WITHIN A DAY OF GARY Clarke’s disappearance, the CID squad investigating the Rubery child murders had become a bigger team and moved to a larger incident room at West Midlands Police HQ. Detectives were interviewing every single adult the Clarkes knew in a bid to find the person who had given Gary directions to his abduction site. There was a television reconstruction of Gary’s last known movements, the last resort when there were no new leads. They were inundated with calls from well-meaning people claiming to have seen Gary that afternoon but nobody had seen him after he’d gone into the woods.
Rubery Hill Hospital’s Dr Tremblay, a specialist in rare psychological disorders like clinical lycanthropy was at a conference in the USA and wouldn’t be back for another fortnight. Delahaye was desperate to speak to him and the waiting was as frustrating as that for forensic test results.
A larger team meant more officers taking calls and more officers on door-to-door duties but the original core of the team remained. Delahaye had a new, slightly bigger desk. Unfortunately, as a result of this move, his post arrived a day later. He sliced the top of the envelope and slid out a letter folded around a Polaroid photograph. His heart double-bumped in his chest: three gravestones. He turned it over to reveal beautiful, cursive handwriting he recognised:
These graves are on Banlock Farm in a hawthorn hollow to the right of the old kennels. I went there on Sunday and there are fresh daisies on one grave and a cat skull on the other. If Mr Coleman’s family are all dead, who is visiting the graves? I’m just curious.
A.
Lines sat at the desk opposite, took a sip of his first morning cup of tea then caught his sergeant’s eye. Delahaye passed the photograph and letter over to him.
Harry Marshall had called him revealing that he and his wife failed to find the graves of Tisiphone and Sophia Coleman in Bromsgrove or Lodgehill cemeteries. Ava’s picture solved that mystery. It gave a solid reason as to why Coleman had been eager to know if his fields had been ‘touched’.
Because Coleman had treasure buried in them.
Lines handed the photograph back to Delahaye. ‘Is it worth a look then, Sarge?’
* * *
Delahaye parked at Banlock Farm and grabbed the Nikon camera from the back seat. ‘I’ve asked Gibson to work her magic,’ he said. ‘And I’ve asked Professor Simmons if she can shed some light on the family’s birth and death certificates.’
Lines raised an eyebrow at the mention of Simmons and suppressed a grin. ‘A side project, is it, Sarge?’
Delahaye considered. ‘Yes, it is. It might be nothing, it might lead to something. It’ll do until I can meet Dr Tremblay and shed some light on clinical lycanthropy.’
Delahaye and Lines clambered over the fence and into the paddock with its kennel ruins and pet cemetery. It perturbed Delahaye that Ava had returned to this place by herself. He hoped at the very least she’d been accompanied by the boy who had spoken on the 999 call.
The men saw only trees that rustled in the breeze. Delahaye walked forward a hundred yards, squeezed himself behind a tree and immediately understood how they’d missed the graves during their initial search of the property. Delahaye had to bow down to enter what was an organic sepulchre – not dingy and mouldy like a stone crypt, but rife with birds and flowers.
They stepped in to the wild sanctum. There were the three graves.
‘Tisiphone Coleman,’ Lines said. ‘And Sophia Coleman. Neville buried his family here.’
‘And Zasha was his favourite dog,’ said Delahaye.
‘But why was this dog buried here, favourite or not?’ Lines asked. His eyes glittered with dark humour. ‘You don’t think there’s a jackal buried here, Sarge? Like in The Omen?’
Delahaye made a sarcastic face then crouched to study the objects placed on two of the graves. There was the daisy bouquet now starting to wilt, and there was the cat skull. He recalled the dog skull with its crown of dried daisies and the crushed bones of animals underfoot when he’d first encountered this macabre property. He took photographs of the graves. When he looked at Lines, he saw that the detective constable remembered too.
‘It could be our killer visiting these graves,’ said Lines. ‘But then, what connection does he have to this place and this family? A friend?’
The Colemans had been a very insular nuclear family. Their blood relatives were dead. Harry didn’t know where Tisiphone and her mother were buried so it wasn’t him paying his respects – and he couldn’t see Harry placing a cat skull on a dog’s grave. He remembered Harry saying he’d seen Tisiphone heavily pregnant but knew nothing of what happened to the baby, had never seen a child with Coleman when he’d visited his friend months after. If the child had died – stillborn or cot death – wouldn’t it have had a grave of its own, here? Not with its mother – she died years after so where was it buried? Or, born alive, was it then given up for adoption? If the kid was still alive, it would be a teenager by now. Delahaye wondered if childbirth showed up on the skeleton post-mortem.
‘We are our bones,’ Delahaye said, to no one in particular.