Bad to the Bone Read online

  Bad to the Bone

  Tony Forder

  Copyright © 2017 Tony Forder

  The right of Tony Forder to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  First published in 2017 by Bloodhound Books

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publisher or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.bloodhoundbooks.com

  PRINT ISBN: 978-1-912175-17-8

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  A Note from Bloodhound Books:

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  It didn’t look much like a corpse. Other than the skull, of course. That was a bit of a giveaway. The bones themselves, clumps of moist soil clinging to them like leeches, looked more like an array of dead branches and twigs than the remains of a human being. In the end, thought Detective Inspector James Bliss, a person doesn’t amount to much.

  He dragged his gaze from the body, taking in both the immediate crime scene and the surrounding area. Bliss was reasonably familiar with this part of Bretton Woods, which lay to the north of Peterborough city centre. He’d watched a few games of football on the adjoining fields, the woods looming over shabby changing rooms as if preparing to pounce on the players as they emerged. Neither large nor dense, the wooded area was nonetheless well populated with elderly birch and oak and wild clumps of ragged undergrowth. The local township of Bretton had been built around it little more than thirty years ago, developers keen to preserve an echo of the past.

  Bliss began to feel like an intruder, quenching a voyeuristic thirst on someone else’s misery. He shook off the feeling, reminding himself that emotions could only hamper the investigation that was about to begin.

  ‘You think it’s a bit late to consider CPR?’ he asked, glancing to his right.

  Detective Constable Penny Chandler shook her head and grinned. ‘You could try. I bet you’ve jumped bones with less life in them.’

  Bliss chuckled and nodded, turning his attention to the body once more. Twenty-three years in the job, two decades of which were spent in the Met, had inured him against such sights. He recalled his first dead body, an almost mummified male held together by ragged strips of cloth. It had been discovered in a dank Hackney basement after a neighbour had complained about the stench coming from the house next door. Bliss had just knelt down next to the corpse when its chest began to stir. Horror-stricken, he had immediately reared back, falling on his arse, eyes unable to turn from the pulsating series of movements. The stark image of a slime-covered creature erupting from John Hurt’s body in the movie Alien flashed through his mind. But that was swiftly eradicated when, in an eruption of clothing and petrified flesh, a huge rat burst out of the corpse’s ribcage. To this day, Bliss swore that rodent had taken a long, contemptuous glance in his direction before scuttling away.

  There had been many corpses since.

  Too many.

  Not all of them murder victims, but increasingly that was becoming the rule rather than the exception. It was a sign of the times.

  Bliss found it curious that the body hadn’t been buried further away from one of the many winding tracks that spider-webbed the wood. It seemed to him that if you were going to take the trouble of burying someone, you might as well do the job properly. Even so, he realised it may have lain hidden forever had a couple of ten-year-old lads not decided to bury a time-capsule (in reality a large biscuit tin containing a newspaper, a few coins, a dog-eared copy of Playboy purloined from an elder brother’s hidden stash, and an audio tape the boys had recorded the previous day).

  Bliss filled his lungs. The smell of burning leaves hung heavy in the late autumn air, but beyond it he thought he could detect the promise of a winter encroaching all too quickly. When he exhaled, his breath formed a cloud before his eyes – a stark reminder, if he needed one, that life was better than the alternative.

  Hunkered down on the edge of the burial site, Bliss played his torch over the scene, the light bright and steady. Mounds of loose soil enveloped the carcass, tossed away casually by eager, excited fingers. Small footprints embossed in flattened patches of earth suggested a frenzied dig. Odd. Or was it? These were young boys, after all. And even though he sometimes felt as old as the dirt now beneath his feet, Bliss could well imagine the thrill those lads had experienced. It would have been intoxicating.

  ‘How long d’you suppose she’s been here?’ he asked, rubbing a small clod of earth between his gloved fingers.

  ‘She?’ Chandler queried, a ridge forming just above her nose.

  ‘I reckon so, yes.’

  Bliss stood fully upright He put two hands to the small of his back and stretched, letting out a gentle groan.

  ‘You sure? I mean, how can you tell?’

  ‘The skull mainly. Females have more oval-shaped heads, the nasal cavities are quite different, and men’s eye sockets are more rectangular. I haven’t clapped eyes on the hips so far, but I’m certain they’ll be the child-bearing kind.’

  ‘I had no idea you were such an expert.’

  ‘It’s called reading, Constable. You should try it some time.’

  Chandler poked her tongue out at him and blew a soggy raspberry. She leaned forward, head now directly over the tangle of bones. Several strands of hair had escaped the clutches of one of her grips, and now hung like curtains across her face.

  ‘Well, whoever this poor woman is, I’d say she’s been here for a few years.’

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘The colour of the bones. They’re very dark – they certainly don’t look fresh.’ She straightened and pulled a face at his look of scepticism. ‘You’re not the only one who knows their job, sir.’

  Bliss studied her face for a moment. A breeze caught the folds of his overcoat, flapping them around his knees as if they were being pawed at by playful puppies. He smiled at the look of challenge in the DC’s eyes.

  ‘You’re guessing, aren’t you?’ he said.

  ‘I might be.’ A smile touched the corners of her mouth.

  ‘I knew it.’

  ‘You know nothing.’

  ‘I know you. Too bloody well for my own good. But as it happens, Penny, I have a feeling you could be right. I think this poor woman has been here for some time.’

  They both peered cheerlessly down into the grave one las
t time, and then Bliss snapped the torch off with a flick of his thumb. The little remaining natural light fringed the area, as if reluctant to trespass upon this place of death. He pulled off his latex gloves, gripping them in a tight fist as he thrust both hands deep into his coat pockets. Already ideas were forming in his mind, arranging themselves in neat blocks. He and Chandler had responded to the call less than half an hour ago, and were still waiting for forensics to arrive from Huntingdon. The scene of crime officers and a doctor had also yet to arrive.

  A uniformed officer stood about ten feet or so away. It was he who had responded to the emergency summons. He was from the local nick, and Bliss didn’t know him. A young black officer, who had introduced himself as Carl Simmonds, he appeared both earnest and eager to please. Bliss motioned for the constable to join them.

  ‘Simmonds. You did a fine job keeping the scene secure here. Making sure we had a clear path in and out was good thinking. Are you on duty tomorrow?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good. I want you to interview the boys. Get them to go over the whole thing again: why they were here, what they saw, whether they’d seen anyone here in recent days. You know the drill.’

  ‘Of course, sir. Should I arrange some counselling for them?’

  ‘Counselling?’

  ‘The boys found human remains, sir. They may be affected by what they saw.’ A hint of the Caribbean mixed with the flat vowel sound of the Fenlands gave the policeman’s voice a curiously upbeat edge.

  Bliss sniffed. ‘Constable Simmonds. Having unearthed a human skeleton, the boys did not run screaming out of the woods, did they? No. They calmly found the nearest phone box, called us, and then waited around to show you what they’d uncovered. Does that strike you as the behaviour of lads who have been mentally unbalanced by their discovery?’

  ‘No, sir. But… well, there could be a delayed reaction.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘You want to add something else, PC Simmonds. Go ahead, spit it out.’

  ‘Well, sir. It’s just… it’s procedure. The boys are both minors.’

  Bliss paused only for a moment before clapping the officer on the upper arm. ‘You’re right, of course. We must follow procedure at all costs. Make the call only after you’ve interviewed them, Simmonds. Get yourself off back to your station. And well done.’

  As the uniform walked away, Bliss hoped he hadn’t come across as overly patronising. Or sarcastic, for that matter. But he couldn’t help thinking that if he had unearthed a skeleton at the ripe old age of ten, he would have considered it the best adventure of his young life. He would have gloried in it, relished telling all his friends and family, hoping the event might turn a young girl’s head his way. A mouldering corpse might have been too gory, but finding a skeleton simply had to be the coolest thing a young boy could do. These days, however, it seemed you had to feel either guilty or psychologically scarred when presented with the merest hint of adventure.

  ‘With a bit of luck,’ he said to Chandler, trying to inject a bit of levity into his voice, ‘these bones will be ancient and we won’t have to worry about them at all.’

  ‘Ancient?’

  ‘Well, old enough for us not to have to get involved.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Well, I was wondering if this might be something the Bone Woman could help us with.’

  The Bone Woman was Emily Grant, a renowned anthropologist currently based at the nearby historically significant Flag Fen Bronze Age site. Bliss remembered her well. He and Chandler had met Grant a while back when she delivered a training course relating to stages of human decomposition. The topic of insect invasion had been a particular eye-opener for the vast majority of attending police officers, and, to his recollection, Grant had appeared to revel in her role as tutor. Throughout the demonstrations she’d handled human bones as if they were made of glass, her long fingers seeming to caress rather than grip.

  Shifting his weight from foot to foot, Bliss blew out his cheeks, considering Chandler’s suggestion. ‘She might be of some help. But if the doc can’t nail down the details we need, we could have someone official here within a day or two.’

  ‘For the official report, yes. But it would be nice to know a little bit more before that. Right?’

  He had to agree. Information was the lifeblood of any case. And it would be no hardship seeing the Bone Woman again.

  ‘I’ll give Emily a bell now. See if she’ll help.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s Emily, huh? I knew you two had hit it off at the training course, but I didn’t realise it was quite so intimate.’

  ‘Don’t push your luck, Penny.’ Bliss did his best to look stern, but failed miserably.

  ‘And I’ll bet you just happen to have her mobile number programmed into yours, right?’

  ‘I got it off her card. I thought I might need it one day.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  He grinned and turned away, stepping out into a small clearing where he hoped to raise a signal for the Nokia he’d pulled from the inside pocket of his suit jacket. It was true that he found Emily Grant attractive, and had enjoyed her company when they chatted both during lunch and after the course, but he would never admit as much to Penny. Ever since they had worked a murder case together six months ago, his DC had been trying to fix him up with her friends and other female police officers. Each time he had resisted with as much good grace as he could muster. Penny’s heart was in the right place, and he appreciated her concern. It had simply never occurred to her that, at the age of forty-three, he could cope with life on his own.

  Glancing at the digital time readout on his phone, Bliss selected Emily Grant’s number. It was gone six, and he wondered if she might have already left work. ‘I’m on my way home now,’ she confirmed moments later.

  ‘I trust you’re using a hands-free set in your car.’

  ‘Naturally. Would you arrest me if I weren’t?’

  ‘Well, we could be talking handcuffs.’

  ‘Now that does sound exciting.’

  ‘Yeah, it does. But it’ll have to wait, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You sound a little odd, Inspector. Have you caught a nasty case?’

  ‘A nasty case of what?’

  She laughed. ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Yeah. And it does look that way. But this one is different. Actually, I’m calling because you might be able to help.’

  ‘Really? Me? In what way?’ Emily sounded faintly amused by the idea.

  ‘I’ll tell you when you get here. Or rather, hopefully you’ll tell me.’

  Bliss gave her directions and snapped his phone shut. When he looked up he saw Chandler standing close by. She was grinning at him.

  He hiked his shoulders. ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve never heard you flirt like that before, boss.’

  ‘And you’re unlikely to ever again.’

  ‘You want to watch yourself,’ she warned. ‘People might start to think you’re human.’

  Even the best laid plans can crumble to dust when trampled all over by the full weight of reality. By the time Emily Grant killed the engine of her Citroen, the cavalry had arrived and the crime scene was in full swing. Uniformed officers kept local residents at bay, and one eye on a whole flotilla of official vehicles, including a black unmarked mortuary van. The normally quiet and peaceful area was a riot of movement and sound. As they worked in well-practised unison beneath a bank of floodlights powered by a petrol generator, Bliss watched SOCO and the forensics team probing and searching the cordoned-off area around the remains, which were now concealed by a large canvas tent. Trace evidence was being collected and recorded, every inch of the scene photographed and videoed, all the while leaving the remains in situ. Paths to and from the shallow grave were now being outlined with luminous strips of tape, helping to protect the crime scene from being tainted.

  Bliss was waiting for Grant when she arrived, and he fe
lt a momentary sense of heightened anticipation as she climbed from her vehicle. The dark auburn curls of her hair spilled out over the shoulders of a red knee-length coat, beneath which she wore grey trousers. She looked every bit as good as he remembered. Bliss was suddenly glad he had called.

  ‘Good to see you again, Inspector Bliss,’ Grant said, smiling warmly and extending a gloved hand.

  They shook, eyes locking for a moment. Bliss returned the smile as she slipped the strap of a bag over her shoulder and used the remote on her key fob to lock the car.

  ‘Please, call me Jimmy,’ he said. ‘I think we can afford to be a bit less formal, seeing as you’ve given up your time to lend a hand.’

  ‘Jimmy it is, then.’

  ‘Good.’ He led her through the protective wall of uniforms. ‘I was hoping to smuggle you in and out before this place became a circus,’ he explained as they walked along a rutted, uneven path. ‘But unfortunately, the troops descended just a few minutes after I called you, and now everything goes by the book. Even so, I’ve managed to persuade SOCO to let you have a brief visual inspection of our mystery victim.’

  ‘Well, that’s something, at least.’

  ‘I’m sorry it’s not more, and I feel like I’ve dragged you out here for nothing, but until the doctor turns up and releases the remains to us, I’m afraid a physical examination is out of the question.’

  ‘A doctor?’ Grant seemed surprised. Her mouth crinkled a little. ‘Isn’t it a bit late for that?’

  ‘I know what you mean. It’s procedure, I’m afraid. We mere mortals can’t officially confirm that these bones are human. Or dead, for that matter. Anyhow, take a quick shufti.’