The Calling of the Grave

by Simon Beckett

  I held her as she cried herself into an exhausted sleep. I was shattered myself, bone-weary and aching, but I had to stay awake. I stared across at Monk's unmoving form, desperately trying to think what to do. Everyone had always assumed he'd been lying when he'd said he couldn't remember where the Bennett sisters were buried. Now ... I didn't know.

  Not that it made any difference. Even if Monk really was suffering from some sort of amnesia there was nothing Sophie could do about it. She'd been a BIA, not a psychiatrist. She was no more able to help him recover his memories than I was. Sooner or later he was going to realize that, and when he did . . .

  I had to get her out of here.

  Monk still hadn't moved, and if the deep, wheezing rhythm of his breathing was anything to go by, his sleep was deeper than ever. But I doubted it was deep enough for us to slip out without disturbing him. So what, then? Club him while he's asleep? Even assuming I could do something so cold-blooded - and that he didn't wake and tear me apart - I'd no idea how to get back to the surface.

  I looked around the chamber, hoping to see something that might help. The floor was piled with empty water bottles and food wrappers, discarded gas canisters and batteries. Some of them were years old, probably dating to the last time Monk had hidden out here. Near me was a tattered phone directory and a more recent pile of boxes, ripped open to spill cough linctus, foil packets of antibiotics and small brown bottles I recognized as smelling salts, clearly raided from some chemist's. The smelling salts puzzled me, until I made the connection with the police dog that had tried to track him a few days earlier.

  Smelling salts contained ammonia.

  The only other thing nearby was a plastic bag filled with foul- smelling earth. The musky odour was somehow familiar, but I couldn't place it. Still watching Monk, I tried to see what else was hidden among the debris. I gently moved a box aside and stiffened when I saw what lay behind it.

  The black cylinder of a torch.

  It was just out of reach. For all I knew it could be broken, and even if it wasn't we'd still have to get past Monk before we could use it. But at least it offered a small hope, and right now I needed every little I could get. Careful not to disturb Sophie, I leaned towards the torch, stretching as far as I could. My fingers were only inches away from it when I felt a change in the chamber. The hairs on my arms prickled, as though the air had suddenly become charged. I looked up.

  Monk was staring at me.

  Except he wasn't, not quite. His eyes were fixed on a spot just off to one side. I moistened my mouth, trying to think of something to say. Before I could he jerked his head spastically to his right, mouth curling in a one-sided sneer.

  Then he began to laugh.

  It was an eerie, phlegm-filled chuckle. It grew louder, rising in pitch until his shoulders were shaking with the force of it. I flinched as he suddenly lashed out with a scabbed fist, smacking it sideways into the rough wall beside him. If it hurt he gave no sign. Still laughing, he thumped his fist into the rock again. And again.

  Sophie stirred and gave a restless moan. Without taking my eyes off Monk I put my hand on her shoulder, willing her to keep still. She subsided, too exhausted to fully wake as Monk's manic laughter began to die down. At any moment I expected those dead eyes to turn to us, but it was as though we weren't even there.

  The last bubble of laughter escaped from his chest, and his breathing slowed back into the raw wheeze of before. He sat quiescent, blood dripping from the hand he'd been slamming into the wall, mouth hanging slack as though he were drugged.

  Christ! I'd no idea what had just happened. I knew Monk was unstable, but this . . . this was something else. It had seemed involuntary, as though he hadn't even been aware of it himself. Or even really conscious. From nowhere, something Roper had said all those years ago suddenly came back to me: He kicked off on one last night. . . One of his party pieces, apparently, having a tantrum after lights out. That's why the guards call him laughing boy.

  Monk was starting to stir, blinking slowly as though he were waking up. Another coughing fit racked him. When it passed he cleared his throat and spat on to the floor. It seemed to exhaust him. He rubbed a hand over his face, the same one he'd punched the wall with. He frowned when he saw the blood on it, then realized I was watching.

  'The fuck you looking at?'

  I quickly looked away. Trying to sound unconcerned, I picked up one of the foil packs of antibiotics that lay on the floor nearby. 'These won't do your chest infection any good.'

  'How would you know?'

  'I used to be a doctor.'

  'Fuck off.'

  I dropped the tablets back into the mess. 'OK, don't believe me. But they're for bladder infections, not respiratory tract.'

  Monk's dark eyes glittered. He looked down at where Sophie's head lay on my lap.

  'What this?' I asked quickly, nudging the soil-filled bag with my foot. It was the first thing that came to mind.

  He seemed to debate whether to answer, but at least it shifted his attention from Sophie. 'Fox piss.'

  'Fox . . . ?'

  He raised a booted foot. 'For the dogs.'

  That explained some of his stink, at least. Foxes used their pungent urine to mark their territory: Monk must have been smearing himself with soil from a den, hoping to mask his own scent. Once again I felt there was something I should remember, but I was too distracted to worry about it.

  'Does it fool them?' I knew it wouldn't, but I wasn't about to tell him that.

  'Not the dogs. The handler.'

  I'd underestimated him. Police dogs would be able to track him regardless of what he used. But if an inexperienced handler caught the distinctive smell of a fox they might think the dog was on the wrong trail.

  'What is this place?' I asked. 'I didn't think there were any caves round here.'

  'Nobody does.'

  Including the police. 'Is this where you hid last time?'

  His head snapped up. 'I don't fucking hide! I've always come down here.'

  'Why?'

  'To get away from people like you. Now shut the fuck up.'

  He rummaged in the rubbish on the floor and produced a bar of chocolate. Ripping it open, he tore into it as though he were famished. When it was gone he twisted the top from a bottle of water and tilted his head back to drink. I was aware of my own parched throat as I watched his Adam's apple bob up and down.

  Monk tossed the empty bottle aside. He nodded down at Sophie. 'Wake her up.'

  'She needs to sleep.'

  'You want me to do it?'

  He reached his bloodied hand towards Sophie. I acted instinctively, knocking it away. Monk became very still, his eyes burning into me.

  'She's hurt,' I said. 'If you want her to help you she needs to rest. She's just been in a car crash, for God's sake.'

  'I didn't know it'd roll like that.' He sounded sullen. He looked down at Sophie again, this time taking in the fading bruise on her cheek. 'What happened to her face?'

  'Don't you know? Someone broke into her house and attacked her.'

  Something seemed to flicker in those dark eyes. The broad forehead creased into deep lines. 'It was all smashed up. She wasn't there. I didn't ... I can't. . .'

  He folded his hands over his shaved head, his voice dropping to an inaudible mumble.

  'Can't what?' I pushed, forgetting myself.

  'I can't fucking remember!’ His shout reverberated inside the small chamber. He banged the heels of his hands against the sides of his head, as though trying to drive them through. 'I try and try, but there's nothing! You're supposed to be a doctor, what's wrong with me?'

  I couldn't begin to answer that. 'I was only a GP, but there are specialists—'

  'Fuck 'em!' Spittle sprayed from his mouth. 'Pricks in white coats, what do they know?'

  This time I had enough sense to stay quiet. Some of the heat seemed to go from him. The big hands opened and closed as he looked at Sophie. She hadn't woken, even now.

  'You
and her . . . She's your girlfriend.'

  I was about to say no, but something stopped me. Monk didn't seem to expect an answer anyway.

  'I had a girlfriend.' He clasped both hands round the back of his head. His mouth worked. 'I killed her.'

  * * *

  Chapter 27

  By the time he was fifteen, Monk's life was set in stone. Orphaned since birth, he'd grown up doubly excluded, shunned for his physical defects and feared for his abnormal strength. The few families that fostered the surly, freakish boy soon sent him back, shaken by the experience. By the time he reached puberty he was stronger than most grown men, and violence and intimidation had become second nature.

  Then the blackouts started.

  To begin with he didn't realize. Most came at night, so his only awareness of them was a feeling of haziness and lethargy next day, of inexplicable bruises or bloodied hands. The problem only came to light in a young offenders' institution, when his nocturnal behaviour terrified the other inmates. Monk would throw tantrums, laughing like a lunatic and reacting to any attempts to subdue him with devastating, frenzied violence. Next morning he wouldn't recall any of it.

  At first he believed the accusations and subsequent punishments were just new forms of victimization. He reacted by becoming more insular and aggressive than ever. It never occurred to him to ask for help, and he would have rejected any had it been offered. Not that it was. Prison psychologists spoke of anti-social behaviour, of impulse- control disorders and sociopathic tendencies. One look was enough to confirm anyone's worst suspicions. He was a freak, a monster.

  He was Monk.

  As he grew older he took to wandering on the moor. The ancient landscape, with its rocky tors and thorny gorse, had a calming effect. More importantly, it allowed him to be on his own. One day he came across an overgrown hole in a hillside. It was an old mine adit, although he didn't know that at the time. It opened, quite literally, a new world for him. He began seeking out the old mines and caves that lay below the surface of Dartmoor, exploring and even sleeping in them whenever he could. He spent as much time down in the cold, dark tunnels as he did in the run-down caravan he called home. They were a reassuring constant, indifferent to day or night and untouched by weather or seasons. They made him feel secure. Stilled.

  Even the blackouts seemed less frequent.

  He was on his way to the moor one night when he saw the gang. He'd been away from it for almost a week, labouring on a building site for cash in hand. Now, with money in his pocket, the need to get back made his skin prickle and itch. He felt as if nails were being scratched on blackboards inside him, and there was a muzziness in his head that often presaged an impending blackout.

  At first he ignored the hooded youths huddled under a broken streetlight. They had something down on the floor, trapping it like a pack of animals. Monk wasn't interested, and would have gone on by if it hadn't been for their laughter. Vicious and cruel, it throbbed behind his eyes like an echo of childhood. The gang had scattered after he'd knocked two or three of them away, leaving a lone figure on the floor. The tendons in Monk's hands had ached with the need to hit something else, but the girl on the ground had looked up without fear. She gave him a shy smile.

  Her name was Angela Carson.

  'You knew her?'

  The question spilled out before I could stop it. According to the reports I'd read, witnesses had seen Monk in his fourth victim's neighbourhood before the murder, but it was assumed he'd simply been stalking her. There was never any suggestion that he'd known Angela Carson, let alone that they'd had any sort of relationship.

  The look in Monk's eyes was answer enough.

  After that first, accidental meeting the pair had been drawn together. Both were lonely. Both, in different ways, excluded from society. Angela Carson was almost completely deaf, and it was easier for her to sign than speak. Monk didn't know how, but the two of them still managed to communicate. In the plain young woman he finally found someone who was neither terrified nor repulsed by him. For her part, it wasn't difficult to imagine that she found his strength comforting. He took to visiting her after dark, when there was less chance of being seen by neighbours.

  It wasn't long before she asked him to stay the night.

  The blackouts had been less frequent since they'd met. He'd been calmer, less agitated. He'd allowed himself to believe they were over. Even so, he hadn't meant to fall asleep.

  But he had.

  He claimed to have no recollection of what happened, only that he found himself standing by the bed. There was a pounding on the door as the police tried to break in. All was noise and confusion. His hands were covered in blood, but none of it was his.

  He looked down and saw Angela Carson.

  That was when Monk lost what little control he had left. When the police burst into the room he attacked them in a frenzy. Then he ran until his legs gave way, futilely trying to escape the images of that bloodied room.

  Without even thinking about it, he'd gone out on to the moor.

  And gone to ground.

  That the police would be looking for him didn't really enter into his thinking: he was trying to escape from himself, not them. Cold and hunger drove him up after a few days. He'd lost all sense of time, and it was night when he emerged. He stole clothes and food, and what equipment he needed, and was back in his sanctuary before dawn.

  Over the next three months he spent more time underground, beneath the gorse and heather of Dartmoor, than he did in the outside world. He only emerged into fresh air and daylight to move to another system of tunnels, or to steal or forage fresh supplies and check the traps he'd laid for rabbits. The surface reminded him of who he was and what he'd done. Underneath the dark rock he was able to bury himself away.

  And forget.

  Indifferent to his own safety, he was able to find places and worm into tunnels that no one else would dare to enter. Twice he had to dig himself out when the roof collapsed; another time he was almost drowned when the system he was in flooded after heavy rains. Once he sat unseen, hunched in the shadows as a group of cavers clattered by only yards away. He let them go, but afterwards sought out a less public refuge.

  The blackouts continued, but down there he was only vaguely aware of them. Sometimes he would wake in a different cavern or tunnel from the one he remembered, with no memory of how he had got there. He took to sleeping with a torch in his pocket for when that happened.

  Then one day he found himself walking on the roadside in broad sunlight. He felt confused, his thoughts as muddy as his clothes, with no idea of where he was or what he was doing. That was how the police found him.

  The first time he heard of Tina Williams or Zoe and Lindsey Bennett was when he was charged with their murders.

  'Then why did you plead guilty?' I asked.

  Monk absently rubbed at a spot between two of his knuckles, the button eyes staring at nothing. I'd always thought they were empty: now I wondered how I could have missed the pain in them.

  'Everyone said I'd done it. They found their stuff at my caravan.'

  'But if you couldn't remember—'

  'You think I fucking cared?'

  He glared at me, but even that seemed too much effort. He convulsed as another coughing spasm took him. It was even more violent than before, and when it passed it left him gasping.

  Without thinking, I reached out for his wrist. 'Here, let me check your pulse—'

  'Touch me and I'll break your arm.'

  I lowered my hand. Monk sat back against the rock, regarding me with suspicion. 'If you're a doctor, how come you dig up bodies? Think you can bring them back to life?'

  'No, but I can help find who killed them.'

  I wished the words back as soon as they were out, but it was too late. When Monk started wheezing I thought it was another coughing fit until I realized he was laughing.

  'Still a fucking smartarse,' he rumbled.

  But he soon broke off. Each breath was a ragged whistle, a
nd there was a sheen of sweat on his face. The black eyes seemed sunken into his skull as it pressed through the yellow skin.

  'The heart attack wasn't faked, was it?' I said.

  Monk stroked his hand back and forth over his head, his thumb fitting disconcertingly into the depression in his skull. It seemed to calm him.

  'It was charlie.'

  It took me a moment to understand. 'You overdosed on cocaine? Deliberately?'

  The big head nodded. His hand continued to rasp over it.