Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

‘I don’t care if you have steal it from the hospital canteen, just find one and get it back here, will you?’ Frears instructed.

We’d gone into the briefing room while we waited. Soon afterwards Frears had excused himself to attend to some unconnected query, but by then Lundy had arrived. He’d finished overseeing the removal of the barbed wire from the creek, and cups of tea from a vending machine steamed on the table in front of us as he briefed his SIO.

‘The end of it was stuck in a lump of concrete. An old fence-post, by the look of it,’ he told her.

‘Could it have been just dumped there?’ Clarke asked.

‘It could, although it begs the question of who’d take it all that way. There aren’t any fences nearby, and there’re a lot more convenient places for fly-tipping.’

‘So you think someone used it to deliberately weigh down the body?’

I’d been wondering about that myself, ever since Lundy’s comment about the remains being surprisingly well trussed to say they’d supposedly drifted onto the wire. The DI absently stroked his moustache with a thumb and forefinger.

‘I don’t think we should rule it out,’ he said at last. ‘Look at where it was. The creek’s partially dammed by a sandbank there, so it never fully drains. And it’s not far from the road. Someone could have taken the body there in a car and carried it from the bridge. Tangle it up in the barbed wire to weigh it down, so even if it was found it’d look like it got caught up by accident. And a place like that, you could reasonably hope it’d stay hidden for years. Pure fluke we found it when we did.’

Fluke and bad luck for Trask’s young daughter. Clarke pinched the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. I could almost see her headache. ‘Dr Hunter, you said it’d probably been in the water for several months?’

‘Going on its condition and what I could see, yes.’

‘So it can’t be Leo Villiers?’

‘I don’t see how it can be,’ I said. Villiers had been missing for six weeks at most, and the advanced state of decay of the remains from the barbed wire told me they’d been in the water much longer than that.

A knock on the door announced the APT’s return. Frears re-joined us as we filed back to the examination room.

‘I take it this isn’t routine procedure?’ Lundy commented, pulling on a pair of surgical gloves. They made his thick fingers look like blue sausages.

‘Not really. It wouldn’t hold up in court, but it should give us a pretty good indication of whether the foot’s from this body or not.’

Lundy stared down at the naked remains. ‘If it’s a match that’s really going to put the cat among the pigeons.’

He was right, but there was nothing I could do about that. The APT, a young Asian woman called Lan, handed me the cling film.

‘I could only get a twelve-metre roll. Will that be enough?’

‘That’ll be plenty,’ I told her.

Forensic science was becoming increasingly sophisticated, with technology steadily overtaking the more hands-on approach I’d been trained in. The old plaster of Paris used to make casts had been replaced by silicon-based alternatives, more efficient and less likely to damage the bone. And scanners were now being developed that would eventually make even that obsolete, allowing a perfect replica of any bone to be created on a 3D printer.

But we didn’t have a scanner or 3D printer, and even if we had, both that and casts required the bones to be properly cleaned. That would take time, and Clarke wanted a quick answer. So I’d make do with less sophisticated resources.

In this case, a roll of cheap cling film and a steady hand.

The APT hovered behind Clarke, Frears and Lundy, clearly curious as to what I was going to do. The group of them watched in silence as I tore off a length of the transparent plastic, carefully smoothing it over the exposed surface of the ankle bone.

‘Somewhat unconventional, I have to say. Hope you didn’t try anything like this on the Jerome Monk inquiry last year.’ Frears looked amused at my surprise. ‘Knew I’d heard your name before. Turned into quite the debacle, as I recall. Hardly your fault, of course, but not the sort of career move you’d want to repeat.’

‘No, it wasn’t,’ I said without looking up. What had happened on Dartmoor was a matter of public record, and I didn’t need reminding. I glanced at Clarke, but the DCI wasn’t paying any attention. She’d have known all about my history before hiring me, and was clearly more concerned with what I was doing now.

‘Are you sure about this?’ she asked sceptically. ‘There won’t be any cross-contamination?’

‘There shouldn’t be,’ I told her, spreading the cling film over the rest of the foot and making sure there were no wrinkles. The transparent plastic would minimize any risk, and DNA samples had already been taken from both the foot and the body. If any more were needed, they could be extracted from deep inside bones well away from the exposed surfaces.

But I didn’t think cross-contamination was going to be an issue anyway. The wrapped foot resembled an off-cut of meat from a butcher’s counter as I set it aside and turned to the body. Stripping off my dirty gloves and replacing them with a fresh pair, I tore another section of cling film off the roll and smoothed it over the ends of the right leg’s tibia and fibula, making sure it fitted smoothly on to the surfaces of the exposed bones.

I stood back and considered my handiwork for a moment, then picked up the cling-film-wrapped foot again.

‘OK, let’s see what we’ve got.’

Without a cushioning layer of cartilage, the ankle joint was never going to fit together as snugly as it had in life. Yet even though the cling film was a poor substitute, the foot and lower leg came together like old friends. I gently rotated the foot, exploring the full range of movement, but there wasn’t really any doubt. Not even twins would have identical joint surfaces. Subtle differences would develop over time, variations caused by wear and tear. Yet there were no ill-fitting bumps of bone here to disrupt the smooth motion. The fit was near perfect.

I set the foot back down. There was silence before Clarke spoke.

‘Shit.’

Everyone there understood the seriousness of what had just happened. If this wasn’t Leo Villiers’ foot, then it couldn’t be his body either. Which potentially meant there were now two unknown male bodies to identify, neither of them his. And Emma Derby’s remains were still out there somewhere, waiting to be found.

‘Well, I think it’s safe to say this undermines the suicide theory somewhat,’ Frears said. The pathologist’s blue eyes twinkled. ‘Still, looking on the bright side, we don’t have far to look for a suspect.’

I caught a taxi back to Willets Point. Lundy told me he could arrange for me to be given a lift but I preferred to make my own way. One thing I hadn’t thought through was having to give the taxi driver directions. He was a young man, and grew increasingly unhappy as civilization gave way to the Gordian knot of waterways that carved their way through the flat marshland.

‘You sure you know where we’re going, mate? There’s nothing out here,’ he said nervously, as the single lane road doubled back on itself before passing over a small, hump-backed bridge.

I hoped I did. I recognized some parts, but this was a different route from the one I’d taken from London, and I’d not been paying much attention when the police officers had driven me earlier. The light was failing now besides, and with the creeks and channels swollen with the returning tide the landscape looked completely different.

In the end I decided it would be easier for me to make my own way for the last half-mile or so and told the driver I’d walk. His mood improved even more after a healthy tip. He gave me a cheery wave as he turned the cab around awkwardly in the cramped lane before disappearing back the way we came. I stood for a moment as the sound of the car’s engine faded, listening to the gentle lapping of the waters in the marsh, then set off along the empty road.