Dead People

by Ewart Hutton

  I followed him down between the house and the barn. We turned a corner at the end, past an old sheep-gathering fold, and I saw the activity. Valerie Horne was surrounded by a semicircle of the younger kids.

  She saw me and waved me forward. It wasn’t a welcome, it was all urgency.

  The kids parted to let me through. They were standing at the head of an old track that led down to the river, by the side of a steep, earth-faced bank. The top of the bank was lined by stunted hawthorns, the vestigial remains of a former hedge, and there was a run of old holes and spoil slips along its length, under the lip, probably a redundant badger sett.

  Valerie pointed.

  And the shock shortened my life by a measurable factor.

  The bone, grey-green, was lying on the inclined surface of the bank. The soil around it was damp enough to still have a metallic, freshly dug smell.

  At the same time that I was trying to adjust to this, I realized that we were inhabiting an unnatural silence. Everyone was staring at me. The kids rapt, Valerie tense. All were expectant. I was supposed to do something to explain this, and bring their lives back to normal again.

  ‘No one has touched this?’ I asked.

  Valerie shook her head. ‘I can’t promise. The boys who found it say they didn’t, but . . .’ She inclined her head and tailed-off.

  ‘Is it from a real dead person, mister?’ one of the braver boys called out. A voiced ripple of disgust combined with a frisson of horror went through the group.

  ‘It’s probably from a cow, isn’t it, Sergeant? Or a sheep?’ Valerie suggested hopefully.

  I went as close as I could without disturbing anything. The loose earth was covered by kids’ footprints and indentations that I realized had been made by their knees. Why had they been digging here?

  And where was everyone else?

  ‘Where are your husband and brother?’ I asked Valerie.

  ‘They’re out on a trek on the moors with the older ones.’

  ‘Can you take the children away from here, please?’

  ‘You didn’t answer the question,’ she reminded me softly.

  ‘I think it’s an ulna,’ I replied equally quietly.

  She looked at me questioningly.

  ‘One of the forearm bones.’ Before this case started I would have had a problem identifying it, but I had had cause to get reacquainted with the sharp end of skeletons.

  I put in the call to Fletcher, and left it to him to call Jack Galbraith and organize a SOCO team. I put in another call to DEFRA. I drove back down to the head of the track and set up a makeshift perimeter with incident tape.

  WHY?!

  Why move the action from the wind-farm site to Fron Heulog? Why bring it here when he had gone to such trouble to fit up Bruno and get the investigation shifted to Newport? I took a slow look around, and felt the chill as it dawned on me. Because it didn’t change anything. We were still in Bruno’s immediate neighbourhood. No one but me suspected that this was the home ground.

  But why bring the investigation back?

  I didn’t think for a minute that this was an accidental discovery. We had been meant to find that bone. The bastard had just thrown in another cryptic shift.

  I used my digital camera on the bone. When I zoomed in I realized that there was something wrong with it. From the bottom of the bank it looked like the wrist-end of the bone was still partially buried. It wasn’t. It just wasn’t there. It looked like it had been snapped off.

  Was it a coincidence that the part of the bone that should demonstrate the severance markings where the hand had been removed was missing? Was it fuck. But I knew that I was going to be the only person who would be asking that question.

  Because all this was going to do was make poor old Bruno look like an even more rampant serial killer than previously believed.

  WHY?!

  Emrys Hughes and a team of uniforms turned up to spell me.

  He looked at the bone and turned to me with a significant set to his face. ‘Your Mr Gilbert was a busy chap, wasn’t he?’

  I had been right. Emrys Hughes was as good a representation of the public cross-section as you get around here. And he had jumped to the immediate conclusion that this was down to Bruno Gilbert. Oh, the powers of perceptual manipulation. This fucker should be in advertising.

  ‘It’s just one bone.’

  He sucked in a big noisy, dramatic breath. ‘There will be more.’

  ‘Well, you’d better get ready to roll your sleeves up, because you and your guys are going to be fucking digging for them,’ I observed nastily.

  I found Valerie and the younger boys in the canteen area. She had calmed them down to a degree with fizzy drinks, crisps and chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Emergency measures,’ she explained guiltily.

  ‘Who found the bone?’

  She searched the group with her forefinger raised. ‘Darren, Dewayne and Rocky.’ She used her finger to point them out.

  ‘Can I talk to them?’

  She looked at me doubtfully. ‘What’s the legal position?’

  I shook my head. ‘It’s not an interrogation. It’s just something I need to know now, while it’s still fresh in their memory.’ She still looked concerned. ‘You can ask it for me.’

  I wrote it down. She sat the three boys down at one of the refectory benches. I squatted beside her. The remainder of the kids started to gather round, sensing drama. ‘Right, no one is going to get into any trouble over this. In fact, the sergeant is very pleased with you for finding it.’ She looked my way. I nodded enthusiastically on my haunches. ‘But what I’d like to know is why you chose to dig there?’

  The three boys looked at each other, hesitant and nervous now that the focus of attention was on them.

  ‘Rocky?’ Valerie prompted gently.

  Please tell me ‘a man told us to dig there’, I willed them silently. A man answering the description of Clive Fenwick. Or Greg Thomas. I didn’t really care which, I just wanted to end it.

  ‘The dog was digging. We thought there might be something good underneath,’ Rocky explained tremulously.

  ‘What dog was that?’ Valerie anticipated my next question.

  He looked at the other two. They both shook their heads, he joined in. ‘Dunno, a black-and-white one. It run away before we got close.’

  A black-and-white one. In these parts that was the generic description for dog.

  ‘You don’t have a dog?’ I asked Valerie when we had moved away from the kids. I hadn’t bothered to infuse the question with hope, I already knew the answer.

  ‘No. We get our fair share of farm dogs passing through, though. Especially if there’s a bitch in season in the neighbourhood.’ She smiled wanly, she looked exhausted. ‘What’s going to happen now?’

  ‘A lot of people are going to be getting very busy,’ I warned her. She was a kind person. She worked too hard. And she probably loved her brother.

  She was probably going to end up hating me.

  So now the bastard had recruited fucking Lassie. The scruffy black-and-white Welsh version at least.

  I pondered it while I drank my tea. Trying to figure out the modus operandi. He had probably planted the bone, scented the earth around it with some kind of allure de chien, found a dog from somewhere, waited until he saw that the boys were heading that way, and then released it. There had been so much scrabbling activity around that bank that the bait scent would have been dispersed. Even if I could have persuaded forensics to look for it.

  Clever bastard. It was a complicated and risky operation, but at least, if my hunch was correct, he was working on his own territory. But it still brought me back to the question: why change the status quo at this juncture?

  Because it widens the geography?

  It doesn’t shift the blame from Bruno, it just extends the zone of the operation. So why does he want to disseminate?

  Because he wants to shift the focus!

  He wanted to lift our attention away fro
m the original site. He wanted it to lose its importance. He wanted it to be seen as just one of a series of multiple sites. It reinforced my hunch that it could be acting as a memorial. The place had a specific personal significance, and he didn’t want us trampling all over its sanctity. He wanted to shift us onto unhallowed ground.

  But why wait this long? That was the question that now stabbed at me. If the spirit of the place was so important, why hadn’t he diverted us away from it before now?

  I instructed myself to go back to first principles. This was not the work of a classic serial killer. These bodies had been put there over time to serve as a specific memorial. A memorial to Rose? From her former fiancée?

  And what did these bodies have to do with her? As far as we could tell, after the third body had been buried, the monument had been completed, because the killing had stopped.

  Until Evie.

  But she had been cold-bloodedly murdered to serve a purpose. To divert us. She had never been a part of the original plan.

  Oh, fuck!

  If he hadn’t killed anyone else during his active period he wouldn’t have had any more body parts at his disposal. That’s what had caused the time lapse. He had had to wait until he had found some other source of suitable skeletal material. Because there was no ulna superstore.

  Or was there?

  The only reassuring thing was that he wouldn’t have gone out there and killed a fresh victim to source the parts he needed. Not because he would have had any qualms about it, but because it wouldn’t serve the purpose. It would be too fresh. He needed to find a skeleton that would match the profile of the others, both in terms of age and length of burial.

  This new bone was going to fit the original pattern. I was certain of it.

  And then, because he couldn’t match the marks of the hands being detached, as on the originals, because he was working with something that was already a skeleton, he had snapped the bone off above the joint. And because we had swallowed his line so completely, we would find something to account for the damage. Animal dispersal, agricultural machinery, some rational explanation that would keep us on track.

  What were Jack Galbraith and Kevin Fletcher’s reactions going to be when I laid out this theory? It was a purely academic conjecture. Because I wasn’t going to tell them. Not without something stronger than merely speculative reasoning. I didn’t want to be back on the hunt for a lamb castrator.

  So where did I start to look for that ulna superstore?

  I was still stuck in that puzzle slot when the SOCO team arrived. They went to work, measuring and photographing the bone on its perch on the side of the bank, the forensic anthropologist patiently waiting her turn. Dressed in their white sterile suits they looked like a bunch of loopy acolytes paying homage to a displaced holy relic.

  Trevor Horne and Greg Thomas had returned from their hike with the older kids. They had been kept back from the perimeter, and I hadn’t been able to study Greg Thomas’s reactions. I suppressed the urge to face him. I didn’t want him spooked and running at this stage.

  And how involved was Trevor Horne?

  Jack Galbraith and Fletcher arrived together. They strode through the farmyard, glowering like hostile bailiffs in their overcoats and Wellington boots.

  ‘Have you seeded this, Capaldi?’ Jack Galbraith asked bitterly when he saw the bone.

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘Is this you playing out some kind of a revenge fantasy? Bringing me down to the valley of the fucking bones again?’ He looked across towards the wind farm. ‘How far are we from the other site?’

  ‘Just under a kilometre, sir.’

  He groaned. ‘I just hope that we don’t have a procession of dead bodies stretching between here and there. Shit, this may not even be the terminus. This could be just another way-station on the fucking slaughter trail.’ He glared at me. As if this was all my fault. He called the head of the SOCO team over. ‘Okay, when you’ve finished your photography and measurements you can move the bone and start digging. I want to see what else we’ve got in there.’

  ‘That’s a badger sett, sir,’ I said.

  He flared round on me. ‘So?’

  ‘It’s protected by law. Technically, we have to apply to DEFRA for a licence to dig it up.’

  He stared at me, speechless. ‘You’re jerking my chain, Capaldi. There could be a mass burial under there, and you’re telling me that I have to apply to the fucking Ministry for permission to dig it out?’

  ‘I’m arranging it, sir. I’ve been in contact with DEFRA. I’ve told them that it’s an emergency. I’m expecting someone to turn up at any time.’

  ‘Fuck that. Brer Brock can give up his secrets now.’

  So much for my demonstration of initiative and efficiency.

  It was going to be slow. Teaspoon and toothbrush digging. Delicate excavation. At least when you were uncovering a whole body you could guess the perimeters, the rough outlines to work to. Here, all we had was one bone. The assumption was that the rest of them were somewhere deeper in the bank, and not necessarily still in the convenient shape of a body.

  I had tried to suggest that one bone may be all we were going to find on this site, but no one was listening. Perceptual manipulation was still at work. No one had yet started to ask why only one bone had managed to detach itself and levitate to the surface under its own steam.

  And, an hour later, we still only had our original bone. The rain had set in. A fine, soaking drizzle, wafting in on a cold westerly breeze. Because of the bank and the slope, the shelter that had been rigged was only keeping the excavators dry. Even under the golf umbrella he was making Fletcher hold up, Jack Galbraith was getting wet. And grumpier.

  ‘There’s fuck all else here,’ he announced crossly, grinding out the butt of his latest cigarette.

  ‘Perhaps we should move down the bank? Try another part of the badger sett?’ Fletcher suggested. The DEFRA officer had since arrived and pronounced the sett inactive.

  He shook his head. ‘No, I’ve been thinking about it. Bruno Gilbert would never have cached even one of his victims so close to an established farm.’ He turned to me. ‘You’re the nearest thing I’ve got to a nature consultant. Why would a badger have just one bone in its den?’

  ‘I thought they were vegetarians,’ Fletcher commented.

  I remembered the talk I had overheard from farmers about badgers taking lambs and hens. ‘I think they’ll eat anything. But this sett looks like it’s been long-abandoned.’ I looked over at the DEFRA officer standing on the sidelines, who nodded his confirmation.

  ‘What about a fox?’ Fletcher suggested, showing off his knowledge of nature red in tooth and claw. ‘Maybe it found the original skeleton and has been distributing the bones around for future use.’

  ‘I think that’s what squirrels do with nuts, boss,’ I offered helpfully.

  Jack Galbraith moaned. ‘Over what sort of a radius do these bastards roam?’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not an expert, sir.’

  ‘All available personnel tomorrow,’ Jack Galbraith ordered Fletcher. ‘I want an expanding-envelope search out from here.’ He looked at me for confirmation. ‘It shouldn’t be that difficult to see, should it? If a wild animal’s been digging up a human body?’

  I had to try to stop this. ‘It depends on how historic it is, sir. Maybe the animal died and never got back to retrieve the bone. The site may be covered up again.’ I gave it a pause to charge up my credibility. ‘Or there is another possibility.’

  He eyed me suspiciously. ‘Like what?’

  ‘That you were right with your first hunch. That someone has seeded this. To make it look like a burial site. Or that it came from another burial site.’

  ‘Why would someone do that?’ Fletcher snapped. ‘When we already know who did it.’

  Jack Galbraith made a pantomime of receiving illumination. ‘No, Kevin, I think Capaldi means that the mass murderer on this side of the fucking valley is attempting a copyca
t operation to fit up the mass murderer on the other side.’

  Fletcher laughed.

  ‘Where are the tooth marks?’ I asked, the thought swooping down out of nowhere to rescue me.

  ‘What tooth marks?’ he asked, glancing doubtfully at Jack Galbraith.

  I turned the viewing screen of my camera towards them. ‘If a wild animal had had that bone why didn’t it chew it?’

  They didn’t buy it, though. Because Sheila Goddard, the forensic anthropologist got excited. It was only guesswork at this stage, she warned, but the bone, in terms of condition and appearance, looked like a good match with the others. She also tentatively suggested that it might have belonged to a woman, which ramped up their alpha male protector instincts.

  ‘Before we enter the realm of the fucking minutiae, Capaldi, we have to find the rest of the body,’ was the curt and succinct rebuttal Jack Galbraith used on me. Without giving me a chance to explain that whoever had deposited that bone would have made certain that it would be a match with the others.

  He left to oversee things from headquarters, where rain was banned. Fletcher, faced with the prospect of another night in The Fleece, used the excuse of getting the bone down to the lab to make his getaway. He claimed that he needed to pester the scientists for a quick mitochondrial DNA profile. Just in case there was a match with one of the other victims.

  The blanket search for the putative carnivore-desecrated grave was scheduled for the following morning. Fletcher, with Bruno Gilbert already in the body bag, saw no glory in returning for a cold search in a damp valley, so I, as resident hayseed, was appointed coordinator.

  Had the perpetrator just pillaged the ulna? Or had he taken the entire skeleton? That was the possibility that was concerning me when I got back to Unit 13 that evening. Because if it was the latter, the bastard could skip around the countryside dispensing bone after bone after bone, like some kind of macabre paper chase, every time our interest looked like flagging. And, if the perp was Greg Thomas, he could scatter the contents of his ossuary all over Fron Heulog land. Eventually it would be discovered that they were all from the same body, but by the time that happened he could have found himself another one. And so on, ad infinitum.