Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(42)
Maxwell set off up the slope.
‘Morning, Mr Sandford, my name is Chris Maxwell.’
‘It was a good morning but the cloud’s headed back,’ he answered with a wry smile.
‘How is it going?’ asked Maxwell. ‘I saw the helicopter as I was driving here. Has the digging started?’
‘Yes. Come and see.’
Willis and Carter arrived and, along with Dermot, walked up the field to join them.
Floodlights were illuminating the left-hand corner of the field above the grave. There was the drum of a mobile generator and arc lights gave that corner the look of a film set. A tent, with a soil-sifting station, had been erected nearby. It was an eerie-looking sight – the white tent, with the grave being excavated, and the black hedge behind. The white tarpaulins flapped and billowed like sails in the wind and the stormy clouds settled overhead.
Dermot stopped and stood up for a moment, from the excavation pit, beside the main grave, and stretched his limbs to ease out the cramp from being confined. When he stood, the grave came up to the top of his thighs. He lifted his arms up for a stretch and then paused as a barrage of hail pelted the plastic awning above their heads. The wind suddenly picked up and almost turned it inside out; shouts went up to cover everything that was exposed. SOCOs caught in the middle of the field cowered over buckets of soil and endured the sharp balls of ice bouncing off their backs. When it stopped, after three minutes, the ground was covered in hail. A laugh went up and caught on, before everyone continued where they left off.
Sandford stood looking down at the grave. Dermot went back to kneeling in an extension of the excavation, which allowed for easy access to the remains without causing too much damage. He was sweeping away the earth from a kneecap, which had come to rest against the edge of the grave as the victim went in. Both legs were propped up against the side wall of the grave. The victim was lying mainly on her back, but leaning over to the right. The skull rested on an outstretched right arm as if she had been caught sunbathing, or she was about to turn in her sleep. The other arm reached up, fingers pointing skyward.
‘It’s definitely a female, isn’t it?’ said Willis, observing the shape of the pelvis together with the unpronounced brow bone.
‘Yes. I think she’s been in there a long time – ten years at least – but it’s not Heather, she was taller. Also, this woman has had children and she’s in her thirties, early forties maybe,’ said Sandford.
Maxwell seemed to take time to assimilate that knowledge, looking agitated.
Unlike Maxwell, Sandford was very calm; he was enjoying being out in the fresh air. He was a man who never minded any part of his job but standing in the countryside on a fresh autumn morning was pretty good although he wished his head didn’t have a woodpecker inside it from the beer he’d drunk with Dermot the night before. Dermot was watching the helicopter, transfixed. The bringing-in of giant toys like helicopters made Dermot look idiotic with a permanent grin on his face.
‘Here she comes again, boys!’ he bellowed from the grave and the SOCO team stopped to gaze skyward with appreciation.
The helicopter was flying below a giant cloud of biblical blackness. In seconds it swallowed the sun and hovered over them, threatening to unleash its fury again at any moment.
‘Rather them than me,’ said Carter, looking up at the belly of the helicopter. ‘They’re sitting ducks up there, just asking to get fried.’
‘The helicopter is able to withstand lightning strikes, it acts as a conductor,’ answered Sandford. ‘It would be damaged but not badly.’
‘A conductor, huh? Great, that’s really not very reassuring,’ said Carter, shading his eyes and watching the helicopter as it looped around for another sweep of the area.
Dermot walked up to talk to them. ‘I bet if you scanned every farm in the UK, you’d find a fair few bodies. Many times we’ll find legitimate graves. You can bury your loved one in your own back garden if you get permission and subject to health and safety issues. Of course if you want to sell the house, it could be tricky . . .’
Willis was watching Maxwell, who hadn’t been listening to Dermot.
‘Where is the helicopter going?’ Maxwell asked, worried.
‘It’s finished its search now,’ answered Sandford as he started walking down the field and the others followed. He went across to his van and sat in the driver’s seat with the door open, laptop open on his knees.
‘How long does it take before we know if there are any more sites of interest here?’ asked Maxwell.
‘We expect to get a full report within a couple of hours,’ said Sandford. ‘We are not asking for a complicated model – we just need to see if there is any historical soil disturbance, any more graves, that kind of thing. The software is pretty simple for that.’
Sandford looked at Chris.
‘You’re the profiler, what do you do, look for access from the road or a quiet lane, that kind of thing? Why this farm and not one of the others?’ he asked.
‘I’m interested in somewhere that’s a short drive from a main road, but with access along small lanes. On paper, this is similar to the Rachel McKinney field at Hill Farm. This one was also owned and worked by a small farming unit: a husband and wife. It was mainly arable and set-aside land. It was the right size, the same setting with the line of the tall conifers, the way the field slopes upwards and hides behind the tall old hedges. On either side of the lane there are only fields. No house within a mile of the site. The lane is for access for farm vehicles only and even they had no need to come to a field that was set aside for meadow. Okay, I’m going to take a walk around the farm, if I may, get a look at things, and then I’m going to look at a few more farms in the vicinity.’