Ward had started her leave shortly after that, understandably deciding to concentrate on more positive maternal issues of her own. It was high time. The only loose end from the St Jude’s investigation was that Gary Lennox’s remains were still missing, and there seemed little prospect of his mother revealing where they were. Whelan had speculated that she might have simply dropped them into a wheelie bin, but I disagreed. The shrine she’d created on the cabinet hadn’t been solely to torment Wayne Booth. It had been just that — a shrine. Lola wouldn’t have disposed of her son’s burnt bones simply to get rid of the evidence.
Not long after Ward had started her leave I’d had a call from Whelan.
‘Fancy taking a dog for a walk?’ he’d asked.
The church ruins had looked even bleaker at this time of year. Ivy still clung to the crumbling gable wall, and the moss looked thicker than ever on the fallen stones. But the trees surrounding it were bare now, the fallen leaves forming a rotting mat underfoot. A few rooks looked down from the black branches, feathers ruffled against the wind and rain. It was a foul day, but one member of the party didn’t mind. Star trotted happily around the woodland clearing, the scents here far more to the Labrador’s liking than the fustiness of the old hospital.
It had been Whelan’s idea to walk the cadaver dog along the route Lola would have taken as she’d brought her son’s bones back from the boiler. We’d started at the demolished morgue, its mound of broken bricks now dwarfed by the rubble of St Jude’s, and let the dog sniff its way through the waste ground to the woods behind the hospital.
We found Gary Lennox’s remains in the clearing. Or rather the Labrador did. They weren’t even well hidden. After snuffling around the church ruins, the dog made a beeline for the lightning-struck oak. Split a few feet off the ground, the rooted part of the trunk was hollowed out by rot and surrounded by the bush of straggling shoots thrown up by the dying tree. At the base of the hollow, all but invisible inside the trunk, were charred human bones. The skull was at the very bottom. It was blackened and cracked, and its upper jaw was missing its front teeth.
As the last of Gary Lennox’s bones were removed from inside the rotting tree, I’d thought about when I’d seen Lola there. How annoyed she’d been to find someone else in the church’s crumbling remains. It had always seemed out of character for her to be collecting litter from around the clearing, but now I understood why.
She’d been tending her son’s grave.
It had begun to snow outside. Small flakes clung to the barred window, slowly sliding down the glass as they melted. I shifted again on the uncomfortable chair, tempted to use the weather as an excuse to leave. Now I was here I wondered what I’d hoped to achieve. I still couldn’t say for sure why I’d come, except that it wouldn’t have felt right not to.
It was just something I’d felt I had to do.
I felt my stomach tense as I heard footsteps approach in the corridor, as though the scar beneath my ribs had a memory of its own. The door opened and an orderly entered. I half rose to my feet as the woman shuffled into the room behind him. She was painfully thin, dressed in a plain white gown through which the bones of her shoulders clearly showed. The wispy grey hair was short and bristly above one temple where it had been shaved, showing the line of a healing scar.
Whatever threat had once existed in the frail figure had burned itself out. The orderly held on to her arm, guiding her into the chair opposite mine. The skin on her face was still livid and raw, although the scalds had now largely healed. But that wasn’t the real damage. The eyes that darted fretfully around the room were milky, as though clouded by cataracts. The boiling coffee had been strong and viscous, badly burning the delicate corneas and causing permanent scarring. Surgery might have restored some sight but, even if the courts were to allow it, the psychiatrists felt the trauma would be too much for her fragile psyche. From now on, her world would be a grey mist.
She tilted her head, listening anxiously.
‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was a whisper. ‘Michael, is that you? I’ve been so scared.’
There was a desperate eagerness about her. For a moment, I saw a hint of her former beauty, the ghost of the woman she used to be. Then that too burned out and disappeared. I forced myself not to recoil as the blue-veined hands groped across the table towards mine. Her skin was icy to the touch.
I caught a faint smell of soap from her. Nothing else.
‘Hello, Grace,’ I said.
Acknowledgements
I was helped in the writing of this book by the generosity and expertise of people with far more knowledge than I have. Any inaccuracies in the text are entirely mine, not theirs. In no particular order, thanks to Tim Thompson, Professor of Applied Biological Anthropology at Teesside University, for patiently answering yet more odd questions; Tony Cook, the National Crime Agency’s Head of Operations at CEOP, for procedural advice, and whose excellent Senior Investigating Officers’ Handbook provided invaluable reference; Dr Martin Hall, forensic and veterinary entomologist at the National History Museum, London, for insights into blowflies and other insects; Patricia Wiltshire, Professor of Forensic Ecology at Southampton University, for providing wide-reaching background; the Metropolitan Police press office for their prompt responses; and forensic anthropologist Dr Anna Williams of the University of Huddersfield, for information on cadaver dogs and the odours of decomposition. Details of her campaign for a UK body farm are available at http://htf4uk.blogspot.com.
Thanks also to my agents Gordon Wise, Melissa Pimentel and the team at Curtis Brown; my UK editor Simon Taylor, my German editors Ulrike Beck and Friederike Ney, and everyone working behind the scenes at Transworld and Rowohlt publishers; to my Mom for her support, and to Ben Steiner and SCF for their fast read-through and comments.
Finally, a huge thank-you to my wife Hilary, first and best reader, for working tirelessly on this with me and sharing the good and bad. It really is a collaborative effort — I’m just the one at the keyboard.
Simon Beckett, January 2019