Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

There wasn’t much I could do without proper facilities, but now that Wallace had given me permission to examine the remains we’d salvaged there was one thing I wanted to try.

Brody had put his finger on it when he’d said the inquiry was hamstrung until the victim had been identified. Once we knew who she was, it might throw light on who had killed her. Without that information, trying to find her killer would be like groping in the dark.

I hoped I might be able to do something about that.

Taking the skull from its evidence bag, I gently set it on the stainless steel trolley. Blackened and cracked, it lay canted on the cold surface. The empty eye sockets gaped blankly into eternity. I wondered what the eyes they’d once held had looked on not so very long ago. A lover? A husband? A friend? How often had she laughed, unknowing, as the seconds ticked away the last days and hours of her existence? And what had she seen when that realization, finally and irrevocably, made itself known to her?

Whoever she was, I felt an odd sense of intimacy towards her. I knew almost nothing about her life, but her death had pulled me into her orbit. I had seen her history written in her charred bones, noted each year’s passing in every bump and scar. She had been laid bare in a way even those who had known her would have never recognized.

I tried to remember if I used to feel like this in the past, on the cases I’d worked before Kara and Alice had been killed. I didn’t think so. That seemed an age away now, part of a different life. A different David Hunter. Somewhere along the line, and perhaps due to my own loss, I seemed to have lost the detachment I’d once had. I wasn’t sure if that was good or bad, but the truth was I no longer saw the dead woman as an anonymous victim. That was why she’d visited me in my dream, waited expectantly at the foot of my bed. I felt a responsibility towards her. It wasn’t something I’d anticipated, or even wanted.

But I couldn’t turn away from it.

‘OK, tell me who you are,’ I said, quietly.

FOR A FORENSIC anthropologist, teeth are a repository of information. They’re an enduring bone interface, a bridge between the hidden skeleton and the world beyond the body. As well as revealing race and age, they form a record of an individual’s life. Our diet, habits, class, even our self-esteem, can all be gleaned from these chunks of calcium and enamel.

I took the lower jawbone from its evidence bag and laid it on the stainless steel trolley beside the broken cranium. It was as light and fragile as balsa. Under the bright halogen light, the disparate sections of the skull looked like an anatomical pastiche, far removed from anything that had once been alive.

At some point I would have to finish the job I’d tentatively started in the cottage, and piece together the shattered skull fragments I’d managed to salvage. But right now what I needed to do was try to put a face and name to the victim’s burned remains.

With luck, her teeth might be the key to that.

Not that I was overly optimistic. While a few back molars remained stubbornly in place in the jawbones, most of the teeth had fallen out when the fire had first burned away the gums, then desiccated the roots. Grey and cracked by the heat, the ones I’d managed to snatch up before the cottage roof collapsed looked like fossilised remnants of something long dead.

I’d found that, even with my arm in the sling, I could still use my left hand to hold or support things. It made life a little easier as I spread a sheet of paper on the table and began arranging the teeth on it in two parallel rows, one for the upper jaw, one for lower. One by one, I laid them out in the order they would have been in the mouth, with the two central incisors in the middle, the lateral incisors next to them, followed by the canines, premolars and then the large molars themselves. It wasn’t a straightforward task. As well as damage from the fire, the woman’s teeth were so badly eroded it was difficult to determine whether some of them were from the upper or lower jaw, or even what type of tooth they actually were.

Everything outside the clinic ceased to exist as I worked. The world shrank down to the circle of light from the halogen lamp. I took more photographs and sketched out a post-mortem odonto-gram: a dental chart detailing each crack, cavity or filling in every tooth. Under normal circumstances I would have taken X-rays of the teeth and jaws so that they could be compared with dental records of potential victims. That wasn’t an option now, so I did the only thing I could.

I began to fit the teeth back into the empty sockets.

Even using my left hand as much as the sling allowed, it was slow work. I’d lost track of how much time had passed when the lamp suddenly flickered. As though synchronised, a gust of wind rattled against the building, thrumming its structure like a bass note felt rather than heard.

I straightened, groaning as my back muscles protested. God, I ached all over. As though it had only been waiting for me to take notice of it, my shoulder started throbbing. The wall clock told me it was almost five o’clock. It had grown dark outside, I saw. Massaging my back, I looked at the skull and jawbone as they lay on the steel trolley. After a few false starts, I’d fitted most of the teeth back into them. There were only a couple of molars and premolars left, and they wouldn’t affect what I had in mind. I was reaching out to turn off the lamp when I heard a noise from the community centre.

The creak of a floorboard.

‘Hello?’ I called.

My voice echoed in the cold air. I waited, but there was no answer. I went to the door and took hold of the handle. But I didn’t turn it.

Suddenly, I felt certain someone was on the other side.

The clinic seemed unnaturally quiet. The door into the community centre had a round window set in it, like a porthole. There was a Venetian blind on my side, but I hadn’t bothered to lower it.

Now I wished I had. The hall beyond was in darkness. Anyone in there would be able to see into the clinic, but on my side the window was a circle of impenetrable black. I listened, hearing only the wind rushing outside. The silence was like a solid weight, poised ready to break.

I felt the back of my neck prickle. I looked down at my hand, saw the hairs standing up on it.

This is stupid. There’s nothing there. I tightened my grip on the door handle, but still didn’t turn it. There was a heavy glass paperweight on the desk. I picked it up, holding it awkwardly as I stooped down to take hold of the door handle with my strapped hand. Ready…

I threw open the door and pawed for the light switch. I couldn’t find it, but then there was a click and the lights came on.

The empty hall mocked me. I lowered the paperweight. The doors to the hall, and the glassed-in entrance porch beyond it, were closed. The noise must have been the building creaking in the wind. You’re turning into a nervous wreck. I was about to go back into the clinic when I looked down at the floor.

Tracking across it was a trail of wet footprints.

‘You’re sure you didn’t make them?’

Brody was considering the slowly drying puddles on the worn floorboards. The water had run too much to gauge what size shoe or boot had made them, but their path was clear enough. They ran from the community centre entrance across to the clinic door, stopping in front of the glass porthole. A pool had formed below it, where someone had stood while they’d watched me.

‘Certain. I hadn’t been outside since I arrived,’ I told him.

Brody and Duncan had arrived while I’d still been debating what to do about the tracks, the young PC looking fresh-faced after a shave and a shower. Now Brody followed the trail to where it had pooled in front of the clinic door. He stared through the glass panel.