I went home and put a packet of Chorley cakes and a bottle of flavoured water in the car. The route was simple enough: A hundred and eighty miles down the M6 and M5 to J13 and follow the signs. No need to write that down. I stuffed myself with a big ham sandwich and a piece of fruitcake and set off. I was heading to an area of the country we refer to as the Cotswolds. It's a fairytale place, where princes live and call in the pub for the odd half pint with the locals; where pop stars inhabit castles and handsome girls called Cressinda and Tasha, their jodhpur-clad bums rising and falling in unison, give you a friendly wave as you drive slowly past their horses. It only rains at night in the Cotswolds, and the streets are dry again by seven fifteen.
The drive down was hellish. You switch off, regard it as five hours taken out of your life and keep an eagle eye on the brake lights of the car in front. Some people, I reminded myself, have to do this every day. I arrived about eight thirty and pulled off the road for a look at the map and a swig of water. As I drove into Uley the sun was low behind me, giving the lighting a magical quality.
It's a one-street village, the one street being called, simply, The Street. It clings to the valley wall rather than following the bottom, giving long views across to the other side. Cotswold stone has a yellow colour, and the angle of the sun and some obscure property of light, to do with frequencies and reflection, conspired to make the walls of the cottages glow. They were made of limestone or sandstone, or perhaps a mixture of the two. I should have paid more attention during those first geology lessons.
Rose Cottage was now an antique shop but the King's Head had seen better days. I drove slowly with my window down, heading uphill to where I could see the church with its square tower and a small, offset spire overlooking the whole valley. There was a village store and post office and some ancient petrol pumps that someone had saved from the scrap heap. The Old Crown pub, bedecked with window boxes, was straight out of the English Heritage brochure.
Marl, I thought. That was the name of the stone. I'd check with Rosie when I saw her. During my drive through the village I didn't see a single estate agent's sign announcing 'House for Sale'. The people of Uley were content with their lot, and I couldn't blame them.
I parked outside the church, St Giles, and went for an explore. There was a graveyard next to the church and another, more modern one across the road. I wandered around this one and read the dates on the headstones. 1950,1952,1969, continuing right up to the present time, many of the later ones bearing flowers in granite vases. In Heckley they'd be stolen. The grass was mown short and grasshoppers whirred away from my feet. The graves covered the period in question but I couldn't see one with the right name on it, or any sign of preparatory work done by the gravediggers. I crossed the road to the graveyard proper.
The ground here was uneven, with the graves crowding against each other as if seeking comfort in their neighbour's proximity. Some had sunk and some were still heaped up, with the headstones leaning at angles. None had flowers on them and no lawnmower could deal with this terrain. Lichen, moss and acid rain had taken their toll, making it difficult to read dates but they must have stretched back at least two hundred years. The graveyard was surrounded by high trees, firs and yew, and sloped down away from the church. Behind the church was a substantial manor house, which I took to be the vicarage or rectory. Or, more likely these days, the Old Vicarage or Old Rectory. I couldn't see Rosie's car but there was one of those miniature JCB excavators parked nearby, ready for action.
The line of least resistance took me downhill and I found myself in the lowest corner of the graveyard. There were planks of wood alongside an unmarked grave, with folded tarpaulins laid next to them and bags of lime under the hedge. I'd found the last resting place of Abraham Barraclough. The sun never penetrated this secret corner but it was a warm, clear evening, the birds were singing and the grass was dry under my feet. So why was the hair on the back of my neck standing on end? I thought of Stephen King and turned back uphill, towards my car and sanctuary.
Dinner in a pub would have made sense but I settled for coffee at the motorway services and had a snooze in the car. Uley was a different place when I returned, just after midnight, the glow of stone replaced by the soft colour of an occasional lighted window, and beyond them an infinity of blackness. It was a moonless night but the stars put on a show for us. I parked my car behind the long line of vehicles near the church and glanced up at them as I zipped my jacket and closed the car door. Maybe that's my way of praying: a casual glance up at the stars; a tacit acknowledgement that there's something out there that's beyond our comprehension and always will be.
The drone of a generator disturbed the night as it fed a couple of floodlights on a column, and blue police tape held back a silent straggle of people who were watching the gravediggers and TV crew at work. I stumbled on the uneven ground and worried about falling through into one of those sunken graves. A uniformed PC saw me approach and detached himself from the onlookers. I introduced myself and asked him to indicate the coroner's officer and the boffin from Chepstow.
"They're disappointed," the scientist told me, nodding towards the cameras after I found him. "The coffin's in good condition — solid oak at a guess — so we're enlarging the hole and trying to lift it out fairly intact. Saves me and my assistant getting messed up. They were hoping for some good shots of the lid being smashed open and me climbing out of the grave holding a thigh bone or even the skull." He gave a little laugh at the thought. "Bloody ghouls. I don't know why we're helping them. All they want to do is prove that you got it wrong, all those years ago."
"Perhaps we did," I replied.
He was silent for a few moments, wondering where my interest lay, then: "Did you say that you were a friend of the deceased's daughter?"
"Yes."
"Is she here?"
"I believe so."
"I need a mouth swab from her. Could you point her out to me?"
"When I find her."
Rosie was at the edge of the group of people, standing with the vicar and the coroner's officer. They all turned as I approached and Rosie started as she recognised me, then stepped towards me and accepted a hug.
"I didn't expect to see you," she said but I couldn't think of a reason for being there and just gave her an extra squeeze.
The vicar was called Duncan and had a handshake in proportion to the six-foot-six he stood, while the coroner's officer's was soft and warm. She'd been standing with her hands in her pockets.
"We talked on the phone," I said to her. "You must have worked hard, organising all this so quickly."
"You know what they say, Inspector: Ask a busy woman…"
I turned to Rosie. "Did you drive down?" I asked.
"Yes. Duncan and his wife are putting me up at the vicarage."
"That's kind of them. I wish I'd known, I could have brought you."
"You have work to do."
"Look at that lot," the coroner's officer said. "He'll fall in if he gets any closer."
The cameraman was pointing his huge shoulder-mounted camera down into the grave while the director endeavoured to hold him back and look over his shoulder at the same time. A third member of the team, the sound man, waved what looked like a flurry animal on the end of a pole over them. Rosie gave a sniff and a sudden swirl of a breeze stirred me tree-tops, as if some restless spirit were up there, trying — to find its way back home.
"C'mon," I said, taking Rosie by the arm and turning her away from the activity. I switched my hand to hers and she allowed me to lead her towards the church. The light was behind us, so the footing was more secure, and when we were on the paving stones I put my arm across her shoulders.
"You shouldn't be here, Rosie," I told her, when we were standing inside the doorway of St Giles. "I can understand you coming, but there's nothing else you can see, nothing you can do. I think you should go to bed."
"What about you?"
"I'll go home, or book in at the Holiday Inn if I feel tired. I'll be OK, it's you I'm worried about. Listen, Rosie. It's obviously upsetting for you. It would be for anyone. Let them get on with it in their own way. They'll take the coffin to the hospital lab and open it. Apparently they'll have it back here by lunchtime. Maybe you'll be able to say your goodbyes to your dad then, without all this… all this circus."
"That's what they said," she admitted. "Duncan said we could have a little service of interment."
"That's good of him. Would you like me to be there?"
"I don't know. No, I don't think so. I'd prefer to be on my own. Lay him to rest, one way or another, once and for all."
"That would be best," I said. "From what I've heard of him, from what I've gathered, he was a special person. That's the memory to cling to."
Rosie wiped her eyes and pressed her face against my chest. "Shall I tell them you've seen enough?" I asked, and felt her nod her acquiescence.
"Inspector!" I turned to face the voice. It was the scientist from the Chepstow lab. "Is this the lady I'm looking for?"
"Yes," I replied, releasing Rosie and making the introductions. "He needs a sample of your buccal cells," I told her, "from inside; your mouth."
The scientist produced his kits and removed the screwed lid from one of the plastic tubes. He extracted the swizzle stick with its cotton wool bud and handed it to Rosie. "Just give it a good rub round the inside of your cheek, please." Rosie did as she was told, silent and compliant, and he placed the swab back inside its tube. "And another, please, just to play safe."
He sealed the samples in their envelopes and filled in the details before saying thanks and wandering off again. It was going to be a long night for him.
"What's the purpose of that?" Rosie asked as he vanished into the gloom.
"It's just a check," I replied.
"A check for what?"
"He wants to compare your DNA with that from the body, to prove it's the right grave. We inherit half our DNA from our father, half from our mother. They'll be able to verify that you're a close relative to… to the person in the grave."
"I see." Then, after a long pause: "First Call haven't asked me for a sample."
"No? Well, let's just say that we're more thorough than they are."
The vicar insisted I go back with them for a coffee and we had it seated on high stools in his big kitchen. He wanted to make me a flask and a sandwich for the trip home, but I managed to convince him that it wasn't necessary. When I was in the car again I put Gavin Bryars' The Sinking of the Titanic in the CD player and pointed north. It's a musical description of the liner's final journey to the bottom of the sea. The roads were mercifully quiet and I hardly dropped below eighty, almost halving the time of my outward trip. As that final, sad Amen sounded and the broken hulk settled on the ocean floor I'd covered over a hundred miles and the morning sun was in my eyes.
An exhumation isn't undertaken lightly. It can only be done in a few special cases and requires the issue of a warrant by either the local coroner or the Home Office, ©ther parties with an interest are the police, just so that they know it's official and not the work of grave robbers, the environmental health officer and the Church. As this was a criminal case, a police photographer was there to record every stage, and another officer was appointed to follow through the continuity of the process, so that there was no suggestion of bones being substituted. When you added the cost of the JCB, the funeral director and gravediggers, plus a new coffin and all the various materials, it was costing First Call a pretty penny. And they wanted their money's worth.
I went straight to the nick and had a toasted teacake and mug of tea in the canteen, joshing with the dayshift woodentops as they slunk in, bleary-eyed and reluctant.
I was towelling myself dry after a shower when Gareth Adey came into the bathroom. "Morning, Charlie," he shouted to me. "Had a busy night?"
"So-so, Gareth. So-so."
I combed my hair with my fingers, hardly able to see my reflection in the steamed-up mirror, and pulled my pants on. Gareth had a pee and washed his hands.
"If you could start all over again, Charlie," he said, "what would you do differently? What changes would you make?"
That's Gareth's way of making conversation, and as profound as he ever gets. I pulled a sock over my toes, wriggled them about and pulled it fully on.
"If I could start all over again?"
"That's what I said."
"There is one thing."
"What's that?"
"I'd eat more roughage."
"Ha ha!" he laughed. "Ha ha! Eat more roughage! I like it, Charlie, I like it." He wandered out into the real world and I reached for a shoe. Another day had begun.
I went through the motions but my mind was elsewhere. We'd made twelve arrests at the dog fight and they'd all been sent home on police bail, Sir Morton being the last to go, earlier this morning. He'd brought in a high-flyer of a solicitor and admitted nothing, claiming to have been taken to the farm by one of his employees who apparently was under the illusion that a little escapism would do him good, be a relief from the pressure he'd recently been under. But she was wrong. He'd been disgusted and dismayed by the whole thing. Jeff and the CPS prosecutor had the case in hand, so I left it to them. Two burglars were in the cells but I let Dave and one of the DCs do the interviewing. Jeff came into my office to ask how it had all gone and I told him.
"You look knackered," he said. "Why don't you take the afternoon off?"
"I'm thinking about it."
"We can manage." He bent down and opened my bottom drawer. "Have a watch of this," he told me, handing me a video box, "but not before you go to bed."
"What is it? The dog fight?"
"Yeah."
I did some shopping and went home. Sleeping in the afternoon is something I rarely do, but I could get used to it. I set the alarm for three hours and crashed on the bed, with the curtains open and the sun warming my legs. I fell asleep imagining that I was on a Caribbean beach, with Rosie on the next sun bed and an attentive waiter hovering nearby in case either of us felt the need for another pina colada. I never heard the alarm, the three hours was nearer five and I awoke shivering with a mouth like a hamster's nest.
I cleaned my teeth, had another shower, changed my clothes and put the ready meal I'd bought in the oven. Lamb in a rosemary sauce, with roast potatoes and dumplings, to be followed by bread and butter pudding. I had a can of lager while it cooked, and I was looking for somewhere to stand the glass when I saw the video.
Sometimes we do things without making a conscious decision. Our genes take over, do what they think is right or necessary for the future of the human race. An individual's feelings don't come into it. Natural selection in action? I don't know. I just knew that right then was an inappropriate time to be watching that particular video. It was wrong, it was unnecessary, it could have waited. But my arm reached out, my fingers opened the box and shoved the cassette into the machine, and I sat down and pressed the play button.
There was a blizzard of noise on the screen, quickly followed by a parade of dogs, close up and full frontal. They barked and snarled and slavered at the camera, held back by tattooed arms and hands hooked through their studded collars. A narrator told us their names: Tyson, The Wrecker, Tojo and Jaws.
The attention span of the target audience was measured in seconds rather than minutes, so they didn't waste any more time. We saw a dog inside the familiar chicken run, restrained by a chain threaded through its collar as it struggled and fought in a violent frenzy to be attacking something off camera. The camera panned slowly to the right and zoomed in on the object of the dog's fury. A wire cage sat in the middle of the run, with a cat inside it. The creature stood on its claws, back arched, tail erect, staring at the demented dog. As we watched, a rope on top of the cage pulled taut and lifted its protection away, leaving the cat exposed. A second later the chain through the dog's collar was slipped and the chase was on.
The cat reared, hissing and spitting, its claws extended and teeth bared. You saw it as it was: a wild animal stripped of its veneer of domesticity. It looked ferocious, straight from the jungle, but no match for the dog. As the dog attacked, the cat turned to flee, but there was nowhere to go. It swerved left as it hit the side of the enclosure and the dog blundered into the wire, recovered, and continued the chase. The cat headed into a corner, realised its mistake and climbed the wire.
The dog leapt and grasped it by the tail. The cat screamed and fell to the ground, turning to face its tormentor. The dog went for a better hold and its jaws clamped round the cat's back, severing its spine. The poor creature turned, its rear end paralysed, and raised one defiant claw as the dog finished it off with a bite to the head. As it shook the carcass a spray of blood arced away from it and the dog trotted proudly round the enclosure, stump of a tail wagging, more blood trailing on to the concrete floor from the lifeless body dangling from its jaws.
"Fifteen seconds," I heard someone announce, and there was a smarter of jeering from the audience.
The next cat was a long-haired Persian type that had eaten too many chocolate drops and had never faced anything more threatening than Jerry Springer on daytime TV. Instinct kicked in as the cage was raised and the leash slipped, but it was no contest. The cat turned as it reached the wire, losing fur off its back as it dodged the snapping jaws, but the next time it tried the manoeuvre the dog cut the corner and grabbed a leg. The cat rolled on its back and tried to fight but dogs like that don't feel pain and it ignored the flashing claws and went for the cat's belly.
"Eight seconds," the MC told the jeering audience, and Tojo was declared the winner of Cats against the Clock.
After that it was dog versus dog.
I ate the meal but didn't enjoy it. The last big case I had involved someone strangling young women. I couldn't reconcile my feelings for the animals with those I had for the girls. Perhaps it was impossible, futile to try. Perhaps it was the perpetrators I should focus on. I didn't know. Nobody did. It was a shit world with some shit people in it, that's all you could say. I went for a walk around the estate for some fresh air. The weather was changing, as promised by the forecasters, and the threat of thunderstorms had passed. People were saying we needed the rain. They're never satisfied.
Rosie rang. She was still at the vicarage and staying another night. She'd come home Wednesday, she told me.
"Thank you for coming down, Charlie," she said. "I was really pleased to see you. The vicar, Duncan, is very nice, but he's still, you know, a caring professional."
"Did you hold a service?"
"Yes. They had the coffin back by ten a.m. The grave was filled in again before I knew anything about it. There were just the three of us, including the vicar's wife, then they left me alone for a while. I said my goodbyes, Charlie. Now all we have to do is wait for the DNA results."
"Have they said how long it will be?"
"No. As soon as possible, that's all. What about you?"
"No. They can do it in a day, if necessary, but they charge extra. They're always busy, and this isn't an active enquiry, so it will be low priority, but they'll do their best."
We chatted for a while and I remembered an advert I'd seen in the Events column of the Gazette.
"Did you ever get to play the part of Mustard Seed?" I asked.
"Mustard Seed? No, I had to drop out."
"It just happens that A Midsummer Night's Dream is on at the Leeds Playhouse this week. It's the RSC. How do you feel about going to see it on Saturday, if I can get the tickets?"
"This Saturday?"
"Mmm." I was worried about the memories it might revive. People are irrational about some things; they look for something to blame. If Shakespeare had never written that particular play Rosie would not have stayed on at school on the fateful day, therefore her father might still be alive.
She was silent for a while, before saying: "I'd love to, Charlie. It will be wonderful, a real treat, and I need a treat. But what about the gala? Isn't that this weekend?"
"Sunday," I replied. "No problem."
"Have you finished the paintings?"
"Not quite. I'll have to spend some time on them. Hey, listen to this: the uniformed branch always have a display at the gala, and this year they were hoping to do something different. We tried to convince them that they'd look good all dressed up as cowboys, but they've refused."
"I think that's a great idea. You could go as Wyatt Earp, Charlie. You'd look splendid in a frock coat."
"Noway."
"Oh, go on!"
"Noway."
"Spoilsport."
"Thanks for ringing, Rosie. You've brightened my day, and it's good to hear you sounding happier."
"Well, things are moving, aren't they?"
They were, but I wasn't sure in which direction. "I'll try for those tickets," I said.
I slept well. I didn't expect to, but I fell straight into a contented sleep and was deep in the arms of Morpheus when the alarm woke me, early Wednesday morning. Had I been deep in the arms of Goldie Hawn I would have hurled it through the window, but it was only sleep and it had rained through the night, the sky was clear again and Charlie Priest was ready to raise hell amongst the thieves and robbers of Heckley.
He wasn't ready for what was waiting for him.