Simon Beckett - Written in Bone

But that wasn’t the worst of it. What had shocked me to silence was the sight of two unburned feet and a single hand protruding from the ashes. The bones jutting from them were scorched to black sticks, yet they were completely unmarked.

Brody came and stood beside me.

‘Well, Dr Hunter? Still think there’s nothing suspicious about it?’

THE WIND MOANED fitfully outside the old cottage, an eerie background music to the macabre scene before us. From the doorway, I was aware of Duncan’s indrawn breath as he and Fraser saw what was lying on the floor.

But I was getting over the shock now, already beginning to assess what I was seeing.

‘Is there any chance of getting some more light in here?’ I asked.

‘We’ve got a portable floodlight in the car,’ Fraser said, tearing his eyes from the pile of bone and ashes. He was trying to sound blase but the attempt wasn’t entirely convincing. ‘Go and get it, Duncan. Duncan.’

The young PC was still staring at what was left of the body. The blood had left his face.

‘You OK?’ I asked. My concern wasn’t entirely for his sake. I’d worked on more than one body recovery where a green police officer had vomited on the remains. It didn’t make anyone’s job any easier.

He nodded. His colour was starting to come back. ‘Aye. Sorry.’

He hurried out. Brody regarded the remains.

‘I told Wallace it was a strange one, but I don’t think he believed me. Dare say he thought I’d gone soft after a few years off the job.’

He was probably right, I thought, remembering the doubts I’d harboured myself only a few minutes before. But I couldn’t blame Wallace for being sceptical. What I was looking at was freakish enough to flout all apparent logic. If I hadn’t seen it for myself I might have thought the report was exaggerated.

The body-what was left of it-was lying face down. Without going any closer, I played my torch on the unburned limbs. The feet were intact from just above the ankle, and what made the sight even more disturbing was that both were still wearing trainers. I moved the torch beam higher, until it shone on the hand. It was the right one, and could have belonged to either a small man or a large woman. There were no rings, and the fingernails were unvarnished and bitten. The radius and ulna protruded from the exposed tissue of the wrist, their bone burned a dark amber close to the flesh and quickly becoming blackened and crazed with heat fractures after that. Just before where they should have joined the elbow, both had burned right through.

It was the same with the feet. The charred shafts of the tibia and fibula emerged from each as if the flames had eaten away everything up to this point, then came to an abrupt halt where the fire had burned them away halfway up the shin.

But other than that the surviving limbs showed little evidence of the fire that had destroyed the rest of the body. The main damage was caused by rodents or other small animals gnawing at the flesh and unburned bone. What soft tissue remained was starting to decompose normally, a marbling effect evident beneath the darkened skin. There was virtually no insect activity-often a vital indicator of how long decomposition has been under way. But given the cold, wintry conditions that was only what I’d expect. Flies need heat and light.

I shone the torch around the room. The remains of a fire lay in the hearth, and at some point a smaller one had been lit on the flagged floor. It was a good six feet from where the body lay, but that didn’t signify anything. Unless they were unconscious, no one remained still when they caught fire.

I turned the torch beam on to the ceiling. Directly above the body the cracked plaster was smoke-blackened, but not burned. An oily, brownish deposit coated it. The same fatty residue was also on the floor around the remains.

‘What’s all that brown stuff?’ Fraser asked.

‘It’s fat. From the body, as it burned.’

He grimaced. ‘Bit like you get with a chip-pan fire, eh?’

‘Something like that.’

Duncan had returned with the floodlight. He stared wide-eyed at the skeletal remains as he set it on the floor.

‘I’ve read about this sort of thing,’ he blurted. He immediately looked embarrassed as we all stared at him. ‘Where people burst into flames for no reason, I mean. Without burning anything else around them.’

‘Stop talking rubbish,’ Fraser snapped.

‘It’s all right,’ I said, turning to Duncan. ‘You’re talking about spontaneous combustion.’

He nodded eagerly. ‘Aye, that’s it!’

I’d been expecting this ever since I’d seen the remains. Spontaneous human combustion was generally thought of in the same terms as yeti and UFOs: a paranormal phenomenon for which there was no real explanation. Yet there were well-documented cases where individuals had been found incinerated in a room otherwise untouched by fire, often with hands or lower legs partially intact amongst the ashes. A whole range of theories had been put forward to explain it, from demonic possession to microwaves. But the popular consensus was that, whatever its cause, it had to be something inexplicable to known science.

I didn’t believe it for a moment.

Fraser was scowling at Duncan. ‘What the hell do you know about it?’

Duncan gave me a sheepish glance. ‘I’ve seen photographs. There was one woman who was burned up, just like this. All that was left was one of her legs, with the shoe still on. They call her the cinder woman.’

‘Her name was Mary Reeser,’ I told him. ‘She was an elderly widow in Florida back in the 1950s. There was almost nothing left of her except for one leg from the shin down, and the foot still had a slipper on it. The armchair she was sitting on was destroyed, and a nearby table and lamp, but nothing else in the room was damaged. Is that the one?’

Duncan looked taken aback. ‘Aye. And I’ve read about others.’

‘They crop up now and again,’ I agreed. ‘But people don’t just burst into flames for no reason. And whatever happened to this woman, there was nothing supernatural or paranormal about it.’

Brody had been watching us during the exchange, listening without joining in. Now he spoke up.

‘How do you know it’s a woman?’

Retired or not, Brody didn’t miss much. ‘Because of the skeleton.’ I shone the torch on to what was left of the pelvis, obscured by ash but still visible. ‘Even from what’s left, the hipbone’s obviously too wide for a man’s. And the head of the humerus – that’s the ball where the upper armbone fits into the shoulder – is too small. Whoever this was, she was big-boned but definitely female.’

‘Like I said, I can’t see it being anyone local,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’d have noticed if anyone had gone missing. Any idea how long the body might have been here?’

It was a good question. While some things can be gleaned from even the most badly burned remains, an accurate time since death isn’t usually one of them. For that you need to trace the extent of decomposition in muscle proteins, amino and volatile fatty acids, all of which are normally destroyed by fire. But the freakish condition of this body meant there was enough soft tissue to run tests that weren’t possible for most fire deaths. That would have to wait till I was back in a lab, but in the meantime I could make an educated guess.

‘The cold weather will have slowed the rate of decay,’ I told him. ‘But the feet and hand have started to decompose, so death can’t have been too recent. Assuming the body’s been here all the time and not moved from somewhere else-and given the way the flagstones underneath it are scorched I’d say that’s likely-I’d guess we’re looking at around four or five weeks.’