Limestone Cowboy dcp-9
Page 19
"Mmm, I see what you mean," Jeff agreed with a knowing nod. "Now you've mentioned it I did hear a few threats being muttered. In that case perhaps we should hold him overnight, for his own safety."
"Just what I was thinking, Jeffrey."
"OK. We'll leave him 'till last and see how it goes."
"Cheers," I said. "I really would like to be at this exhumation but I'll make a couple of phone calls first."
Rosie didn't answer and she doesn't own a mobile. Inconvenient but another reason to like her. After that I rang a Gloucester number and spoke to the coroner's officer in charge of the exhumation. She'd cleared all the legal obstacles and orchestrated interested parties so that the whole thing would run smoothly at midnight tonight. She was an ex-police sergeant and had no objection to my attending, even though the case was well outside my jurisdiction. I didn't explain my interest and she didn't ask.
"Presumably First Call are paying," I said.
"You bet," she replied.
"Why midnight? And why so hastily arranged?"
"Their request. We would normally have organised it for first light, about 5 a.m., but they asked for the midnight slot. It's the witching hour. They'll be able to show the church clock at that time and superimpose hooting owls on the soundtrack. We're normally seen as a bunch of obstructionists but they were in a hurry and the family member had given her permission, so we were happy to accommodate them. It shows us in a good light and the publicity for the office won't do us any harm. You know the score: everything stops for the great god television."
"And the TV crew'll be able to go there straight from the pub," I said, "instead of having to drag their hungover bodies out of bed at four in the morning."
"You're a cynic, Inspector."
"A cynic? Moil Never."
The next call was to the Home Office laboratory at Chepstow, where I eventually found myself speaking to the scientist who was handling the case. He suggested that he ring me back.
"So what's the game plan?" I asked after wte'd confirmed that we were talking about the Barraclough case.
"Not much of a plan," he replied. "We dig down to the coffin and then decide on the next step. Ideally, if it's in a good condition, we'll remove the whole caboodle and take it to the path lab, but after thirty years that's unlikely. We'll have a spare coffin standing by, a big one, and we'll probably have to lift everything into that. The best place to find uncorrupted DNA will be in the bones. We'll get what we want while it's in the lab and have the coffin back down the hole by lunchtime."
"Is Chepstow handling the profiling?"
"Not completely. The TV people have asked for samples so they can use a private lab."
"And you still have the nail-scrapings from the girl?"
"Yes, we've already done a profile on them."
"Have you given First Call a sample?"
"No. We refused, but they've got the profile."
"Are they happy with that?"
"They'll have to be."
"So why do they need a Barraclough sample? Why can't they let you do the whole job? Don't they trust you?"
"Probably not, but we have different agendas. They want to televise the process and we won't allow them in here, so they're using the private lab. And they want to beat us to it, of course. It's all to do with the great unwashed's craving for excitement. We want to get to the bottom of a murder and possibly defend the police's reputation, they want a story, preferably one that shows police incompetence."
I thought about his words for a few seconds and decided to come clean with him. "The dead man's daughter is an acquaintance of mine," I said, "so I have a slight personal involvement. She'll be there and I'm worried she'll find it upsetting."
"Hmm, I imagine it will be. I'd keep her well back if I were you. He'll be a skeleton by now and there might be a certain amount of disrespectful conduct when we're down the hole, trying to find all his bits and pieces."
"Rather you than me," I said.
"It's a living."
"Thanks for your help, and we'll see you at midnight."
"See you then. Oh, and just one other piece of advice."
"Fire away."
"Your friend. I'd keep her upwind of the grave if I were you."
Chapter Eleven
I went home and put a packet of Chorley cakes and a bottle of flavoured water in the car. The route was simple enough: A hundred and eighty miles down the M6 and M5 to J13 and follow the signs. No need to write that down. I stuffed myself with a big ham sandwich and a piece of fruitcake and set off. I was heading to an area of the country we refer to as the Cotswolds. It's a fairytale place, where princes live and call in the pub for the odd half pint with the locals; where pop stars inhabit castles and handsome girls called Cressinda and Tasha, their jodhpur-clad bums rising and falling in unison, give you a friendly wave as you drive slowly past their horses. It only rains at night in the Cotswolds, and the streets are dry again by seven fifteen.
The drive down was hellish. You switch off, regard it as five hours taken out of your life and keep an eagle eye on the brake lights of the car in front. Some people, I reminded myself, have to do this every day. I arrived about eight thirty and pulled off the road for a look at the map and a swig of water. As I drove into Uley the sun was low behind me, giving the lighting a magical quality.
It's a one-street village, the one street being called, simply, The Street. It clings to the valley wall rather than following the bottom, giving long views across to the other side. Cotswold stone has a yellow colour, and the angle of the sun and some obscure property of light, to do with frequencies and reflection, conspired to make the walls of the cottages glow. They were made of limestone or sandstone, or perhaps a mixture of the two. I should have paid more attention during those first geology lessons.
Rose Cottage was now an antique shop but the King's Head had seen better days. I drove slowly with my window down, heading uphill to where I could see the church with its square tower and a small, offset spire overlooking the whole valley. There was a village store and post office and some ancient petrol pumps that someone had saved from the scrap heap. The Old Crown pub, bedecked with window boxes, was straight out of the English Heritage brochure.
Marl, I thought. That was the name of the stone. I'd check with Rosie when I saw her. During my drive through the village I didn't see a single estate agent's sign announcing 'House for Sale'. The people of Uley were content with their lot, and I couldn't blame them.
I parked outside the church, St Giles, and went for an explore. There was a graveyard next to the church and another, more modern one across the road. I wandered around this one and read the dates on the headstones. 1950,1952,1969, continuing right up to the present time, many of the later ones bearing flowers in granite vases. In Heckley they'd be stolen. The grass was mown short and grasshoppers whirred away from my feet. The graves covered the period in question but I couldn't see one with the right name on it, or any sign of preparatory work done by the gravediggers. I crossed the road to the graveyard proper.
The ground here was uneven, with the graves crowding against each other as if seeking comfort in their neighbour's proximity. Some had sunk and some were still heaped up, with the headstones leaning at angles. None had flowers on them and no lawnmower could deal with this terrain. Lichen, moss and acid rain had taken their toll, making it difficult to read dates but they must have stretched back at least two hundred years. The graveyard was surrounded by high trees, firs and yew, and sloped down away from the church. Behind the church was a substantial manor house, which I took to be the vicarage or rectory. Or, more likely these days, the Old Vicarage or Old Rectory. I couldn't see Rosie's car but there was one of those miniature JCB excavators parked nearby, ready for action.
The line of least resistance took me downhill and I found myself in the lowest corner of the graveyard. There were planks of wood alongside an unmarked grave, with folded tarpaulins laid next to them and bags of lime under the hedge. I'd fo
und the last resting place of Abraham Barraclough. The sun never penetrated this secret corner but it was a warm, clear evening, the birds were singing and the grass was dry under my feet. So why was the hair on the back of my neck standing on end? I thought of Stephen King and turned back uphill, towards my car and sanctuary.
Dinner in a pub would have made sense but I settled for coffee at the motorway services and had a snooze in the car. Uley was a different place when I returned, just after midnight, the glow of stone replaced by the soft colour of an occasional lighted window, and beyond them an infinity of blackness. It was a moonless night but the stars put on a show for us. I parked my car behind the long line of vehicles near the church and glanced up at them as I zipped my jacket and closed the car door. Maybe that's my way of praying: a casual glance up at the stars; a tacit acknowledgement that there's something out there that's beyond our comprehension and always will be.
The drone of a generator disturbed the night as it fed a couple of floodlights on a column, and blue police tape held back a silent straggle of people who were watching the gravediggers and TV crew at work. I stumbled on the uneven ground and worried about falling through into one of those sunken graves. A uniformed PC saw me approach and detached himself from the onlookers. I introduced myself and asked him to indicate the coroner's officer and the boffin from Chepstow.
"They're disappointed," the scientist told me, nodding towards the cameras after I found him. "The coffin's in good condition — solid oak at a guess — so we're enlarging the hole and trying to lift it out fairly intact. Saves me and my assistant getting messed up. They were hoping for some good shots of the lid being smashed open and me climbing out of the grave holding a thigh bone or even the skull." He gave a little laugh at the thought. "Bloody ghouls. I don't know why we're helping them. All they want to do is prove that you got it wrong, all those years ago."
"Perhaps we did," I replied.
He was silent for a few moments, wondering where my interest lay, then: "Did you say that you were a friend of the deceased's daughter?"
"Yes."
"Is she here?"
"I believe so."
"I need a mouth swab from her. Could you point her out to me?"
"When I find her."
Rosie was at the edge of the group of people, standing with the vicar and the coroner's officer. They all turned as I approached and Rosie started as she recognised me, then stepped towards me and accepted a hug.
"I didn't expect to see you," she said but I couldn't think of a reason for being there and just gave her an extra squeeze.
The vicar was called Duncan and had a handshake in proportion to the six-foot-six he stood, while the coroner's officer's was soft and warm. She'd been standing with her hands in her pockets.
"We talked on the phone," I said to her. "You must have worked hard, organising all this so quickly."
"You know what they say, Inspector: Ask a busy woman…"
I turned to Rosie. "Did you drive down?" I asked.
"Yes. Duncan and his wife are putting me up at the vicarage."
"That's kind of them. I wish I'd known, I could have brought you."
"You have work to do."
"Look at that lot," the coroner's officer said. "He'll fall in if he gets any closer."
The cameraman was pointing his huge shoulder-mounted camera down into the grave while the director endeavoured to hold him back and look over his shoulder at the same time. A third member of the team, the sound man, waved what looked like a flurry animal on the end of a pole over them. Rosie gave a sniff and a sudden swirl of a breeze stirred me tree-tops, as if some restless spirit were up there, trying — to find its way back home.
"C'mon," I said, taking Rosie by the arm and turning her away from the activity. I switched my hand to hers and she allowed me to lead her towards the church. The light was behind us, so the footing was more secure, and when we were on the paving stones I put my arm across her shoulders.
"You shouldn't be here, Rosie," I told her, when we were standing inside the doorway of St Giles. "I can understand you coming, but there's nothing else you can see, nothing you can do. I think you should go to bed."
"What about you?"
"I'll go home, or book in at the Holiday Inn if I feel tired. I'll be OK, it's you I'm worried about. Listen, Rosie. It's obviously upsetting for you. It would be for anyone. Let them get on with it in their own way. They'll take the coffin to the hospital lab and open it. Apparently they'll have it back here by lunchtime. Maybe you'll be able to say your goodbyes to your dad then, without all this… all this circus."
"That's what they said," she admitted. "Duncan said we could have a little service of interment."
"That's good of him. Would you like me to be there?"
"I don't know. No, I don't think so. I'd prefer to be on my own. Lay him to rest, one way or another, once and for all."
"That would be best," I said. "From what I've heard of him, from what I've gathered, he was a special person. That's the memory to cling to."
Rosie wiped her eyes and pressed her face against my chest. "Shall I tell them you've seen enough?" I asked, and felt her nod her acquiescence.
"Inspector!" I turned to face the voice. It was the scientist from the Chepstow lab. "Is this the lady I'm looking for?"
"Yes," I replied, releasing Rosie and making the introductions. "He needs a sample of your buccal cells," I told her, "from inside; your mouth."
The scientist produced his kits and removed the screwed lid from one of the plastic tubes. He extracted the swizzle stick with its cotton wool bud and handed it to Rosie. "Just give it a good rub round the inside of your cheek, please." Rosie did as she was told, silent and compliant, and he placed the swab back inside its tube. "And another, please, just to play safe."
He sealed the samples in their envelopes and filled in the details before saying thanks and wandering off again. It was going to be a long night for him.
"What's the purpose of that?" Rosie asked as he vanished into the gloom.
"It's just a check," I replied.
"A check for what?"
"He wants to compare your DNA with that from the body, to prove it's the right grave. We inherit half our DNA from our father, half from our mother. They'll be able to verify that you're a close relative to… to the person in the grave."
"I see." Then, after a long pause: "First Call haven't asked me for a sample."
"No? Well, let's just say that we're more thorough than they are."
The vicar insisted I go back with them for a coffee and we had it seated on high stools in his big kitchen. He wanted to make me a flask and a sandwich for the trip home, but I managed to convince him that it wasn't necessary. When I was in the car again I put Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic in the CD player and pointed north. It's a musical description of the liner's final journey to the bottom of the sea. The roads were mercifully quiet and I hardly dropped below eighty, almost halving the time of my outward trip. As that final, sad Amen sounded and the broken hulk settled on the ocean floor I'd covered over a hundred miles and the morning sun was in my eyes.
An exhumation isn't undertaken lightly. It can only be done in a few special cases and requires the issue of a warrant by either the local coroner or the Home Office, ©ther parties with an interest are the police, just so that they know it's official and not the work of grave robbers, the environmental health officer and the Church. As this was a criminal case, a police photographer was there to record every stage, and another officer was appointed to follow through the continuity of the process, so that there was no suggestion of bones being substituted. When you added the cost of the JCB, the funeral director and gravediggers, plus a new coffin and all the various materials, it was costing First Call a pretty penny. And they wanted their money's worth.
I went straight to the nick and had a toasted teacake and mug of tea in the canteen, joshing with the dayshift woodentops as they slunk in, bleary-eyed and reluctant.
"So-so, Gareth. So-so."
I combed my hair with my fingers, hardly able to see my reflection in the steamed-up mirror, and pulled my pants on. Gareth had a pee and washed his hands.
"If you could start all over again, Charlie," he said, "what would you do differently? What changes would you make?"
That's Gareth's way of making conversation, and as profound as he ever gets. I pulled a sock over my toes, wriggled them about and pulled it fully on.
"If I could start all over again?"
"That's what I said."
"There is one thing."
"What's that?"
"I'd eat more roughage."
"Ha ha!" he laughed. "Ha ha! Eat more roughage! I like it, Charlie, I like it." He wandered out into the real world and I reached for a shoe. Another day had begun.
I went through the motions but my mind was elsewhere. We'd made twelve arrests at the dog fight and they'd all been sent home on police bail, Sir Morton being the last to go, earlier this morning. He'd brought in a high-flyer of a solicitor and admitted nothing, claiming to have been taken to the farm by one of his employees who apparently was under the illusion that a little escapism would do him good, be a relief from the pressure he'd recently been under. But she was wrong. He'd been disgusted and dismayed by the whole thing. Jeff and the CPS prosecutor had the case in hand, so I left it to them. Two burglars were in the cells but I let Dave and one of the DCs do the interviewing. Jeff came into my office to ask how it had all gone and I told him.