The Fifth Grave, page 2
part #1 of DCI Jacob Series
Cobalt blue eyes and jet black hair, some silver on the temples. More grey than a fortnight ago, he noticed with no concern at all, and ran the razor deftly above his top lip. Now he stretched the skin down over his upper jaw to make the cheek taut and easier to shave, shaking the cut hairs and gel off in the hot water in a ritual he had done since he was a young teenager. The cold scrape of the steel blade, the sting of the soap in the gel on his lips, the forced study of his ageing face. Those days seemed like another century, which they were, he supposed.
He rinsed the remnants of the shaving gel from his face with a splash of water from the cold tap and patted himself dry with a hand towel. As he put the towel back on the rail he knocked the tea cup into the sink. The price of too much beer the night before and the inevitable consequences the morning after – a sore head, dry eyes and an unnerving lack of concentration.
“Sod it,” he said, and fished out the cup, washing it clean with some fresh cold water and then pulling the plug on the whole damned mess.
He moved over to a lead-lined window on the mill’s north side and peered out over the frost-caked garden once again. Damned it might be, but it was his only sanctuary now. Far away from the nightmare that his life had become in Oxford – but was it far enough away for him to start all over again?
Only if his guilt let him.
He slid on his wristwatch, put his phone in his pocket and walked downstairs. What was it they said? Today is the first day of the rest of your life.
Something like that, but with less than a week until he went back to work he was starting to wonder just how many more chances this life was going to give him.
Just then, his mobile chirped. He heard it but couldn’t see it. After a brief search he found it in his jacket hanging over the back of the kitchen chair. The caller ID kept no secrets, and when he saw it was Anna Mazurek he wasn’t sure whether to smile or frown.
“I know you’re desperate to see me again,” he said. “But you couldn’t wait just a few more days?”
“Still the same old smart-arse, I see. Your start date just got brought forward.”
He smiled. “I missed you too.”
“How far is your place from Grovely Wood?”
Straight to business, as usual.
“Around forty-five minutes. Maybe more like thirty if I drive like you. Why?”
“We’ve got a dead body buried underneath a beech tree. Welcome home, Jacob.”
*
He swung open the old, creaking garage doors and frowned. The car was his father’s, not driven for years until a few weeks ago and still a bit reluctant to do what it was told. A relic from the sixties, the big powder blue convertible Alvis was most charitably described as a work in progress. Barely roadworthy, he had teased it through the MOT and covered it with classic car insurance to keep the costs down. The plan was to restore it to its former glory and sell it to an enthusiast, and in the meantime, it was the only vehicle he had.
He opened the chunky rust-speckled door and collapsed down on the soft, torn leather seat. It took three attempts to turn over, but when it did, it fired up with an impressive growl and shook the paint cans on his workbench. Driving the enormous beast out of the small garage was like navigating a cruise ship out of port, but he was soon pulling away down his gravel drive and turning onto the main road running to the west of Bradford-on-Avon.
The usual drive into work took him past the Caen Hill Locks on the way into Devizes but today he was going south. This drive to the ancient woodland offered expansive, panoramic views across the far-reaching downs and today the snow had made the landscape seem even bigger than usual. Snow at this time of year was rare but not unheard of, but a lot of people had lost money betting on a White Christmas. According to the news report the snow hadn’t fallen until after midnight.
Boxing Day meant quiet roads and he soon reached Cranborne Chase and the chalk ridge where Grovely Wood was situated. He signalled and slowed to make a right turn and reached his destination without a hitch. The canopy of the woods was just visible a few hundred feet to the west and he spied two other vehicles parked up at the side of a narrow lane. Drawing closer, he saw people inside them and when he parked up behind the cars they pushed open the doors and climbed out.
He emerged into a gloomy and miserable day to find three nervous and confused faces looking back at him. “Are you the man who phoned the police?” he asked.
“That’s me,” one said, raising his hand. “I can show you where I saw it.”
“No, just tell me, please.”
He pointed as he described the location and Jacob made a note of the man’s number plate. “I want you to wait here. Other officers are on their way. Understand?”
“Yes, of course.”
Tucking his face down into his scarf, he started off towards the woodland up on top of the chalk ridge. He stopped halfway to the tree line, his shoes already caked in mud from the fallow fields surrounding the woods. He took in the location for a few moments. Bleak, windswept and secluded on the best of days, another light snowfall seemed to have moved the place to a whole new level of isolation. A few villages were scattered around the woods, obscured by the closed-in weather; the only tangible sign of humanity was the ghostly outline of a farm building beyond the railway line to the east.
He walked up the sloping chalk ridge and reached the tree line. Entering the dark woods, he followed the main Roman Road running through the centre, branches interlocking above him like a cathedral’s vaulted roof. Slowly, he made his way to the area that the man had described.
Leaving the road, he walked down an incline towards a hollow full of fallen leaves and broken branches. His path led him up the other side of the ditch and into a small clearing where he found himself standing in a ring of beech trees, half-bare and obscured in the gloomy forest.
And then he saw it. The scene was exactly how it had been called in. At the base of a beech tree on far side of the clearing was a freshly dug hole, at the bottom of which he saw the unmistakeable glint of a golden ring on a filthy dirt-covered bone.
He took in the grisly sight and blew out a long, slow breath. From the size of both the hand and the ring, he was sure it was a woman, but how long she had lain under this tree was much harder to know.
Taking out his iPhone, he took some preliminary photos and saved the GPS coordinates of the crime scene. He looked up at the tree’s canopy and then followed its trunk straight back down to the shallow grave.
“You wanted to be sure she was never found,” he muttered.
He closed his eyes and started to rebuild the moment in his imagination. Night, he thought. Were there just the two of them up here, killer and victim? Or more than two? A shallow grave around a foot deep beneath a beech tree. No, he reconsidered; the tree was an afterthought, or maybe an accident of nature.
A deer barked, hoarse and wild in the distance, startling him from his thoughts.
He checked his phone. He’d been up here for nearly a quarter of an hour and still no sign of Mazurek or the CSI team. He was considering the likelihood of their being caught in the snow when he saw a pair of LED headlights forming two arctic haloes on the road at the base of the ridge’s eastern slope.
It was Mazurek’s blue BMW , and behind her he saw the headlights of other police cars and the CSI team. Now things could get moving.
CHAPTER 3
He pulled up the collars of his coat and blew out another long, quiet breath. It condensed in the wood’s cold air, lingered for a moment and then vanished into the grey sky. Down on the road, Detective Sergeant Anna Mazurek was talking with two CSI officers, one of whom was passing her a coffee. She gripped the paper cup and trudged up the hill, looking like she wanted to be anywhere but here. Her blonde hair was tied back in a neat, professional bun and beneath a woollen coat she wore an expensive petrol-blue suit. As she drew closer he saw the slate grey eyes and the high cheekbones he remembered from so long ago.
“Morning guv,” she said, extending a gloved hand. “Christ, you got old.”
He gave a nod. “Thanks.”
“Before we start, I just wanted to say that it was a privilege working with you before and I’m really sorry about what happened.”
“Okay.” He looked down at the road. “What are CSI doing down there?”
“They’re waiting for their senior officer.”
“Right.”
He shook her hand and was surprised by the strength of her grip. He’d worked with her many years ago before taking a promotion and moving to the Met, and he hoped she hadn’t changed too much. She was tough, she was unforgiving, and as he recalled, she was a very good detective.
“Good to see you again.” He fixed his eyes on hers and gave as good as he got on the handshake front. He was still thinking about how she had used the word privilege in connection with working with him, and it made him uncomfortable. “Even in these circumstances.”
“The pub might have been better,” she said, sipping her coffee. “Or even the office.”
“Either of those would have done me just fine.”
She changed the subject. “What the hell is that parked down there?”
“A 1962 Alvis TD21 drophead coupé,” he said proudly. “Why? Do you like it?”
“I wouldn’t be seen dead in it. It looks like a skip.”
“You have no class.”
“If you say so.”
“It’s a beautiful colour though, you have to admit.”
“All the panels are different colours, which bit do you particularly admire?”
Jacob smiled. “The bonnet has just had its final respray,” he said.
“Are you sure it’s even legal?”
He looked at the old wreck parked up below the ridge and frowned. “Some more work is needed, admittedly.”
“It needs a car crusher.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that.”
Her laugh was muted by the cold wind. Down in the road a number of uniformed police officers were talking with the metal detectorists.
“Who’s with the caller and his friends?” Jacob asked.
“PCs Smith and Cook.”
“Okay, thanks.”
She glanced up at the bare trees looming out of the weak dawn light. “Now then, what’s ruined my Christmas holidays?”
“Skeletal remains buried in a fairly shallow grave,” he said. “Problem is we have a tree growing over the top of them.”
“That is a problem.”
“Get in contact with the Forestry Commission,” he said. “This part of the woods is owned and controlled by them so call them up and tell them what’s happened. Also tell them to get someone up here with a chainsaw and a winch. I want that tree out of the way as soon as possible.”
“Guv.” She pulled her phone from her pocket and started to look up the number. After she had made the call, she slipped the phone away and stamped her feet to warm them. “They’re sending some people over.”
He nodded and turned his face out of the wind.
“So where exactly are these remains, guv?”
“It’s just up here. Follow me.”
*
Looking down at the skeleton’s hand, she shook her head in disbelief. “At the end of the day, you’ve got to ask yourself if it’s all worth it.”
“Sorry?”
“I mean if you have to share the same world with the kind of animal who can do something like this.” She took another sip of the coffee and stamped her feet once again in the hard ground to help her circulation. “Dumped out here and left to rot like a dead animal. Christ, it’s cold.”
“You can say that again,” he muttered. “And yet people are out here with bloody metal detectors.”
“It takes all sorts.”
She looked up at the man beside her and tried to work out his age. Word around the office was he was still the right side of forty, but up close and personal she had to disagree. There was more grey in his temples than she had expected, but it didn’t look too bad on him at all. If anything it leant a certain distinguished air to him, as did the crow’s feet settling in at the corners of his blue eyes.
“So, what do you think?” he asked.
“Hard to say while there’s a bloody tree in top of it.”
“Which is why we need one of the foresters up here, pronto. Where the hell are they?”
“Speak of the devil, sir.”
Jacob turned to see a Land Rover make its way up the track. When it reached the woods a uniformed constable hopped out and opened the five-bar gate blocking the lane. Waving the vehicle through, he climbed back into the cab and they drove slowly over to the crime scene.
The PC climbed out again, as did a younger man in a green body warmer, followed by the driver, who slammed his door and trudged over to them along the muddy track. He was wearing a crumpled waxed jacket, a pair of brown corduroy trousers and green wellington boots that had seen better days. The picture was topped off by a woollen flat cap pulled down low to stop the bitter wind blowing it away.
He drew nearer now, his hands shoved down inside his jacket pockets.
“How do?”
Anna spoke first. “Neil Talbot?”
“That’s me,” the ranger said, pointing to the sign painted on the door of his Land Rover. It read Forestry Commission England. “That kind of gives it away, I suppose.”
Jacob said nothing.
“And this is Adam Dawes,” Talbot said, pointing at the younger man. “This is one of my assistants.”
Anna sniffed and took out her notepad to make a note of their details and registration number.
Dawes craned his head to peer over shoulder. “Don’t often see much action around these parts.”
Anna ignored his comment. “I’m Detective Sergeant Mazurek and this is Detective Chief Inspector Jacob. The situation here is that a body has been found in these woods, just behind me in that hollow over there. The problem we have is that it’s actually caught up in the roots of a tree and we can’t get the body out until the tree is removed.”
Dawes stepped forward and sniffed. “I bet that doesn’t happen every day.”
“Leave it, Adam,” Talbot said gruffly. “Let them get on with their jobs.”
Jacob’s eyes sharpened. “Thank you both for getting here so promptly. What with it being Christmas and everything.”
“No trouble at all,” Talbot said. “I live local and come up here most days anyway to make sure everything’s all right and no one’s been messing about up here.”
“Messing about?” Anna asked,
Dawes spoke up. “Just the usual – breaking fences, making fires, leaving empty bottles of booze all over the place. But the truth is not much happens up here. It’s very peaceful and clean and tidy. Fact is, when you called and said someone had found a body up here I thought to myself, have they found another witch?”
Jacob locked his eyes on him. “I’m sorry?”
“Ignore him, it’s rubbish,” Talbot said.
Dawes gave a bland smile. “Just over there,” he said, quieter now. “There’s four witches buried up here among these trees and I was wondering if you’d found the fifth. A giant beech tree marks each grave, see.”
Anna narrowed her eyes. “What are you talking about?”
“Local legend, but don’t worry about it. None of their graves is anywhere around this part. The four of them are buried just to the south in a coppice called Four Sisters.”
“I’m only interested in this one, the fifth grave,” Jacob said, looking over the man’s shoulder. “I see you brought a vehicle with a winch bumper.”
Talbot lifted his eyes from the grave and nodded. “That’s what the sergeant here requested.”
“And you also brought a chainsaw?”
The man nodded. “How wide’s the trunk? If it’s too big then I’ll have to go and get more equipment.”
Jacob pulled his gloved hands from his pockets and measured out an estimate. “Diameter about this size.”
“That’s just a baby,” he said. “We’ll have him out with chains, no problem.”
“Good, then let’s get to work.”
CHAPTER 4
It didn’t take Neil Talbot and Adam Dawes long to drive the Land Rover up to the tree, and after a few minutes of work they had secured the winch’s anchor chain around the slender trunk. Talbot climbed back into the cab of his mud-encrusted four-wheel-drive and fired up the engine. A cloud of blue diesel smoke billowed up out of the vertical exhaust and drifted into the bare branches above.
Anna called the uniformed officers over and when Talbot activated the winch it tore the trunk out of the ground with remarkable ease. When the job was done and the tree was on its side, they worked together to guide the fallen trunk up out of the stump hole and away from the grave. Years of darkness were now exposed to the light, and roots wrenched from the soils and leafmould. Working slowly, they got it clear without causing too much damage to the crime scene but part of the skeleton had snagged inside the root system and one of the arms twisted up out of the hole.
“Woah!” Jacob called out. “That’s enough!”
Anna signalled to Talbot who killed the engine and silence fell over the woods once again. As she walked over to the hole, Jacob pulled up his collar and stamped his feet in the snow in a bid to warm himself up. For a while, neither of them knew what to say.
“All right,” Jacob began. “Have uniform get some barrier tape up around this part of the woods, and make sure it’s far enough out that we don’t get any rubberneckers on their Christmas walk.”
“Guv.”
While Talbot and Dawes talked quietly by the Land Rover, she walked over to the policemen who had helped pull the tree out of the stump hole and gave them their orders. Jacob looked at their cold faces, and then down the ridge at the metal detectorists who were still standing by their SUV. Joined now by an ambulance, it was an atmosphere of curiosity and confusion, lit by the strobing of the blue LED emergency lights.
