The Calling of the Grave by Simon Beckett Read Free Book Online

myself.
        But
Pirie showed no such qualms. 'I'm always keen to learn new skills,' he said,
delicately teasing a tendon away from its connected bone. 'Although I accept
that these days that probably puts me in a minority.'
        It
took me a second to realize he'd been making a joke.
        In
the end, confirming that the dead woman was Tina Williams was relatively
straightforward. The clothes and jewellery the body was buried in matched those
the nineteen-year-old was last seen wearing when she'd disappeared from
Okehampton, a market town on the northern edge of Dartmoor, and dental records
confirmed her identity beyond doubt. Although the jaw and mandible were
shattered and the front teeth broken, enough remained to provide a positive ID.
The attack had been extensive but not methodical. Either Monk didn't realize
his victim could be identified from her dental records, or he didn't care.
        But
then he probably never expected her body to be found.
        I'd
been able to add little to what we already knew. Tina Williams had suffered
horrific blunt trauma injuries. Most of her ribs and the clavicle had simple
fractures caused by a swift downward force, as did the metacarpals and
phalanges of both hands. Although her face had LeFort fractures, formed when
force from an impact dissipates along certain buttressing areas of the cranium,
the rear of her skull was intact. That suggested she'd been lying face up on
soft ground when the injuries had been inflicted.
        Yet
she seemed to have made no attempt to defend herself. Typically, when the
forearm is raised to block a blow, it's the ulna that takes the brunt of the
force, causing a wedge-shaped break called a 'parry fracture'. Here the ulnae
and radii in both forearms had a combination of simple and more complex,
comminuted fractures. That pointed to one of two scenarios. Either Tina Williams
was already dead or unconscious during the attack, or she'd been trussed and
helpless while Monk broke most of the bones in her body.
        I
hoped for her sake it was the former.
        It
was hard to say what had caused the injuries, but I thought I could guess.
While Monk was powerful enough to have inflicted many of them with his bare
hands, the frontal bone of Tina Williams' skull — her forehead — bore a
distinctive curved fracture. It was too big to have been caused by a hammer,
which would in any case more than likely have punched straight through. It
looked to me like something that might have been caused by a shoe or boot heel.
        She'd
been stamped on.
        I'd
worked on any number of violent deaths, but the image conjured up by that was
especially disturbing. And now I was about to come face to face with the man
who was responsible.
        
        
        The
sound of the helicopter rotors had all but disappeared as Terry and I went back
to the small township of police trailers, cars and vans that had now sprung
into life around the moorland track. The constant traffic was churning the moor
into a quagmire. Duckboards had been set down as temporary walkways, but black
mud oozed up through their slats, making them treacherously slippery.
        I
hadn't expected to be here more than a few days, but the convict's surprise
offer to show us where Zoe and Lindsey Bennett were buried had changed all
that. While Wainwright would remain in charge of any excavation, Terry had told
me Simms wanted me on hand when - if — any more bodies were found.
        'Are
you nervous? About meeting Monk, I mean?' Kara had asked the night before.
        'No,
of course not.' I had to admit I was more curious than anything. 'It isn't
every day you get to meet someone like him.'
        'So
long as you don't get too close.'
        'I
don't think there's much danger of that. We're all supposed to keep our
distance. Besides, I'll be the one hiding behind the police.'
        'I
hope so.' Kara didn't laugh. 'How's Terry?'
        'He's
OK, I