I got up from my desk to make myself another coffee. Even though Leo Villiers – it was still hard to think of the person at the centre of this as Lena Merchant – wasn’t the killer we’d all believed, he didn’t emerge from this blameless. He might have been a child when his father killed Rowan Holloway, but he’d elected to remain silent as an adult. In his statement he admitted letting Edgar live rent free and sending him monthly food parcels in an attempt to appease his conscience. In doing so, he not only condemned the father of his childhood friend to a solitary existence, but set the stage for the final act of the tragedy.
He’d made Porter deliver the supplies.
If his intention was to punish the driver by reminding him of his part in the crime, it failed. All it did was gift him with another opportunity, in the form of a secluded house and an uncomplaining tenant. And when it appeared that Leo Villiers had committed suicide, Porter stopped bothering with the food parcels anyway. He’d been prepared to help cover up the killing of Edgar’s young daughter. I couldn’t see him losing any sleep over letting her father starve.
Now Porter himself was dead, along with five other people. And the only person who’d emerged unscathed was the man who had started it all.
Sir Stephen Villiers.
I sat down with my coffee, then got up and added a splash of whisky to it. There was precious little chance that Rowan Holloway’s killer would face charges for what he’d done. Although I didn’t doubt what I’d read – it fitted too well with what we already knew – an unsubstantiated childhood memory would never be enough to warrant prosecution. Especially not one that had supposedly been suppressed for years, and that by his own admission Leo had chosen to conceal until now.
The unpalatable truth was that, with neither evidence nor a body, there was little the police could do. They had ample cause now to conduct yet another, more exhaustive search at Willets Point, and it had crossed my mind that the magnolia tree planted on the site of the old chalet might have more than soil concealed under its roots. But Sir Stephen wouldn’t have wanted such tangible evidence of what he’d done to remain on his property, not since there was a much better alternative nearby.
Perhaps Mark Chapel’s body wasn’t the first Porter had hidden in the Backwaters.
The maze of waterways would no doubt be searched again as well, but the chances of finding Rowan Holloway were remote. After all these years, there would be little of the young girl left to find. Just lonely bones sunk into the mud.
Yet the police couldn’t ignore the allegations, not when they’d come from Sir Stephen’s own son. I would have liked to ask Clarke what was going on, but I knew the DCI wouldn’t appreciate that, and doubted she’d tell me anyway. She’d stuck her neck out enough as it was.
So there was nothing I could do but wait, and hope something happened. Days passed without any mention of Sir Stephen Villiers so much as being questioned, let alone arrested. I shouldn’t have been surprised. He’d been ruthless enough in protecting the family name when it was his son who’d been a suspect. Now it was his own reputation, not to mention liberty, at stake, he’d be exerting all his power and influence. It was galling to think he could emerge unscathed even after this, yet as the furore over the killings in the Backwaters started to die down, I began to think that Rowan Holloway’s killer was going to go unpunished.
I wasn’t the only one.
When Leo Villiers posted his story on social media, not even Sir Stephen’s legal team could suppress the storm that followed. The heir of a wealthy and powerful man hadn’t only come back from the dead, but done so as a woman. As if that weren’t enough, now he was accusing his father of killing a young girl over two decades before.
The revelations caused outrage. An old school photograph of a smiling Rowan Holloway, blond and engagingly gap-toothed, was shown everywhere as the story of her disappearance was revisited. Predictably, Sir Stephen hid behind his lawyers, who deflected questions with assertions of innocence or bland ‘no comment’s. The businessman himself said nothing, but news footage of him hurrying into his car – a dark-grey rather than black Daimler now – told its own story. His face looked drawn, even more colourless than before, the bones of his skull picked out by the flash of cameras. Before I turned off the TV in disgust I had the unprofessional, and unsympathetic, thought that he looked like a dead man in waiting.
It turned out to be prophetic. When news broke that Sir Stephen was critically ill after a massive stroke, his lawyer issued a statement blaming the stress caused by all the media attention. It could well have been true. There’s nothing unusual about being able to commit a crime. What sets some people apart is their ability to live with it. Sir Stephen had lived with his for twenty-five years, untouched and apparently unmoved.
What he couldn’t live with was other people knowing about it.
His former son gave no interviews, either before or after his father died two days later. Disliking the air of voyeurism that now surrounded the case, I tried to avoid the gossip and speculation that rushed to fill the vacuum. But it was impossible to ignore altogether. One particular video clip was shown again and again. It was outside the glass doors of a building I recognized as the police headquarters I’d been to myself. There was movement inside, then the doors opened and someone emerged.
Leo Villiers had been a good-looking man, and Lena Merchant was a striking woman. She was elegant and smartly dressed, with well-cut, medium-length dark hair. I’d never met Villiers, and it was strange now to see this person I’d heard and read so much about. She was immediately engulfed by microphones and cameras, and I expected her to hurry away from the attention. Instead, she calmly walked through the jostling scrum, head held high as she ignored the questions fired at her. There was no shame, no embarrassment. Not any more.
Just a dignified silence as she walked away from her old life and into a new one.
Epilogue
I PUT THE skull back in the box and rubbed the back of my neck. The vertebrae there clicked as the stiff muscles reluctantly acclimatized to the idea of moving again. Not for the first time, I told myself I needed to set an alarm to remind me to take breaks while I was working.
Not for the first time, I knew I wouldn’t.
I set the box in a cupboard under the workbench. The skull was an historic one, an archaeological relic found on Salisbury plain. It was over seven hundred years old, and there was damage to it that the archaeologists thought could have been made by an axe. It was possible. People were no less inclined to kill each other in the fourteenth century than they were today. Still, I was unconvinced. The wound had been made by something with an edge, but not a bladed one, and there was a curvature about it that didn’t shout axe to me. While I couldn’t categorically rule out some other type of weapon, I’d seen similar injuries before, and had a pretty good idea what might have caused this. A glancing blow from a horse’s hoof might be less dramatic from an historical perspective, but it was no less fatal to the person receiving it.
I would have to examine it further to be sure, but there was no rush to do it now. The skull had kept its secret for several centuries: another day or two wouldn’t make any difference. It was a Saturday morning, so there was no real reason for me to be at the university anyway. I’d only gone in because I hadn’t wanted to sit around my flat. The skull made a convenient excuse.
But the thoughts that had driven me here in the first place were still waiting, and without the distraction of work to keep them at bay now they crowded in again. I automatically looked at my watch, catching myself too late to keep from seeing the time.
Two more hours.
The café was closed at weekends, but I made myself a coffee in the department’s tiny kitchen. There was no one else around. The corridors were empty and silent, which as a rule didn’t bother me. Today, though, the emptiness weighed more heavily than usual.
If I hadn’t been exactly welcomed back at the university with a fanfare of trumpets, there was a definite sense
that things had changed. I’d escaped any mention in the news coverage of what had happened in the Backwaters, which was hardly surprising. With so many more sensational aspects to report, no one cared very much about the peripheral involvement of a forensic anthropologist. That suited me. I hadn’t enjoyed the attention the previous year, when my name and photograph had appeared in media reports after the Dartmoor case. My job was supposed to be behind the scenes, and I preferred to keep it that way.
But professionally it was another matter. My connection with such a high-profile police inquiry didn’t hurt the department’s reputation, and the new head’s attitude towards me had noticeably thawed. ‘Good to see you back in the game,’ Harris had beamed on my first day back. Nothing about what had happened in the Backwaters could remotely have been described as a ‘game’, but I took his point.
I should have been relieved not to find myself back in the job market, but that didn’t seem so important any more. I sipped the hot coffee and took another look at my watch. Half past twelve.
Another hour before Rachel’s flight would take off for Australia.
We’d only seen each other once after she came to Covent Garden to tell me she was leaving. It had been at Lundy’s funeral, a formal affair with police dignitaries as well as rank and file officers paying tribute to a colleague killed in the line of duty. The sombre mood seemed out of keeping with the cheerful DI I’d known, and it was a relief when it was unexpectedly lightened. The reading was from Ecclesiastes, and as the bishop intoned about ‘a time to plant and a time to uproot’ a young girl’s voice suddenly piped out.
‘But Granddad hated gardening!’
A ripple of laughter went around the church, and the solemnity was broken. I thought Lundy would have liked that.
There hadn’t been an opportunity to really talk to Rachel at the funeral, and even if there had it was neither the time nor the place. We’d spoken several times on the phone afterwards, though, and I’d begun to sense she was having second thoughts about leaving. I’d told her how I felt, but I’d resisted the urge to pressure her to stay, knowing the decision had to be hers.
In the end she’d made it.
She hadn’t wanted me to go to the airport. I could understand why, but I’d still been bitterly disappointed not to see her one more time. Our last conversation was a strain for both of us. She’d promised that she’d be coming back to the UK at some point, for Jamie’s trial if not before. He’d finally been charged with Anthony Russell’s murder, although there was a good chance that would be dropped to a lesser charge of manslaughter before it came to court.
But we both knew his case wouldn’t be heard for months, and a lot could have changed by then. Rachel had a life and career in Australia, one that involved swimming on the barrier reef rather than grubbing for eels in the Essex mud. And she was going back to make a go of a broken relationship, with a man she’d lived and worked with for seven years. He even surfed, for God’s sake.
I didn’t say any of that. Rachel was right, this was hard enough already. So I went along with the fantasy that it wasn’t goodbye. I told her to take care, kissed her one last time. And then she was gone.
My coffee had gone cold. I poured it down the sink and began washing out my mug. When my phone rang I felt a brief hope it might be Rachel until I saw that the number was withheld. Work, then. Trying to ignore the disappointment, I answered.
‘Dr Hunter? It’s Sharon Ward.’ The voice was familiar and so was the name, but just then I couldn’t place either. ‘DI Ward?’ she added, tentatively.
‘Yes, of course.’ The name came back to me from a year or two ago. I’d met her when a dismembered body part had, in a very literal way, turned up on my doorstep.
‘Have I caught you at a bad time?’ she asked.
‘No, I was just …’ I tried to gather myself. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I need to have a word with you about the attempted break-in.’
‘Break-in?’
‘The one at your flat …?’
I’d assumed the call must be about a case. The break-in seemed like an age ago, and I’d practically forgotten all about it. I made an effort to focus. ‘Right. Sorry.’
‘Can we meet?’
‘Sure. I’m around all next week, so pretty much any day then.’
‘Actually I was thinking of sooner. Whereabouts are you?’
‘At work. The university.’ She had my attention now. A DI didn’t get in touch about a failed burglary, far less want to meet to discuss it. Not unless there was something else going on. ‘Why, what’s happened?’
‘I’d prefer to tell you in person. How long will it take you to get home?’
‘I can be there in an hour.’ I’d left my hire car at home but the Tube shouldn’t be too busy on a Saturday. ‘Look, are you going to tell me what this is about?’
There was a pause. I felt an awful presentiment, a conviction that an already bad day was about to slip into uncharted territory.
‘We’ve had a hit from one of the fingerprints we found on the front doorway,’ Ward said. ‘It was Grace Strachan’s.’
The name seemed to resonate down the line. I felt a sense of dislocation, as though this wasn’t really happening. From a long way off I heard the DI’s voice continue.
‘… apologize for not contacting you sooner, but with budget cuts being as they are routine break-ins are bottom of the queue. No one realized until now, and I called you as soon as it was flagged up. Dr Hunter, are you still there?’
‘Yes.’ I felt distantly surprised at how calm I sounded. ‘Are you sure?’
‘It’s only a partial, but it’s definitely hers. The thing is it was lifted from the strip of putty on the window frame, and the oil in that’s made it impossible to date. So we don’t know how long it’s been there. It might have been left when she attacked you, but we just can’t say. Obviously, given what happened last time, we don’t want to take any chances. That’s why I want to see you at your flat. I think … well, I think we should take a look at what sort of precautions you need to take.’
There was a rushing in my ears. I realized my hand had gone to the healed scar on my stomach. Given what happened last time … She meant when I’d almost bled to death after Grace Strachan stabbed me in my own doorway. But that was years ago. There’d been no sign of my attacker since then, so how was it possible she’d come back now? Grace had been a murderous psychotic who’d only escaped detection because she’d had help. As time passed I’d allowed myself to believe that she must be dead. If she wasn’t …
I mumbled some sort of agreement and lowered the phone. I was barely aware of the journey back to my flat. Buffeted by feelings I thought I’d left in the past, I descended the escalators to the Tube in a bubble of shock. As the carriage rumbled through the tunnel I checked the time. Rachel’s plane would be in the air by now. I actually felt relieved. If Grace Strachan was back then everyone close to me was in danger.
At least I knew Rachel was safe.
Walking from the station I found myself scanning the street in a way I hadn’t done for years. I went up the path to my flat and stopped by the front door. The woodwork had been repainted after the joiner had replaced the lock and repaired the damage. Any fingerprints that had been there would have been covered over. There was no way of determining now if Grace Strachan’s was an old one or not. I told myself it might have survived all this time, that this could all be a false alarm. But I didn’t really believe it.
I couldn’t afford to.
There was no one home upstairs, but at some point I’d have to let my new neighbour know. That was a conversation I didn’t look forward to. When I let myself into my own flat, the rooms and furniture seemed familiar and yet utterly strange, as though I were only now seeing them. I went into the kitchen and filled the kettle. I didn’t want anything to drink, but it gave me something to do.
My coffee cooled untouched as I waited for Ward to arrive. Even though I was expecting it,
the doorbell’s cheerful chime made me flinch. I hurried to answer it, pausing in the porch with my hand on the front door. There was no peephole. I’d always resisted having one fitted, not wanting to give in to paranoia after the attack. But it meant I couldn’t see who was outside now. A sense of déjà vu settled over me as I stood in the black-and-white tiled hallway, then I opened the door.
‘Can I come in?’ Rachel said.
Acknowledgements
It’s been a longer than anticipated gap between the previous David Hunter novel and The Restless Dead. A number of people and organizations helped along the way. Thanks are due to Tim Thompson, Professor of Applied Biological Anthropology at Teesside University; Tony Cook, the National Crime Agency’s Head of Operations at CEOP; Patricia Wiltshire, Professor of Forensic Ecology at Southampton University; Dr Martin Hall, Research Entomologist at the National History Museum; Essex Police Press Office; Kay West, former president of transgender support group the Beaumont Society; GIRES (Gender Identity Research and Education Society); and Robin Adcroft, chairman of sea fort renovation group Project Redsand Trust. Without their assistance with factual aspects of the story, The Restless Dead would be a poorer novel. It goes without saying that any errors or inaccuracies are my fault, not theirs.
Thanks also to my agents Gordon Wise and Melissa Pimentel at Curtis Brown, my editor Simon Taylor and the team at Transworld, my German editor Ulrike Beck and all at Rowohlt, my parents Frank and Sheila Beckett, my sister Julie for the dog food cake, Ben Steiner and SCF.
Finally, as ever a heartfelt thank you to my wife Hilary, for being there with me throughout.
About the Author
Simon Beckett worked as a freelance journalist for national newspapers and magazines before turning to write fiction full time. A visit to the Body Farm in Tennessee was the inspiration for what has become a number one bestselling series of thrillers featuring the forensic anthropologist David Hunter – The Chemistry of Death, Written in Bone, Whispers of the Dead, The Calling of the Grave and now The Restless Dead. He is also the author of five standalone psychological thrillers, including Stone Bruises and Where There’s Smoke, which have also been international bestsellers.