The Calling of the Grave (23 page)

    '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 hide 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.