The Drowning Ground (18 page)

‘And he can't get to Hurst because of what he's done to the house,' I said quietly. ‘But the moment he does leave the house –'

‘Somebody gets to him,' Powell said. ‘They act fast and they nail him to the top of that hill.'

22

Graves continued to search, as the afternoon wore slowly on and the light began to fade. In a few hours it would be dark and they'd have to call it a day. His lower back was driving him mad. He stared up at the patch of cleared rubble and briefly closed his eyes in cold despair. It seemed to be taking them forever. They would never find anything else out here: he had known that from the very beginning. If the other girl had been buried here, the fire must have destroyed every trace of her.

He stood up, sorely tempted to warm up for a while in the tent. Drayton seemed to have had enough for one day as well. He was pouring himself a cup of hot soup from a flask and watching Graves through the flap of the tent as if he were sorry for him. Graves had kept Drayton there in case he needed help with anything. Graves swore loudly and then crouched back down again. His lower back, for what must have been the hundredth time that day, screamed out at him in pain, as he made his way along the ground, searching painstakingly beneath the burnt rubble and clutching at his back from time to time like an old woman.

He kept working, looking up every now and then to make sure no one was taking his photograph. To his dismay, more journalists had arrived just after lunch – so many, in fact, that he'd had to call in someone with a little more natural authority than Drayton to keep them out. He thought about journalists and wondered how they lived with themselves as he searched. Then he stopped. All of them forgotten. He began to gently push away the stones and rubble with the palms of his hands, until he had created a small hole.

He plucked out a long shard of mud-streaked glass and threw it to the side. His hands slipped down further. There was a shifting, shuffling sound. Another piece of glass. Smaller this time. And, after that, a piece of old plastic and then the shattered remains of some piping or guttering. Something gave, and dust and black stone poured off a surface. There was something down there all right, though it was impossible to see what it was. There was no longer enough light. He made himself stop and take his time. He breathed in deeply and stood up.

Graves strode off towards the two rugged generators. Then he hoisted up both lights so that they were fixed exactly on the point of interest. There in front of him, within the widened hole, was a blackish material of some kind. Clothes? A coat? A jacket? Another groundsheet perhaps. Impossible to tell. He stood looking down and then knelt on the rubble.

He dug a little deeper clearing a larger space around the sides of the object and feeling along its sides before reaching in. More dust came off the top. Earth went spiralling down into the darkness below. He reached in again, then changed his mind.

‘Drayton!' he yelled. ‘Come over here.' More quietly he added: ‘Might have something.'

Drayton appeared beside him.

‘Get Shotgun on the phone and have him come over here quick.' Graves reached for his mobile from his inside pocket and passed it to Drayton. ‘His number's in there. You'd better warn him about all those fucking journalists as well.'

As Drayton scanned the contacts list, Graves dug further around the object. A glimpse of something else now. A string or a cord. Something plastic. A buckle perhaps? No, he couldn't see.

‘He's not answering,' Drayton said.

‘All right,' Graves said. ‘Keep trying.'

Graves moved his hands around the object and reached further in. He yanked. The material shifted once more and rose a few inches higher into the white light. Then, finally, with infinite care, Graves pulled and brought a rucksack out into the open air.

23

The press had left their cars and vans parked along the side of the lane. I slowed down when I saw them. They were crowded together, joking, laughing, smoking their cigarettes, but when they saw my car all camaraderie instantly vanished in the mad scramble to get at their gear. A wily and alert-looking police officer was keeping them at bay; he nodded when he saw me and waved me through. But in seconds they were on my car. Bulbs flashed. A scrum of microphones and telephones. One of them banged the car window. A man who had been eating a pork pie hurled it to the ground and took what appeared like a hundred pictures of my car. I beeped my horn until they got out of the way, then watched them through my rear-view mirror as the constable closed the gates behind me.

Graves was waiting for me outside the large white tent.

‘You managed to get through them all right?' he said sheepishly.

‘Just,' I said.

‘You saw the story, then?'

I nodded.

‘They must have come last night after we'd left and got their pictures. I'm really sorry, sir.'

‘It's all right, Graves,' I said. ‘Not your fault. They were going to be here sooner or later.'

Graves held open the flap of the tent and we walked inside. Despite the cold, the air was close and oppressive. There were two arc lights powered by generators. It was the smell that hit me first: rotting vegetation and ancient mud and something deep within the smell. Something ripe and over-sweet. Something that shouldn't be there at all, coiling its way through.

‘So it was out there, you say. By the house?'

‘Yes,' Graves said. ‘It was around ten to twelve feet in under the stone platform, and then I'd say five feet to the left of the stone steps. Not all that far away from the girl, in fact. I very nearly missed it. It was buried rather deep.'

I looked over his shoulder. Inside the tent were a long trestle table and a single chair. I could see a broken, muddy strap hanging over the table's edge. Clots of mud lay on the crumpled grass.

‘All right,' I said. ‘Let's have a look at it.'

Graves pulled the plastic disposable gloves tighter over his fingers before taking a few steps towards the table. Very gently, as if he were lifting a sleeping puppy, he set it upright. He undid the cord at the top. The rucksack was still intact, although it had been crushed almost flat. It was lime green and black and covered in chalky dust and mud. On the top were pieces of broken mortar and stone, and it seemed to have been stained with something that looked like black tar. At the top and around the sides it was brushed with reddish, broken streaks of brick dust. There was black webbing at the front, and just beneath a front pocket was a logo: a red tent and a pine tree.
GLOBALHIKE
was written in simple black lettering above the symbol.

‘What was it buried under?' I said. ‘Was there another groundsheet?'

‘No, sir. Don't think so. As I said, it was near the place where you found the girl.' Graves turned once more to the rucksack.

It was so crushed that he had to pull hard at its neck to get at the remaining contents. He pulled out, first, a blue polo-neck sweater. Two pairs of jeans. Levis. With holes in. A green anorak bunched up into a tight ball, and something that looked like it had once been a pamphlet. The clothes were damp, and the pages of the pamphlet stained and curled at the edges. There were a few pairs of woollen socks, some musty-smelling T-shirts, a yellow skirt and a thin red sweater.

It was not at all what I had expected to see. Standing closer to the rucksack, I now noticed that it was giving off a deep smell of sour earth. Again, I remembered the mortuary and the girl lying on the slab. It was the same smell somehow. Graves was, I realized, looking at me, curious to see how I was reacting. The mud around the bag was black and thick. The rucksack looked permanently tainted now that I could smell it.

Lodged near the bottom of the bag was a daisy-patterned washbag containing a broken toothbrush, toothpaste, a broken shampoo bottle, two bars of damp soap along with a pair of small bent scissors. Graves placed all of these objects beside the washbag. There was also a thick black hairbrush.

Very carefully, Graves pulled away a number of hairs. They were too thin for me to be able to discern their exact colour, but they looked opaque and greyish in the strong artificial light. Graves placed the hairs into a small Ziploc evidence bag.

Next came several pairs of women's tights, a neat black blouse, jogging pants and various bits of women's underwear, which had been rolled into a ball. Also, wrapped in a green mud-smeared towel was a make-up bag. Inside were two shades of cracked lipstick, nail varnish, a shattered nail file and a bottle of inexpensive-looking perfume, the contents of which had long since evaporated.

Graves started to explore the side pockets. An old novel was bent double and had been stuffed inside the largest pocket at the side. Beneath it was a plastic Bic lighter without a flint. In the other side pocket were a cracked biro and a box of crushed and wet-looking Marlboro Lights as well as a half-finished faded packet of Juicy Fruit chewing gum.

Graves laid the rucksack on its back, unzipped the front pocket and pulled out an old and faded bus ticket. He put it on the table and I peered at it. But the destination was so faint that it was impossible to read. Then he reached once more into the pocket and this time drew out a few pound coins along with a single folded five-pound note, which he laid on the table.

‘Gail Foster was only thirteen when she went missing,' I said quietly, ‘and Elise was only twelve. All this stuff belongs to someone else. Someone a lot older.'

‘But who?' Graves said. ‘Maybe Hurst put more of them down there than we thought,' he ventured. ‘Maybe she was a hitchhiker he picked up.'

I lifted up my hand. ‘Let's not get carried away just yet. You sound like one of those journalists. They'd just love that. There's no identification in there? Nothing like that?'

Graves began to recheck all of the pockets on the bag a second time and then looked inside again. But all of its contents were now neatly laid in a row on the table. Graves took off his gloves, rolled them into a ball and put them in his pocket. I looked at the bag again.

I crossed my arms. I'd left the files Graves had found in Hurst's house in my kitchen along with the videotapes; and, thinking that, I realized with some shock that they were the only things that remained extant from Hurst's house. Everything else was gone.

24

I told Graves to bag and label the contents of the rucksack and to take it back to the station. After he was gone, I drove there myself. On my way to my office, I waved absently through the open door to the dispatcher, Terry, who was sitting slumped on a high red office chair behind a monitor.

‘They're bringing him in now, sir,' Terry said when he saw me, his head a little to one side. ‘Shouldn't be long.'

‘Who? Bringing who in?'

I turned around to face the super. My face expressionless. ‘A suspect,' I said in a vague way.

‘Already.'

I nodded.

She looked at me suspiciously for a moment and then turned around and motioned for me to follow, and of course I followed. Emma Collinson had a large mane of red hair. She was possessed of a cold, austere and almost intimidating kind of beauty, of which she seemed utterly aware without seeming vain. Not an easy trick to pull off. I had thought that the first time I saw her. She carried an air of adult disapproval with her everywhere, and, though I was older than her, it was particularly acute in all her dealings with me.

‘I hope you're right, Downes,' she said. ‘About the other girl. That sounds awful, but it will be better … better for the families if we're able to find her … and they know for sure. How long do you think it will take?'

‘I'm not sure. A lot depends on Graves,' I said. ‘He's in charge there now.'

Collinson's heels clicked loudly along the corridor as we walked. ‘How are you two getting along?'

I shrugged. ‘He seems all right, I suppose. Better than the other two you lumbered me with. But young, you know.'

‘And he's not Powell,' she said, looking straight at me, coolly and appraisingly as always.

I didn't say anything straightaway. ‘What did he do in Oxford?' I said. ‘He got himself in some kind of trouble over there, didn't he?'

‘He hasn't told you?'

I shook my head.

‘Well, nothing really wrong. It's in his file if you're interested. You haven't looked at it yet?' she said, surprised.

‘No.' Collinson had picked Graves out for me. I knew that Powell was never coming back. But reading Graves's file would have somehow made it real.

‘A woman was assaulted outside a pub. It was pretty nasty. She had to go to hospital. She didn't see her attacker, who came up from behind and took her bag. But someone saw it.'

‘Who?'

‘A taxi driver reported it, and two officers took his statement. The description of her assailant matched a known suspect – he'd been involved in a number of similar incidents over the years. So it all looked straightforward to begin with. But then later the taxi driver came back to the station and signed a retraction. Said he couldn't be so sure now. The two officers who'd originally taken his statement had been out, so Graves dealt with it.

‘Anyway, according to what Graves said later, the cab driver had felt uncomfortable and under pressure when he'd been interviewed. Graves took down his retraction – and then a few days later it simply disappeared.'

‘All right. So what did he do?'

‘Apparently Graves, when he saw it had gone missing, went straight to the Independent Police Complaints Commission, instead of going to his super, who could have dealt with it more tactfully.'

‘But perhaps he did go to the super.'

‘Yes. Reading between the lines, I think he may have tried the super or another superior officer and got nowhere. Maybe he'd been told to keep a lid on it.'