The Calling of the Grave

by Simon Beckett

  'I shouldn't have shouted,' I said.

  'It's my fault.' Sophie stared out of the window, rubbing her temple. 'You're right, I shouldn't have done it. I thought . . .Well, it doesn't matter.'

  'Is your head hurting?'

  'No.' She dropped her hand. We were approaching a turn-off for Padbury. 'Go straight on here,' she said, as I indicated to take it.

  'Aren't we going back to your house?'

  'Not yet. There's one more place I'd like to go first. Don't worry, it doesn't involve meeting anyone else,' she added when I gave her a look.

  I'd assumed Sophie's attempt to persuade me had ended with the visit to meet Cath Bennett. It was only when we passed the overgrown earthworks that once housed the old tin mine's waterwheel that I realized where we were heading.

  Black Tor.

  Where Tina Williams had been buried.

  I took the turning without having to ask. It was like driving back in time. I passed the point where the policewoman had stopped me eight years ago and parked at the end of the dirt track that cut across the moor to the tor. The last time I'd been here this whole area had bustled with trailers, vans and cars. Now, except for a few distant sheep, the moor was empty.

  I switched off the engine. 'Now what?'

  Sophie gave a weak smile. 'I thought we'd take a walk.'

  I sighed. 'Sophie . . .'

  'I just want to go and see where the grave was. That's all. No more surprises, I promise.'

  Resigned, I got out of the car. A cold breeze plucked at my hair. The air was fresh, underlaid with a faintly sulphurous whiff of bog. I felt the past overlay the present as I looked out at a landscape I'd last set eyes on nearly a decade before. The moor stretched for miles, a wintry patchwork of gorse, heather and dead bracken. There was no corridor of police tape, no distant blue forensic tent. But for all that it was hauntingly familiar. Here was the same pattern of rocky tors, the same undulating hummocks and troughs. The years still seemed to fall away, leaving me feeling hollow at how long had passed since the last time I'd stood here.

  And how much had changed.

  Beside me, Sophie stood with her hands jammed in her coat pockets, eyes scanning the moor. If she felt at all daunted by it, she gave no sign.

  'It's a long walk. Are you sure you're up to it?' I asked. Coming here had snuffed my earlier anger. As perhaps she'd hoped it would.

  'I'm fine.' She looked up at the grey sky. 'We'd better hurry. It'll be dark soon.'

  She was right: the afternoon was already shading into a dusky twilight. A thin mist was starting to form, rising from the ground like steam from a horse's back. Before I locked the car I took the torch from the glove compartment. We should be back long before dark, but I'd been lost on a moor at night once before. It wasn't an experience I wanted to repeat.

  We set off along the track that led to Black Tor. About halfway along it she stopped, turning to face the moor off to our left.

  'OK, this is where the police tape was strung out to the grave.'

  'How can you tell?' As far as I could see, nothing about where we stood looked very different from anywhere else.

  Sophie gave me a sideways glance, mouth quirking in a smile. 'What's wrong? Don't you trust me?'

  'I just don't see how you can remember. It all looks the same to me.'

  She leaned nearer to me, her hand resting lightly on my arm as she pointed. 'The trick is to memorize landmarks that aren't going to change. See that other tor about two miles away? That should be at right angles to where we are now. And then if you look over there . . .'

  She turned, standing close against me so I turned with her. 'There's a sort of cleft in the ground. If we're at the right place the end of it should line up with that hummock with the flat rock on top. See?'

  I nodded, but I wasn't really concentrating on what she'd said. She was still pressed against me. She brushed a windblown strand of hair away from her face as we looked at each other, then she moved away.

  'Anyway . . . this is a natural entry point into the moor as well,' she said. 'There's a steep bank running along most of the track, but it's easier to negotiate just here. Shall we?'

  'OK'

  I was glad to start walking again. Keep your mind on what you should be doing. The embankment running down from the track might not be so steep here, but it was a lot more overgrown than I remembered. I scrambled down, then turned to help Sophie. She came down in a rush, flashing me a self-conscious smile as I steadied her.

  'Are you sure you can find where the grave was without a map?' I asked as we started picking our way across the tangled heather.

  'I'm sure,' she said.

  It was hard going. Even when the heather gave way to spiky marsh grass it was still impossible to see where we were treading. My boots alternatively squelched into mud or twisted on some hidden rock or hole. But Sophie seemed confident of where she was going, skirting the clumps of thorny gorse and boggier patches of ground as if following an invisible path. It took me a while to realize that she wasn't just reading the landscape any more.

  'You've been here recently, haven't you?' I asked.

  She pushed her hair out of her eyes. 'Once or twice.'

  'Why?' There couldn't be anything to see, not after all this time.

  'I don't know. It feels . . . sanctified, almost. Knowing what happened, that someone was buried here. Can't you feel it?'

  I felt something, but it was more of a prickling sense of unease. Like we're being watched. That was stupid, but I was uncomfortably aware of how alone we were, how far we'd come from the road. And the light was still dropping, wisps of wraith-like ground mist obscuring the dips and hollows. I found myself glancing at the nearest patches of gorse and rocks.

  'How much further?' I asked.

  'Not far. In fact it's just. . .' She tailed off, staring directly ahead.

  The moor was pitted with holes.

  They'd been hidden by the grass and heather until we were right on top of them. I counted half a dozen, each one about eighteen inches deep and about twice that long, roughly hacked out with clods of peat scattered around them. They seemed to have been dug at random, with no pattern or scheme.

  I looked at Sophie. 'You didn't. . .'

  'No, of course not! They weren't here last time I came!' Her indignation was real: this wasn't another of her surprises. 'Could an animal have dug them?'

  I crouched down by the nearest hole. It was a little smaller than the rest, as though it had been abandoned partly dug. Its edges were marked with clear vertical cuts, and a neatly severed earthworm coiled blindly in the bottom. I could almost hear Wainwright s voice: Lumbricus terrestris. Overcomplicate at your peril.

  'These were dug with a spade,' I said, straightening. 'Where was Tina Williams buried?'

  'Just over there.' Sophie pointed. The patch of ground was undisturbed, overgrown with heather. The holes were unevenly spread out all around it.

  'Are you sure?'

  'I'm sure. The first time I came back out here I brought the original Ordnance Survey map I'd marked the coordinates on. I didn't need it after that.' She came and stood closer. 'It was Monk, wasn't it?'

  I didn't answer: we both knew there was only one person who would have done this. None of the holes was big enough to be a grave. They were more like crude attempts at the exploratory trench Wainwright had dug when we'd found the dead badger.

  'I don't understand. Why would Monk have been digging out here?' Sophie asked, glancing round uneasily.

  'It has to be for the graves. You always said he might be telling the truth about not being able to remember where they were. Perhaps you were right.'

  Her forehead wrinkled. 'That's not what I meant. I'm not surprised he couldn't find them after all this time, if that's what he was doing. But why would he want to?'

  That hadn't occurred to me. It wasn't unheard of for killers to dig up their victims and rebury them, sometimes more than once. But that was usually done out of panic, a paranoid urge to hi
de the evidence. That didn't apply here. Monk had already confessed to the murders, and Zoe and Lindsey Bennett's graves had lain undetected for years.

  So why dig up half the moor looking for them now?

  I found myself looking down at the earthworm again, wriggling in its stubborn attempt to burrow into the soil. Something about it was nagging me. Then I realized.

  Worms, even cut ones, don't stay long on the surface. Either they burrow back underground or they're eaten. Yet this one was still here. And the hole it was in was smaller than the others, as though whoever had dug it had broken off or . . .

  'We need to go,' I said.

  Sophie didn't move. She was staring across the moor. 'David . . .'

  I followed her gaze. No more than a hundred yards away a motionless figure stood watching us. It seemed to have appeared from nowhere: there were no bushes or rocks nearby where it could have hidden. In the fading light it was little more than a silhouette, motionless in the rising ground mist. But there was a breadth and bulk about it that had an awful familiarity.

  Topping the broad shoulders was the pale globe of a head.

  There was an instant when everything seemed frozen. Then the figure started towards us. I took hold of Sophie's arm.

  'Come on.'

  'Oh, God, that's him, isn't it? It's Monk!'

  'Just keep walking.'

  But that was easier said than done. Heather clutched at our feet like barbed wire, and white tendrils of mist spread across the darkening moor like a vast cobweb. At another time I might have appreciated the sight. Now it made each step potentially treacherous. If either of us fell or turned an ankle . . .

  Don't think about that. I kept my grip on Sophie's arm, urging her back towards the track. The car was just visible on the distant road, a tiny block of colour disappearing into the dusk. I felt sick at how far away it looked. It was tempting to ignore the track and cut straight across the moor, but even though that was the shortest route it would mean slogging over rough heather and bog. That would take even longer, and in the fading light we daren't risk it.

  Both of us were already out of breath as I took another glance behind us. The figure was nearer than before, steadily closing the gap. Don't get distracted. Keep going. I turned away, and focused on the track ahead of us. It was no use phoning for help. Even if there was a signal no one would get here in time.

  We stumbled over tussocks of reed-like marsh grass, boots squelching into the mud and water concealed underneath. I took another look back and saw that the figure wasn't following us any more. Instead of trying to catch us before we reached the track, he was cutting across the moor towards the road.

  He was going to try to beat us to the car.

  Sophie had seen him as well. 'David . . .' she panted.

  'I know. Just keep going.'

  The track was tantalizingly near, but once we reached it we still had to get back to the road. The figure didn't have nearly so far to go. He was moving across the moor in a steady, unhurried stride.

  God, we're not going to make it. The ground rose more steeply as we reached the bank immediately below the track. Sophie was struggling now, and I had to help her scramble up the last few yards, clutching at handfuls of heather to pull ourselves up.

  Then we were on the track's firmer surface. My chest was burning as I tugged Sophie into a lumbering run. 'Come on!'

  'Wait . . . get my breath . . .' she gasped. Her face was white and slick with sweat. She shouldn't have been exerting herself so soon after coming out of hospital, but there was no choice.

  'We need to run,' I told her.

  She shook her head, pushing me away. 'Can't ... I can't. . .'

  'Yes, you can,' I said, tightening my arm under her shoulders and almost dragging her down the track.

  My legs felt like water as we lurched towards the car. The figure was no more than thirty or forty yards away, off to one side and slightly below us as he slogged over the rugged moor. But he'd begun to slow now himself. The pale head turned towards us as we stumbled the last few yards. He'd stopped, barely a stone's throw away. I could feel his eyes on us as I fumbled for my key fob and unlocked the car. Sophie collapsed inside while I ran round to the driver's side, conscious of the shadowy figure watching from the knee-deep mist.

  He'd beaten us. Why did he give up? I'd no idea and didn't care. Slamming the door, I turned on the engine and stamped on the accelerator. As the car roared away I looked in the rear-view mirror.

  Both the road and moor behind us were empty.

  * * *

  Chapter 16

  I didn't slow for two or three miles. Only when I was certain no one was following did I began to relax. Reaction was setting in, leaving me wrung out and clammy as I let the car's speed ease back to normal.

  'Are we safe?' Sophie asked. She was still breathing heavily. The bruise looked worse than ever against the pallor of her face.

  'I think so.'

  She closed her eyes. 'I'm going to be sick.'

  I pulled over. Sophie stumbled out of the car almost before we'd stopped. Leaving the engine running I waited nearby, keeping one eye on the surrounding moor. Despite my assurances I'd be happier when we were far away from this place. The dusk was thickening and the rustle of wind through the heather only emphasized the loneliness. We could have been the only living things out there.

  But we weren't. As I waited for Sophie, I checked my phone and saw with relief that there was enough signal to make a call. I dialled Terry's number, willing him to pick up. It seemed to ring for a long time, but just when I thought it was going to go to voicemail he answered.

  'This better be good.' He sounded slurred, as though he were either very tired or drunk. But I couldn't see even Terry drinking in the middle of an investigation like this.

  'We're at Black Tor. We've—'

  'Who's "we"?'

  'Sophie Keller. She discharged herself from hospital yesterday and—'

  'Keller? What are you doing there with her?'

  'Does it matter? Monk's here!'

  That seemed to get through. 'Go on.'

  I kept it brief, conscious of the fading light. 'So you didn't actually see him up close?' Terry said, when I'd finished.

  'Look, it was Monk! I didn't see another car, so he can't have got far.'

  I heard a rasp of bristles as Terry rubbed his hand across his face. 'OK, leave it with me.'

  'Do you need us to hang around?'

  'I think we'll cope.' His tone was heavy with sarcasm. 'If I want you I'll know where to find you.'

  The line went dead. Feeling the familiar irritation, I put the phone away and went over to Sophie. She gave me a wan smile. 'Sorry. False alarm.'

  'How're you feeling?'

  'My head's throbbing a little, but it isn't too bad. Did you call the police?'

  'I've just spoken to Terry Connors. He's getting things moving.'

  Her mouth tightened at the mention of Terry, but for once she didn't criticize him. 'Do we have to wait here?'

  'He says there's no need.'

  I'd been expecting that we'd have to stay until the police got there, but I wasn't about to argue. I looked out at the moor. The light was dropping quickly, and a haze of mist blurred the edges of the little we could still see. Sophie shivered, and I knew what she was thinking.

  Monk was still out there.

  I put my arm around her. 'Come on, I'll take you home.'

  The mist had thickened to a full-blown fog by the time we reached Padbury. I was forced to slow to a crawl, my headlights almost useless against the white gauze. I didn't even realize that we'd reached the village until the shadowy outline of the old church loomed up out of the fog.

  I pulled into the lane at the bottom of Sophie's garden and switched off the engine. In the ticking silence as it cooled we might have been at the bottom of the sea. I found myself glancing around uneasily as we went up the path, straining to hear. The fog wrapped round us, making everything more than a few feet away all
but invisible.

  'You should get security lights,' I said, as the conical shadow of the kiln took form on one side, towering over the spectral branches of the orchard.

  'I don't need them out here,' Sophie said, reaching in her bag for the house keys. She faltered as she realized the irony of what she'd just said. 'Not usually, anyway.'

  But the front door was still intact, the new lock fitted by the joiner reassuringly solid. When Sophie opened it and flicked on the hall light, the house looked exactly as we'd left it that morning.