He was shaving when the phone rang. It was barely seven o’clock but he was sleeping badly at the moment and going into the station early was no hardship.
‘Guv.’
‘Morning, Nathan.’
‘They’ve found a body.’
‘What sort?’
‘Child’s.’
‘Oh Christ. OK, where?’
‘Gardale Ravine – in a shallow grave on the steep bank beside the river, just before it disappears underground.’
‘They were supposed to have searched Gardale.’
‘Yeah, right. Only it’s rained quite a bit since then, lot of stuff been brought down – probably uncovered it.’
‘Who found it?’
‘Caller wouldn’t give his name. Said he’d been walking his dogs along there.’
‘OK, on my way. Tell forensics.’
‘I just did.’
It was raining now, a soft, steady rain that misted the wind screen. Lafferton was just getting on the move but the traffic was still light.
Simon put his foot down as he headed out of town. He had already been called about Alan Angus. Now this. It might not be the boy. But if it did turn out to be David’s body in the ravine, Marilyn Angus had the worst day of her life ahead.
Gardale was a steep ravine. There was a narrow, vertiginous road down to it in one direction and another out of it at the other end. In summer it was a fisherman’s paradise; trout swam in the unpolluted clear water of the river which appeared here and vanished again, only to reappear mysteriously further down, the stuff of local legend for generations. On sunlit summer after noons Gardale held no fears, no sadness or mystery. It was dappled and peaceful. People picnicked beside the water and children shouted up and down the ravine to hear the peculiar echoes.
Now, on a grey March morning of cold wind and rain, the ravine was difficult to get down to, shadowy and menacing. The sheer sides with their overhanging rocks and shallow caves closed in and the air was fetid. The space beside the track was littered with cars – the usual police clutter plus forensics. Simon got out of his own vehicle. Two men were clambering into ghostly white suits. Another was pulling out a bag.
‘Morning, Simon.’
‘Jonathan.’
The duty pathologist, Jonathan Nimmo, was an unattractive, wire-thin man of six feet five or six, with a mouth full of small, pointed rat-like teeth.
‘I suppose this might be your boy.’
‘Hope not, afraid so.’
Nimmo finished pulling his boots on. ‘OK, let’s go.’
‘Hang on, I’ll change my own footgear. It’ll be treacherous as hell down that slope. You ever tried it?’
‘Nope.’
‘Then I suggest I go first.’
‘I don’t need a nanny.’
‘Just a guide.’
Simon bent to lace his walking boots. They had a grip that would keep him upright on the face of a mountain.
The descent was slow and they took it with caution. Below, Simon saw the small area already taped off, and the figures of a couple of uniform.
‘All right?’
The pathologist grunted, trying to keep his balance and hang on to his bag.
The rain was falling softly and steadily, making the ground a mulch of leaves and mud on the tarmac surface. Simon did not look up, only at his feet, placing them carefully. But he had the picture of the whole ravine in his mind. If the grave was that of David Angus, how had he been brought down here, by whom, and how long ago? He tried not to imagine what the journey would have been like, if the child had been alive. If dead, how had he been killed and how long before he was brought here?
By the time they reached the bottom, others were coming down behind, more forensics, the photographer and Nathan Coates.
They crossed the river, which was swollen and moving fast, by the place where it disappeared underground, and climbed the short slope to the taped-off area. Serrailler’s hair was soaked, his anorak running with water.
‘Guv.’
‘Morning.’
‘Over here.’
They ducked under the tape. A small area had been disturbed. Brush and stones had been pushed aside by the coursing rain.
‘Whoever phoned in more or less said where it was. Very accurate. We hardly had to search around. This had been partly uncovered anyway.’
Simon stepped forward. Looked down. A trench about three feet deep had been scraped out of the earth and undergrowth.
‘There was still quite a bit of greenery and mulch covering it over. But it was loose. Easy to see.’
The ground had been cleared just enough to reveal the grave.
There was a body in an advanced stage of decomposition, bones revealed. It looked as if it had been naked.
‘Looks as if it may have been here too long to be David Angus.’
‘What we thought, guv.’
‘All yours, Jonathan.’
The pathologist had his bag open, his white suit half on. There was a look of eagerness on his face, but the DCI had seen that plenty of times before. Pathologists were either world-weary and apparently bored out of their minds, or they licked their lips with anticipation and the nastier the corpse the better they liked it.
Nathan Coates came up.
‘Guv? What we got?’ His squashed-in face was apprehensive.
‘I doubt if it’s him. Too far gone. Still, I also know what effect weather can have – he’ll tell us more in a minute.’
They both stood looking up. The ravine rose sheer on either side.
‘I ’ate this place, you know. Me dad brought us here once when we was kids, frightened us to death. He said there was robbers and that hiding in them caves, great big giants with red hairy beards and sweaty armpits and wooden clubs. I never stopped believing him really, had bad dreams about it for years.’ He looked up at the scooped-out caves.
‘How old were you, for God’s sake?’
‘Four, five? Bloody terrifyin’. That was what he did, me dad … he thought it was a laff.’ Occasionally, Nathan’s cheerful front gave way to let slip just this sort of titbit about his childhood.
‘Simon.’
‘Coming.’
Please God, don’t let it be. Let this be … Well, what? Some other child’s body, hastily buried in the ravine?
‘What’ve we got?’
‘Child. Between eight and ten years old. Cause of death probably fracture to the skull. There’s quite a split at the back.’
God.
‘How long has it been here?’
‘Hard to say. The body had been partially exposed, we’ve had a few frosts and then heavy rain … I’ll know when I’ve got it back to the mortuary.’
‘Could it be three weeks, maybe less?’
‘Unlikely.’
The pathologist looked up like an owl from out of the white hood with the strings drawn under his chin. He was standing in the shallow grave beside the body.
‘Anyway, however long, it isn’t the body of your missing schoolboy.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because this is female. You got any of those unaccounted for?’