Written in Bone dh-2

by Simon Beckett

I hurried back to where Brody and Fraser waited by the Range Rover as she climbed back into her Mini.

  ‘What the hell did you say to her?’ Fraser demanded as she drove away.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Have you spoken to Duncan this morning?’

  ‘Duncan? No, not yet,’ he said, defensively. ‘He hasn’t called in yet. But, you know, I was going to take him out some breakfast later…’

  ‘Try him now.’

  ‘Now? Why, what’s-’

  ‘Just do it.’

  He gave me a dirty look but reached for his radio. ‘Can’t get through…’ he frowned.

  ‘All right, get in the car. We’re going out there.’

  Brody had been watching with a worried expression, but said nothing until we were in the car and Fraser was pulling away. ‘What is it? What did you find?’

  I was staring anxiously through the windscreen as we left the village, scanning the sky ahead of us. ‘I checked the wiring back at the community centre. A fire caused by an electrical fault wouldn’t have been hot enough to melt the copper core. But there’s an area round the back where the wires were melted.’

  ‘So what?’ Fraser asked, impatiently.

  ‘It means the fire was hotter there,’ Brody said, slowly. ‘Oh, Christ.’

  Fraser banged the steering wheel. ‘Will somebody please tell me what the fuck’s going on?’

  ‘It was hotter there because that’s where an accelerant was used to start it,’ I told him. ‘The fire wasn’t caused by a short. Somebody set it deliberately.’

  He was still trying to work it out. ‘What’s that got to do with Duncan?’

  It was Brody who answered. ‘Because if someone wanted to get rid of the evidence, it might not only have been the clinic that was torched.’

  I could see from Fraser’s face that he finally understood. But even if he hadn’t there was no need to explain further.

  Smeared across the sky directly ahead was a black trail of smoke.

  The meandering terrain prevented us from seeing the source of the smoke. It seemed like every hill and bend in the road conspired to keep the cottage and camper van from view. Fraser put his foot down, tearing along the narrow road much faster than was safe in the atrocious conditions. No one complained.

  Then we rounded one final bend, and the old cottage was revealed in front of us. So, too, was the camper van.

  What was left of it.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Fraser said.

  Most of the smoke we’d seen was coming from the cottage. There hadn’t been much left to burn, but the thick roof beams and timbers that had fallen in the day before were still smouldering in the ruins. If there had been anything in there that SOC might have salvaged, it had been destroyed now.

  But it was the sight of Brody’s camper van that transfixed us. It had been reduced to a burned-out shell, tyres melted to misshapen lumps of rubber. The living quarters had been almost completely consumed, walls eaten away by the fire, roof partially blown off when either the gas cylinder or petrol tank had exploded. Thin trails of smoke rose wraith-like from it, only to be whisked away by the wind.

  There was no sign of Duncan.

  Fraser didn’t slow as he went off the road and on to the track, the heavy car slewing on the muddy surface as he stamped on the brakes. He jumped out of the car and ran towards the camper van, leaving the door swinging in the wind behind him.

  ‘Duncan? Duncan!’ he bellowed, charging across the grass. Brody and I ran behind him, rain whipping into our faces. Fraser lurched to a halt in front of the camper van.

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ! Where is he? Where the fuck is he?’

  He stared round wildly, as though hoping the young PC would suddenly come strolling up. I became aware of Brody’s gaze. There was the same awareness in his face that I felt myself, and I knew that he’d seen what I had.

  ‘He’s here,’ I said quietly.

  Fraser followed the direction of my gaze. A boot was sticking out from under a piece of heat-buckled roof, the leather burned away to reveal charred flesh and bone.

  He took a step towards the camper van. ‘Ah, no, Christ…’

  Before I could stop him he grabbed hold of the panel and started trying to heave it off.

  ‘Don’t,’ I began, but as I started forward a hand fell on my shoulder. I looked round at Brody. He shook his head.

  ‘Leave him.’

  ‘It was a crime scene; none of us should touch it. But I understood why Brody didn’t try to interfere.’

  ‘I don’t really see it making much difference now, do you?’ he said, bleakly.

  Fraser wrenched the panel free, letting the wind carry it away. It pitched and bounced along the grass like a grounded kite until it came up against the cottage. Fraser continued to tear at the rest of the wreckage like a madman. Even from where I stood, the smell of burned meat was overpowering.

  Then he stopped, staring at what he’d uncovered. He stumbled back, as uncoordinated as a broken puppet.

  ‘Oh, Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, that’s not him. Tell me that’s not him!’

  The body lay in the centre of the camper van. It wasn’t as badly burned as Janice Donaldson’s remains had been, but in some ways its scorched humanity made the sight even worse. Its limbs had drawn up, so that it was curled in a foetal position, pathetically vulnerable. Cooked into the flesh round its middle was a charred police utility belt. A fire-blackened baton and handcuffs were still attached to it.

  Fraser was weeping. ‘Why didn’t he get out? Why the fuck didn’t he get out?’

  I took hold of his arm. ‘Come on.’

  ‘Get off me!’ he snarled, jerking free.

  ‘Get a grip, man!’ Brody told him, harshly.

  Fraser turned on him. ‘Don’t tell me what to do! You’re a fucking has-been! You’ve got no authority here!’

  Brody’s face was uncompromising. ‘Then start acting like a police officer yourself.’

  All at once Fraser seemed to sag. ‘He was twenty-one,’ he mumbled. ‘Twenty-one! What am I going to tell everyone?’

  ‘Tell them he was murdered,’ Brody said brutally. ‘Tell them we’ve got a killer loose on the island. And tell them if Wallace had sent out a proper inquiry team in the first place, your twenty-one-year-old PC might still be alive!’

  There was rare emotion in his voice. And we all knew what he’d left unsaid: that it had been Fraser’s slip that had shown our hand about the woman’s murder, and perhaps panicked her killer into action. But there was no point in recriminations now, and looking at Fraser I thought he was suffering enough already.

  ‘Take it easy,’ I told Brody.

  He took a long breath, then nodded, in control of himself again. ‘We need to let the mainland know what’s happened. This isn’t just a straightforward murder inquiry any more.’

  Red-eyed, Fraser took out his radio, turning his back to the wind and rain as he stabbed a number into its keypad. He listened, then tried again.

  ‘Come on, come on!’

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Brody asked.

  ‘It’s not working.’

  ‘What do mean, it’s not working? You called Wallace last night.’

  ‘Well, now there’s nothing!’ Fraser snapped. ‘I thought it was just Duncan’s radio before, but I can’t raise anybody. See for yourself, there’s no bloody signal!’

  He thrust it at Brody. The retired inspector took it and tapped in a number. He put the handset to his ear, then handed it back.

  ‘Let’s try the one in the car.’

  The Range Rover’s fixed radio used the same digital system as the handsets. Without bothering to ask Fraser, Brody tried it, then shook his head.

  ‘Dead. The gale must have taken out a mast. If that’s happened the whole comms network for the islands could be down.’

  I took in the empty, windswept landscape that surrounded us. The low, dark clouds that squatted over the island seemed to shut us in even more.

  ‘So now what do we do?’
I asked.

  For once even Brody seemed at a loss. ‘We keep trying. Sooner or later we’ll get either the radios or the landlines back.’

  ‘But what happens until then?’

  The rain streaked his face as he looked at the camper van. His mouth set in a hard line.

  ‘Until then, we’re on our own.’

  CHAPTER 17

  I VOLUNTEERED TO stay at the croft while Brody and Fraser drove back to the village to find stakes and a hammer. We needed to tape off the camper van, but there wasn’t enough of it left to fix the tape to. Moving Duncan’s body wasn’t an option, even if there’d been anywhere left to take it. With Janice Donaldson’s remains we hadn’t had a choice, but that didn’t apply here. True, it would mean leaving the van and its grisly contents exposed to the elements. But-Fraser’s frenzy apart-this time I was determined to preserve the crime scene as we’d found it.

  And none of us doubted that it was just that-a crime scene. Someone had torched this deliberately, just as they had the medical clinic. Except Duncan hadn’t managed to escape.

  Before he and Fraser left, Brody and I stood huddled on the track, bracing ourselves against the gale while the police sergeant tried once more to raise the mainland on the radio. The weather was worse than ever. Rain fell like lead shot, dripping from the scorched hood of my coat in shining strands, and heavy clouds raced overhead, their movement reflected in the rippling of the wind-flattened grass.

  But nothing could carry away the stink of burning, or the stark fact of the young policeman’s death. It hung like a pall over everything, adding a further chill to the already frigid air.

  ‘You think this was done before or after the community centre?’ I asked.

  Brody considered the van’s blackened shell. ‘Before, I’d say. Makes more sense for him to have come out to torch this first, then set fire to the clinic. No point in starting a fire that would alert the entire village until he’d taken care of things here.’

  I felt anger as well as shock at the senselessness of it. ‘What was the point? We’d already moved the remains to the clinic. Why leave them out here for weeks, and then suddenly do this? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Brody sighed, wiping the rain from his face. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense. Whoever this is, he’s panicking. He knows he made a mistake leaving the body here, and now he’s trying to rectify it. He’s determined to destroy anything that might tie him to it. Even if that means killing again.’

  He paused, giving me a level look.

  ‘You sure you’ll be all right by yourself?’

  We’d already discussed this. It made sense for Brody to go back to the village since he knew where to find the materials we needed to seal the site. But someone had to stay out here, and Fraser was in no fit state.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

  ‘Just don’t take any chances,’ Brody warned. ‘Anybody shows up, anyone at all, be bloody careful.’

  He didn’t have to tell me. But I didn’t think I’d be in any danger. There was no reason for the killer to come back here now, not any more.

  Besides, there were things I needed to do.

  I watched the Range Rover bump down the track to the road. The rain beat a lunatic’s Morse code on my coat as I turned back to where the burned-out camper van waited. By now the downpour had tamped down the ashes, so that the wind only plucked off the occasional piece of fly-blown char. Set against the rock-strewn slopes of Beinn Tuiridh, the grey-black hulk seemed almost a part of the barren landscape.

  A ring of burned grass surrounded it, where the vegetation had been caught by the fire. Shivering in the freezing wind, I stayed on its edge, trying to visualise the camper van as it had been, forming a picture of how the transformation to its current state had come about.

  Then I turned my attention to Duncan’s body.

  It wasn’t easy. The remains I deal with are usually those of strangers. I know them only through their death, not their life. This was different, and it was hard to reconcile my memory of the young constable with what was in front of me.

  What was left of Duncan McKinney lay amongst the burned shell of the camper van. The fire had transformed him into a thing of charred flesh and bone, a blackened marionette that no longer looked human. I thought about the last time I’d seen him, how he’d seemed troubled as he’d driven me into the village from the clinic. I wished now I’d tried harder to make him say what was on his mind. But I hadn’t. I’d let him drive off, to spend the last few hours of his life alone out here.

  I pushed the regret away. Thinking like that wouldn’t help me, or him. Rain dripped from my hood as I stared down at the corpse, letting my mind clear of thoughts of who it had been. Gradually, I began to see it without the filter of emotions. You want to catch whoever did this? Forget Duncan. Put aside the person.

  Look at the puzzle.

  The body was lying face down. The clothes had been burned from it, as had most of the skin and soft tissue, exposing scorched internal organs that had been protected by the torso’s cocoon. Its arms were bent at the elbows, pulled up as their tendons had contracted. The legs were similarly contorted, throwing the hips and lower body slightly out to one side as they had drawn up in the heat. Part of what remained of the tabletop was visible underneath the body. The feet were nearest the door, the head turned slightly to the right and pointing towards where the small couch had been.

  There was nothing left of the couch but a buckled frame and a few blackened springs. Something else was lying amongst them. Leaning forward I recognized the steel cylinder of Duncan’s Maglite, blistered and dulled by the fire.

  My camera had been destroyed in the clinic along with the rest of my equipment, so I made do with sketching the body’s position on a notepad I’d borrowed from the Range Rover. It wasn’t perfect, as the sling made drawing difficult, and I had to shield the pad from the rain. But I did the best I could.

  That finished, I began to study the body in more detail. Careful not to disturb anything, I leaned as close as I could, until I saw what I’d been looking for.

  A gaping hole in the skull, the size of a man’s fist.

  The sound of a car coming down the track disturbed my thoughts. I looked round, surprised that Brody and Fraser were back so soon. But it wasn’t the police Range Rover that was approaching, it was Strachan’s gunmetal-grey Saab.

  Brody’s warning sprang uncomfortably to mind. Anybody shows up, anyone at all, be bloody careful. I climbed to my feet, slipping my notepad away, and went to meet him as the car pulled up. He climbed out, staring past me at the camper van, too shocked to raise the hood of his coat.

  ‘Christ! This burnt down as well?’

  ‘You shouldn’t be here.’

  But Strachan wasn’t listening. His eyes widened as he saw what was lying in the wreckage. ‘Oh, my God!’

  He stared, blood draining from his face. Abruptly, he twisted away, doubling up as he vomited. He straightened slowly, fumbling in his pocket for something to wipe his mouth.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  He nodded, white-faced. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled. ‘Who…who is it? The young policeman?’

  ‘Brody and Fraser are going to be back any time,’ I said, by way of answer. ‘You shouldn’t let them find you here.’

  ‘To hell with them! This is my home! I’ve spent the past five years getting this place back on its feet, and now…’ He broke off, running his hand through his rain-flattened hair. ‘This can’t be happening. I thought the community centre might be an accident, but this…’

  I didn’t say anything. Strachan was recovering from the shock now. He lifted his face to the clouded sky, oblivious to the wind and rain.

  ‘The police won’t be able to get out here in this weather. And you’re not going to be able to keep this quiet. There are going to be a lot of frightened and angry people wanting answers. You’ve got to let me help. They’ll listen to me more than your police sergeant. Or Andrew Brody, come to tha
t.’

  There was a look of determination on the chiselled features as he stared across at me.

  ‘I’m not going to let someone destroy everything we’ve done here.’

  It was tempting. I knew from bitter experience how ugly the mood could turn in a small community like this. I’d felt the brunt of it myself once, and that had been in a community I’d been part of. Out here, cut off from all contact with the outside world, I didn’t want to think what might happen.

  The question was, how far we could afford to trust anyone? Even Strachan?

  Still, there was one way he could help. ‘Could we use the radio on your yacht?’

  He looked surprised. ‘My yacht? Yes, of course. It’s got satellite communication as well if you need it. Why, aren’t the police radios working?’

  I didn’t want to tell him we didn’t have any means of contacting the mainland at all, but I had to give some reason for asking. ‘We lost one of them in the fire. It’s just useful to know there’s an alternative if Fraser’s not around.’

  Strachan seemed to accept my explanation. Subdued again, he stared at the camper van.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Duncan McKinney.’

  ‘Poor devil,’ he said, softly. He looked at me. ‘Remember what I said. Anything you need, anything at all.’

  He returned to his car and set off back down the track. As the Saab neared the road, I saw the distinctive shape of the police Range Rover heading towards it. The road’s narrowness forced the two cars to slow as they skirted each other, like two dogs warily circling before a fight. Then they were clear, and the Saab accelerated away with a smooth growl.

  Keeping my back to the wind, I waited for the Range Rover to pull up. Brody and Fraser climbed out. While Fraser went to open the back, Brody came over, staring at the rapidly disappearing fleck of Strachan’s car.

  ‘What was he doing here?’

  ‘He came to offer his help.’

  His chin jutted. ‘We can manage without that.’

  ‘That depends.’

  I told him my idea of using the yacht’s radio. Brody sighed.

  ‘I should have thought of that myself. But we don’t need Strachan’s yacht. Any of the boats in the harbour will have ship-to-shore. We can use the ferry’s.’