Stephen Booth - The Dead Place

‘Facial reconstruction is still an art as much as a science,’ said Lee. ‘The shape of the face bears only limited resemblance to the underlying bone structure. It can never be an exact likeness.’

Cooper nodded. A reconstruction couldn’t be used as proof of identification, but it did act as a stimulus for recollection. The accuracy of the image might not be as important as its power to attract media attention and get the eye of the public. Any ID would have to be confirmed from dental records or DNA.

‘There’s a fifty per cent success rate,’ said Lee. ‘You might be lucky.’

Cooper accepted a set of photographs from her and added them to the file. It immediately felt thicker and more substantial. Reference DE05092005, also known as Jane Raven Lee, five feet seven, with shoulders like a swimmer. A bonny lass.

‘Thank you, you’ve been a big help,’ he said.

Lee smiled at him again. ‘Good luck.’

But as he left the laboratory and went out into the Sheffield drizzle, Cooper wondered if he was imagining too much flesh on the unidentified woman now. It could be an emotional reaction to compensate for what he had actually seen of her, those last few shreds of skin on the faded bones.

Her biological identity had been established, at least. Now the anthropologist and the forensic artist were passing the responsibility back to him. He had to find out who Jane Raven really was.

Twenty-five miles away, in the centre of Edendale, Sandra Birley had stopped to listen. Were those footsteps she could hear? And if so, how close?

She turned her head slowly. Echoey spaces, oil-stained concrete. A line of pillars, and steel mesh covering the gaps where she might hurl herself into space. A glimpse of light in the window of an office building across the road. But no movement, not on this level.

Sandra clutched her bag closer to her hip and followed the stairs to the next level. At night, multi-storey car parks were the scariest places she knew. During the day, they were made tolerable by the movement of people busy with their shopping bags and pushchairs, fumbling for change, jockeying for spaces amid the rumble of engines and the hot gust of exhaust on their legs. But after they’d gone home, a place like this was soulless and empty. Drained of humanity, even its structure became menacing.

She pushed at the door to Level 8, then held it open for a moment before stepping through, her senses alert. Not for the first time, Sandra wondered whether she ought to have worn shoes with flatter heels, so she could run better. She fumbled her mobile phone out of her bag and held it in her hand, gaining some reassurance from its familiar feel and the faint glow of its screen.

This was a night she hadn’t intended to be late. A last-minute meeting had gone on and on, thanks to endless grandstanding from colleagues who wanted to show off, middle managers who didn’t want to be seen to be the first going home. She’d been trapped for hours. And when it was finally over, the Divisional MD had taken her by the elbow and asked if she had a couple of minutes to go over her report. Why hadn’t he taken the trouble to read it before the meeting? But then, why should he, when he could eat into her personal time, knowing that she wouldn’t say no?

Her blue Skoda was parked at the far end of Level 8. It stood alone, the colour of its paintwork barely visible in the fluorescent lights. As she walked across the concrete, listening to the sound of her own heels, Sandra shivered inside the black jacket she wore for the office. She hated all these ramps and pillars. They were designed for machines, not for humans. The scale of the place was all wrong — the walls too thick, the roof too low, the slopes too steep for walking on. It made her feel like a child who’d wandered into an alien city. The mass of concrete threatened to crush her completely, to swallow her into its depths with a belch of exhaust fumes.

And there they were, the footsteps again.

Sandra knew the car park well, even remembered it being built in the eighties. Some feature of its design caused the slightest noise to travel all the way up through the levels, so that footsteps several floors below seemed to be right behind her as she walked to her car.

She’d experienced the effect many times before, yet it still deceived her. When it happened again tonight, Sandra couldn’t help turning round to see who was behind her. And, of course, there wasn’t anyone.

Every time she heard the sound of those footsteps, she turned round to look.

And every time she looked, there was no one there.

Every time, except the last.

Wasn’t it Sigmund Freud who said that every humanbeing has a death instinct? Inside every person, the evilThanatos fights an endless battle with Eros, the lifeinstinct. And, according to Freud, evil is always dominant. In life, there has to be death. Killing is our naturalimpulse. The question isn’t whether we kill, but howwe do it. The application of intelligence should refinethe primeval urge, enrich it with reason and purpose .

Without a purpose, the act of death has no significance. It becomes a waste of time, a killing of no importance, half-hearted and incomplete. Too often, we fail atthe final stage. We turn away and close our eyes as thegates swing open on a whole new world — the scented, carnal gardens of decomposition. We refuse to admirethose flowing juices, the flowering bacteria, the dark, bloated blooms of putrefaction. This is the true natureof death. We should open our eyes and learn .

But in this case, everything will be perfect. Becausethis will be a real killing .

And it could be tonight, or maybe next week .

But it will be soon. I promise .

Melvyn Hudson had decided to do this evening’s removal himself. He liked a fresh body in the freezer at the end of the day — it meant there was work to do tomorrow. So he called Vernon out of the workshop and made him fetch the van. Vernon was useless with the grievers, of course. He always had been, ever since the old man had made them take him on. But at least he’d be where Hudson could keep an eye on him.

The vehicle they called the van was actually a modified Renault Espace with black paintwork, darkened windows and an HS number plate. Like the hearses and limousines, the van’s registration number told everyone it was from Hudson and Slack. Your dependable local firm .

They were dependable, all right. Bring out yourdead — that might be a better slogan. Sometimes Melvyn felt like the council refuse man arriving to pick up an old fridge left on the back doorstep. Nobody worried about what happened to their unwanted rubbish. Their disused fridges could pile up in mouldering mountains on a landfill site somewhere and no one would be bothered, as long as they didn’t have to look at them. Most people were even more anxious to get a corpse off the premises.

A few minutes later, Vernon drove out on to Fargate, hunched over the steering wheel awkwardly, the way he did everything. Hudson had sworn to himself he’d get rid of Vernon if he messed up one more thing, no matter what old man Slack said. The lad was a liability, and this firm couldn’t afford liabilities any more.

Hudson snorted to himself as they drove through the centre of Edendale. Lad? Vernon was twenty-five, for heaven’s sake. He ought to be learning the business side of things, ready to take over when the time came. Some chance of that, though. Vernon was nowhere near the man his father had been. It had to be said that Richard had done a poor job of shaping his son. Not that there’d be a business much longer for anyone to run.

When they reached the house in Southwoods, Hudson asked the relatives to wait downstairs. There was nothing worse than having distressed grievers watching the deceased being manhandled into a body bag. If full rigor hadn’t set in, the corpse tended to flop around a bit. Sometimes, you’d almost think they were coming back to life.