Simon Beckett - Whispers of the Dead

Once we were in the car park I took my mobile from my pocket and switched it back on. Although there were no rules against it, I felt uncomfortable disturbing the peace and quiet inside the facility with phone calls. Not that I was expecting any. The people who might have contacted me knew I was out of the country, and the person I most wanted to talk to wouldn’t be calling.

I put the phone away as Tom opened the boot and slid his bag into the back. He pretended not to be breathing heavily, while I pretended not to notice.

‘Give you a lift to the cafeteria?’ he offered.

‘No thanks, I’ll walk. I need the exercise.’

‘Admirable discipline. You put me to shame.’ He broke off as his phone rang. He took it out and glanced at the display. ‘Sorry, got to take this.’

Leaving him to answer it, I headed across the car park. Although the facility was on the University of Tennessee Medical Center campus, it was completely independent of it. Tucked away on the wooded outskirts, it inhabited a different world. The modern buildings and park-like green spaces of the busy hospital were bustling with patients, students and medical staff. A nurse was laughing with a young man in jeans on a bench; a mother was scolding a crying child, while a businessman held an animated discussion on a mobile phone. When I’d first come here I’d found the contrast between the hushed decay behind the gates and the bustling normality outside them hard to take. Now I barely noticed it.

We can grow used to almost anything, given time.

I trotted up a flight of steps and set off along the path that led to the cafeteria, noting with satisfaction that I was breathing barely harder than usual. I’d not gone far when I heard footsteps hurrying behind me.

‘David, wait up!’

I turned. A man about my own age and height was hurrying along the path. Paul Avery was one of the center’s rising stars, already widely tipped as Tom’s natural successor. A specialist in human skeletal biology, his knowledge was encyclopaedic, and the big hands and blunt fingers were as adept as any surgeon’s.

‘You going for lunch?’ he asked, falling into step beside me. His curly hair was almost blue-black, and a shadow of stubble already darkened his chin. ‘Mind if I join you?’

‘Not at all. How’s Sam?’

‘She’s good. Meeting Mary this morning to cruise around some of the baby stores. I’m expecting the credit card to take a serious hit.’

I smiled. I hadn’t known Paul until this trip, but both he and his pregnant wife Sam had gone out of their way to make me welcome. She was nearly at full term with their first child, and while Paul did his best to appear blasé about it, Sam made no attempt to hide her excitement.

‘Glad I saw you,’ he went on. ‘One of my PhD students has gotten engaged, so a few of us are going downtown tonight to celebrate. It’ll be pretty relaxed, just dinner and a few drinks. Why don’t you come along?’

I hesitated. I appreciated the offer, but the thought of going out with a group of strangers didn’t appeal.

‘Sam’ll be going, and Alana, so you’ll know some people there,’ Paul added, seeing my reluctance. ‘C’mon, it’ll be fun.’

I couldn’t think of a reason to say no. ‘Well… OK, then. Thanks.’

‘Great. I’ll pick you up at your hotel at eight.’

A car horn honked from the road nearby. We looked back to see Tom’s station wagon pulling up to the kerb. Winding down the window he beckoned us over.

‘I just got a call from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. They’ve found a body in a mountain cabin out near Gatlinburg. Sounds interesting. If you’re not busy, Paul, I thought you might want to come out with me and take a look?’

Paul shook his head. ‘Sorry, I’m tied up all afternoon. Can’t one of your graduate students help out?’

‘They could, I suppose.’ Tom turned to me, a sparkle of excitement in his eyes. Even before he spoke I knew what he was going to say. ‘How about you, David? Care to do a little field work?’

THE HIGHWAY OUTof Knoxville streamed with slow-moving traffic. Even this early in the year it was warm enough to need the car’s air conditioning. Tom had programmed the satnav to guide us when we reached the mountains, but for the moment we hardly needed it. He hummed quietly to himself as he drove, a sign I’d come to recognize as anticipation. For all the grim realism of the facility, the individuals who’d bequeathed their bodies there had all died natural deaths. This was different.

This was the real thing.

‘So it looks like murder?’ Homicide, I corrected myself. It was a safe bet, otherwise the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation wouldn’t be involved. The TBI was a single-state version of the FBI, for whom Tom was a badge-carrying consultant. If the call had come from them rather than a local police department, then chances were that this was serious.

Tom kept his eyes on the road. ‘Seems like it. I wasn’t told much, but from the sound of things the body’s in bad shape.’

I was starting to feel unaccountably nervous. ‘Will there be any problem with me coming along?’

Tom looked surprised. ‘Why should there be? I often take someone to help out.’

‘I meant because I’m British.’ I’d had to go through the usual red tape of visas and work permits in order to come out here, but I hadn’t anticipated anything like this. I wasn’t sure how welcome I’d be on an official investigation.

He shrugged. ‘Can’t see why that should be a problem. It’s hardly national security, and I’ll vouch for you if anyone asks. Or you could keep quiet and hope they don’t notice your accent.’

Smiling, he reached to turn on the CD player. Tom used music the way other people smoked cigarettes or drank whisky, claiming it helped him to both clear his mind and focus his thoughts. His drug of choice was fifties and sixties jazz, and by now I’d heard the half-dozen albums he kept in the car often enough to recognize most of them.

He gave a little sigh, unconsciously settling back in the car seat as a track by Jimmy Smith pulsed from the speakers.

I watched the landscape of Tennessee slide past outside the car. The Smoky Mountains rose up ahead of us, shrouded in the blue-tinged mist for which they’d been named. Their forest-covered slopes stretched to the horizon, a rolling green ocean that was a stark contrast to the commercial bustle of the retail outlets around us. Garishly functional fast food outlets, bars and stores lined the highway, the sky above them gridded with power lines and telegraph wires.

London and the UK seemed a long way away. Coming here had been a way to regain my edge and resolve some of the issues preying on my mind. I knew that there were some hard decisions to make when I got back. The temporary university contract I’d held in London had ended while I’d been convalescing, and although I’d been offered a permanent tenure, I’d received another offer from the forensic anthropology department of a top Scottish university.

There had also been a tentative approach from the Forensic Search Advisory Group, a multi-disciplinary agency which helped the police locate bodies. It was all very flattering, and I should have been excited. But I couldn’t muster enthusiasm for any of it. I’d thought coming back here would change that.

So far it hadn’t.

I sighed, rubbing my thumb across the scar on my palm without realizing it. Tom glanced across. ‘You OK?’

I closed my hand on the scar. ‘Fine.’

He accepted that without comment. ‘Sandwiches are in my bag on the back seat. Might as well share them before we get there.’ He gave a wry smile. ‘Hope you like bean sprouts.’