Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

There was no sign of Duncan.

Fraser didn’t slow as he went off the road and on to the track, the heavy car slewing on the muddy surface as he stamped on the brakes. He jumped out of the car and ran towards the camper van, leaving the door swinging in the wind behind him.

‘Duncan? Duncan!’ he bellowed, charging across the grass. Brody and I ran behind him, rain whipping into our faces. Fraser lurched to a halt in front of the camper van.

‘Oh, Jesus Christ! Where is he? Where the fuck is he?’

He stared round wildly, as though hoping the young PC would suddenly come strolling up. I became aware of Brody’s gaze. There was the same awareness in his face that I felt myself, and I knew that he’d seen what I had.

‘He’s here,’ I said quietly.

Fraser followed the direction of my gaze. A boot was sticking out from under a piece of heat-buckled roof, the leather burned away to reveal charred flesh and bone.

He took a step towards the camper van. ‘Ah, no, Christ…’

Before I could stop him he grabbed hold of the panel and started trying to heave it off.

‘Don’t,’ I began, but as I started forward a hand fell on my shoulder. I looked round at Brody. He shook his head.

‘Leave him.’

‘It was a crime scene; none of us should touch it. But I understood why Brody didn’t try to interfere.’

‘I don’t really see it making much difference now, do you?’ he said, bleakly.

Fraser wrenched the panel free, letting the wind carry it away. It pitched and bounced along the grass like a grounded kite until it came up against the cottage. Fraser continued to tear at the rest of the wreckage like a madman. Even from where I stood, the smell of burned meat was overpowering.

Then he stopped, staring at what he’d uncovered. He stumbled back, as uncoordinated as a broken puppet.

‘Oh, Christ. Jesus fucking Christ, that’s not him. Tell me that’s not him!’

The body lay in the centre of the camper van. It wasn’t as badly burned as Janice Donaldson’s remains had been, but in some ways its scorched humanity made the sight even worse. Its limbs had drawn up, so that it was curled in a foetal position, pathetically vulnerable. Cooked into the flesh round its middle was a charred police utility belt. A fire-blackened baton and handcuffs were still attached to it.

Fraser was weeping. ‘Why didn’t he get out? Why the fuck didn’t he get out?’

I took hold of his arm. ‘Come on.’

‘Get off me!’ he snarled, jerking free.

‘Get a grip, man!’ Brody told him, harshly.

Fraser turned on him. ‘Don’t tell me what to do! You’re a fucking has-been! You’ve got no authority here!’

Brody’s face was uncompromising. ‘Then start acting like a police officer yourself.’

All at once Fraser seemed to sag. ‘He was twenty-one,’ he mumbled. ‘Twenty-one! What am I going to tell everyone?’

‘Tell them he was murdered,’ Brody said brutally. ‘Tell them we’ve got a killer loose on the island. And tell them if Wallace had sent out a proper inquiry team in the first place, your twenty-one-year-old PC might still be alive!’

There was rare emotion in his voice. And we all knew what he’d left unsaid: that it had been Fraser’s slip that had shown our hand about the woman’s murder, and perhaps panicked her killer into action. But there was no point in recriminations now, and looking at Fraser I thought he was suffering enough already.

‘Take it easy,’ I told Brody.

He took a long breath, then nodded, in control of himself again. ‘We need to let the mainland know what’s happened. This isn’t just a straightforward murder inquiry any more.’

Red-eyed, Fraser took out his radio, turning his back to the wind and rain as he stabbed a number into its keypad. He listened, then tried again.

‘Come on, come on!’

‘What’s wrong?’ Brody asked.

‘It’s not working.’

‘What do mean, it’s not working? You called Wallace last night.’

‘Well, now there’s nothing!’ Fraser snapped. ‘I thought it was just Duncan’s radio before, but I can’t raise anybody. See for yourself, there’s no bloody signal!’

He thrust it at Brody. The retired inspector took it and tapped in a number. He put the handset to his ear, then handed it back.

‘Let’s try the one in the car.’

The Range Rover’s fixed radio used the same digital system as the handsets. Without bothering to ask Fraser, Brody tried it, then shook his head.

‘Dead. The gale must have taken out a mast. If that’s happened the whole comms network for the islands could be down.’

I took in the empty, windswept landscape that surrounded us. The low, dark clouds that squatted over the island seemed to shut us in even more.

‘So now what do we do?’ I asked.

For once even Brody seemed at a loss. ‘We keep trying. Sooner or later we’ll get either the radios or the landlines back.’

‘But what happens until then?’

The rain streaked his face as he looked at the camper van. His mouth set in a hard line.

‘Until then, we’re on our own.’

I VOLUNTEERED TO stay at the croft while Brody and Fraser drove back to the village to find stakes and a hammer. We needed to tape off the camper van, but there wasn’t enough of it left to fix the tape to. Moving Duncan’s body wasn’t an option, even if there’d been anywhere left to take it. With Janice Donaldson’s remains we hadn’t had a choice, but that didn’t apply here. True, it would mean leaving the van and its grisly contents exposed to the elements. But-Fraser’s frenzy apart-this time I was determined to preserve the crime scene as we’d found it.

And none of us doubted that it was just that-a crime scene. Someone had torched this deliberately, just as they had the medical clinic. Except Duncan hadn’t managed to escape.

Before he and Fraser left, Brody and I stood huddled on the track, bracing ourselves against the gale while the police sergeant tried once more to raise the mainland on the radio. The weather was worse than ever. Rain fell like lead shot, dripping from the scorched hood of my coat in shining strands, and heavy clouds raced overhead, their movement reflected in the rippling of the wind-flattened grass.

But nothing could carry away the stink of burning, or the stark fact of the young policeman’s death. It hung like a pall over everything, adding a further chill to the already frigid air.

‘You think this was done before or after the community centre?’ I asked.

Brody considered the van’s blackened shell. ‘Before, I’d say. Makes more sense for him to have come out to torch this first, then set fire to the clinic. No point in starting a fire that would alert the entire village until he’d taken care of things here.’

I felt anger as well as shock at the senselessness of it. ‘What was the point? We’d already moved the remains to the clinic. Why leave them out here for weeks, and then suddenly do this? It doesn’t make sense.’

Brody sighed, wiping the rain from his face. ‘It doesn’t have to make sense. Whoever this is, he’s panicking. He knows he made a mistake leaving the body here, and now he’s trying to rectify it. He’s determined to destroy anything that might tie him to it. Even if that means killing again.’

He paused, giving me a level look.

‘You sure you’ll be all right by yourself?’

We’d already discussed this. It made sense for Brody to go back to the village since he knew where to find the materials we needed to seal the site. But someone had to stay out here, and Fraser was in no fit state.

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said.

‘Just don’t take any chances,’ Brody warned. ‘Anybody shows up, anyone at all, be bloody careful.’