Simon Beckett - The Calling Of The Grave

And important enough for someone to knock her unconscious and leave her for dead while they searched the house. My mind was whirring now, the last cobwebs of fatigue dropping away.

'Terry Connors tried to persuade me to take Sophie away yesterday afternoon,' I said. 'That's why he wanted to see me.'

'Did he now? Then perhaps Monk did him a favour. Got her out of the way long enough for him to find what he was looking for.' Roper considered the debris littering the floor, a smile playing round his mouth. 'For someone who's suspended he seems to be taking an unhealthy interest in this case. I think it's time we had a serious talk with DS Connors.'

A cold feeling was forming in the pit of my stomach. I'd been too tired to wonder why Terry was waiting for me outside the hospital. I'd put his questions down to curiosity, but that wasn't what struck me now. He'd claimed he didn't know where Sophie lived, yet I hadn't told him how to get here.

He'd already known the way.

'I've just seen him,' I said. 'He gave me a lift.'

Roper's smile vanished. 'Connors was here?'

'He dropped me off and then went.'

'Shit!' Roper reached in his pocket for his phone. 'We need to go. I should-'

But before he could finish a shadow stepped through the doorway behind him. There was a sickening thunk of metal on bone as something swung against the back of his head, and Roper pitched face first on to the ground.

Breathing heavily, Terry stood over him with a short length of scaffold gripped in his hands. His mouth stretched into a snarl as he looked down.

'Bastard had that coming for a long time.'

It had happened so quickly there was no time to react. I stood there, stunned by Terry's appearance as much as by the sudden violence. There was a wildness about him, a look of fevered desperation. His once-neat hair had been snagged by branches, and his shoes and trouser bottoms were splashed with mud. Panting, he wiped his mouth on his sleeve as he lifted his gaze to me.

'Jesus, David. Why couldn't you just have got your things and left?'

My mind was starting to function again. I hadn't heard a car engine: Terry must have parked and doubled back across the fields. Perhaps when he saw Roper's car in the lay-by. The policeman lay where he'd fallen. Dark blood glistened on his head, nearly black in the lamplight. I couldn't see if he was breathing or not.

Terry raised the pole threateningly as I started towards them. 'Don't try it!'

I stopped, keeping out of reach. 'Put the pole down. Just think what you're doing.'

'You don't think I have? Christ, you think I want this?' A spasm of anguish crossed his face. He lashed out and kicked a piece of clay. It ricocheted off the scaffolding that propped up the curving wall of the kiln and skittered off into darkness. 'You want to blame somebody, blame Keller! This is her fault!'

I thought about what Roper had said. About the ball of clay, now in fragments on the floor. 'What was she hiding that was so important?'

At first it seemed he wasn't going to answer. He shook his head, but his grip on the scaffolding pole seemed to loosen.

'Zoe Bennett's diary.'

It took me a moment, but then I began to understand. Zoe, the extrovert of the two Bennett twins, who, unlike her sister, preferred partying to studying. And Terry, a womanizer still smarting after being forced to transfer from the Met in disgrace. What better way to salve his ego than with a pretty, vivacious seventeen-year-old with aspirations to be a model?

'Your name was in it,' I said.

His shoulders slumped. The scaffolding pole had sunk lower, almost forgotten.

'I'd been seeing her for a couple of months. The photos don't do her justice; she was a real looker. Trouble was she knew it. She'd got it all worked out: how she was going to go to London, sign up with a big model agency. She was impressed because I'd been with the Met, could tell her stories about Soho and all the rest.'

He grinned at the recollection, but it quickly faded. His mouth twisted.

'Then I saw her with someone else. Some cocky young bastard in his twenties, flash car. You know the sort. We had a row. Things got out of hand. I hit her and she went mental. Screaming at me, saying she'd see to it I got sacked, that she'd say I raped her. We were in my car and I was scared people would hear. I just wanted to shut her up, so I got hold of her throat, and… and it was just so fucking quick. One minute she was struggling, and the next…'

I looked down at Roper, dead or unconscious at his feet. 'Jesus, Terry…'

'I know! You think I don't know?' He'd lowered the scaffolding pole altogether, but still gripped it in one hand. He ran the other through his hair, his face stricken. 'I'd got a lock-up, so I hid her body in there. I thought… I thought if I didn't do anything it'd be treated like just another teenage runaway. Zoe was always saying how she was going to go to London.'

'She was seventeen!'

'Oh, don't start,' he snapped, with a flash of his old temper. 'What was I going to do? Give myself up? That wouldn't bring her back! I'd got Debs and the kids to think about. What was the point in spoiling their lives?'

I felt sickened. 'Did you kill her sister as well?'

Terry seemed to flinch. He no longer looked at me, but there was something like shame in his eyes. 'Lindsey found Zoe's diary,' he said dully. 'There was my phone number, details of how often we'd met. What we'd done. She didn't tell anyone because she didn't want to hurt Zoe's reputation. She thought because I was a police officer I might be able to help find her.'

Christ. So she'd gifted Terry with the only piece of evidence that could implicate him in her sister's death. And, in the process, made herself the only witness.

'Don't look at me like that!' Terry yelled. 'I panicked, all right? If that had come out it would have been all over! I couldn't afford to be questioned. And she looked so much like Zoe, just seeing her was like she was accusing me!'

'And Tina Williams? Why did…' I broke off as I realized. Another teenager, dark-haired and pretty. 'She was just a decoy, wasn't she? So it'd look like a serial killer and take attention off the twins.'

A strange look came over Terry's face, as though he was confronting a part of himself he barely recognized. He shrugged, but he still wouldn't look me in the eye.

'Something like that.'

The shock had gone now, replaced by anger and disgust. 'I saw her, Terry! I saw what you did! For Christ's sake, you stamped on her face!'

'She was already dead!' he yelled. 'I lost it, all right? Jesus, you think I wanted to do it? Any of it? You think I enjoyed it?'

It doesn't matter: they're still dead. But it explained a lot of things. Like Terry's behaviour during the search, especially when Monk inexplicably offered to take us to the graves. Pirie had been closer to the truth than we'd realized when he'd said that Tina Williams' horrific injuries might be an expression of her murderer's shame, an attempt to erase his own guilt. That hadn't made sense when we'd thought Monk was the killer, but it did now.

No wonder Terry's life had fallen apart.

Through the doorway behind him I saw it was growing darker outside. The lamp cast a cocoon of brightness, beyond which the kiln's gloom seemed to deepen. I'd no idea how long I'd been there, but I couldn't expect any help. Roper still hadn't moved, and from what he'd said no one knew where he was. Somehow I had to get past Terry, although I'd no idea how. There was nothing nearby to use as a weapon except broken pottery.

'Was DI Jones the best name you could come up with?' I asked, stalling.

'Worked that out as well, did you?' Terry actually smiled. He seemed calmer, as though relieved to be finally confessing what he'd done. 'It was either that or Smith. Monk was too good an opportunity to miss. I'd still got some of Zoe's things hidden away, but I had to move fast before his place was swarming with SOCOs. I wasn't as careful as I should have been. Almost fell over Walker. But I flashed my warrant card and put the fear of God into him. Said if he kept his mouth shut I'd look after him.'