. Listen, this scene is a complete mystery; I’ve never seen anything like it. In fact, I’ve never heard of anything like it, but I’ll let you take a look for yourself and see what you think.’
As she zipped up the pale blue paper suit, tugging on a pair of shoe covers and a pair of matching blue gloves, she grabbed her heavy case from the boot.
‘Lead the way, I’m ready.’
But are you really ready? The question burned in her mind as she followed Josh across the narrow metal footpath to the crime scene. Taking the scene guard booklet from the officer standing in front of the police tape, she signed herself in. This was it, there was no going back now. Whoever was in that grave was going to demand her full attention and they were going to get it; she’d give every single piece of herself to this case. Stepping inside the tent, all noise except the steady patter of rain as it drummed against the sheeting ceased to exist. The air inside was stuffy and the muted light cast a shadow over the open grave. Beth pulled a torch from her case then stood still taking in the scene. She would live, eat, sleep and breathe it until she had solved the puzzle of the mysterious body in the grave.
Five
Beth switched on the torch and stared down into the grave, her eyes wide and lips slightly parted. She’d seen some terrible things since she’d completed her training, the stuff that nightmares were made of, but this, this was more than terrible. It was wrong, so wrong. Why would someone put a body in a grave that had been dug for another person? From where she was standing the body looked intact, although the marbling on the exposed flesh of the legs and the putrid smell of decomposition that lingered in the air told her that it might not be the case. Through the thin layer of soil she could make out what looked like a rather tatty faded yellow dress. Turning to look at Josh as he entered the tent she mouthed: ‘Why?’
He shrugged his shoulders; he couldn’t answer that yet. She knew that in time to come he would be able to, as she put as much faith in his ability as a detective sergeant as he did her post-mortems. They made a pretty good team and between them had solved every murder that had come their way. For this area they had been few and far between, not like over the border in Lancashire where she also covered, that was far busier. She liked that about Cumbria: the police force was much smaller than the rest of the north-west, so it was easier to get to know the detectives you were working alongside. It was one of the reasons she lived in this county instead of anywhere else: she’d be called to local jobs with a team she trusted. She’d known Josh for years: they’d been friends at university but they’d grown closer after he’d helped her that terrible night – she stopped herself from going back in time; now wasn’t the time or the place to go back there. She squatted down at the side of the grave to take a closer look at the body.
‘We need a forensic archaeologist
to excavate the site. Aside from being flattened with the weight of the coffin and the decomposition, our victim looks relatively fresh. How long ago was this grave dug?’
‘According to the guy over there, Barry, who dug it, around eight weeks ago.’
‘Well I can’t tell you much until the body has been recovered to the mortuary, but I can tell you I don’t think she put herself down there. She was definitely dead, or near to death when she was placed inside that grave. There is no way she could have covered herself in enough soil not to be noticed by the mourners at Florence Wright’s funeral.’
Beth looked across at the men who were leaning against the side of the private ambulance, then back at Josh.
‘Is Barry a viable suspect? He had access to the grave before and after: wouldn’t he have noticed a body in there before the coffin was interred?’
‘At this point, everyone is a viable suspect. I’ve asked for some of my team to come and take Barry, and Jason, the other guy who was operating the digger, down to the station to give a statement.’
‘Good, I know it’s not for me to say, but surely it has to be someone who knows all about the cemetery and how it works. You can’t just rock up with a dead body and throw it in a grave hoping for the best.’
‘Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of. Apparently, there’s a team of two who maintain and dig the graves, plus the office staff. Then there’s also the undertakers who come and go, not to mention members of the public.’
‘Good point: so it could be anyone in the funeral trade?’
‘Or it could have been some opportunistic killer who saw the readymade grave and decided to fill it himself.’
‘So, basically, it could be anyone.’
Josh laughed. ‘Basically, yes. But starting with those two at the top of my list, I guess I’ll have to work my way backwards.’