Whispers of the Dead - Страница 12

All of which suggested that Terry Loomis was the victim and Willis Dexter his killer. But there was something odd about Tom’s manner that told me it wasn’t that simple. ‘So is he in custody?’

Tom took off his glasses and wiped them on a tissue, a quizzical smile playing round his mouth. ‘Well, that’s the thing. It appears Willis Dexter was killed in a car crash six months ago.’

‘That can’t be right,’ I said. Either the fingerprints couldn’t be his or the wrong name must have been put on the death certificate.

‘Doesn’t seem so, does it?’ Tom put his glasses back on. ‘That’s why we’re exhuming his grave first thing tomorrow.’

You’re nine when you see your first dead body. You’re dressed in your Sunday clothes and ushered into a room where wooden chairs have been set out facing a shiny casket that stands at the front. It’s balanced on trestles covered with worn black velvet. A piece of blood-red braiding has come loose on one corner. You’re distracted by how it’s curled up into an almost perfect figure eight, so that you’re almost up to the casket before you think to look inside.

Your grandfather’s lying in it. He looks… different. His face seems waxy, somehow, and his cheeks have a sunken look, like they do when he forgets to put in his teeth. His eyes are shut, but there’s even something not quite right about them, too.

You stop dead, feeling a familiar pressure in your chest. A hand presses into your back, propelling you forward.

‘Go on now, take a look.’

You recognize the voice of your aunt. But you didn’t need any urging to go nearer. You sniff, earning a swift cuff on the head.

‘Handkerchief!’ your aunt hisses. For once, though, you weren’t clearing your nose of its almost permanent drip. Only trying to discern what other odours might be masked beneath the perfume and scented candles.

‘Why’re his eyes shut?’ you ask.

‘Because he’s with the Lord,’ your aunt says. ‘Don’t he look peaceful? Just like he’s asleep.’

But he doesn’t look asleep to you. What’s in the casket looks like it’s never been alive. You stare at it, trying to see exactly what’s different, until you’re steered firmly away.

Over the next few years the memory of your grandfather’s corpse never fails to bring with it the same sense of puzzlement, the same tightness in your chest. It’s one of your seminal memories. But it isn’t until you’re seventeen that you encounter the event which changes your life.

You’re sitting on a bench, reading during your lunch break. The book is a translation of St Thomas Aquinas‘ Summa Theologiae you stole from the library. It’s heavy going and naive, of course, but there’s some interesting stuff in it. ‘The existence of something and its essence are separate.’ You like that, almost as much as you liked Kierkegaard’s assertion that ‘death is the light in which great passions, both good and bad, become transparent.’ All the theologians or philosophers you’ve read contradict each other, and none of them have any real answers. But they’re closer to the mark than the sophomore posturings of Camus and Sartre, who hide their ignorance behind a mask of fiction. You’ve outgrown them already, just as you’re already on your way to outgrowing Aquinas and the rest. In fact you’re beginning to think you won’t find the answer in any book. But what else is there?

There’ve been whisperings at home lately about where the money’s coming from to send you to college. It doesn’t bother you. It’ll come from somewhere. You’ve known for years that you’re special, that you’re destined for greatness.

It’s meant to be.

You chew and swallow the packed sandwiches mechanically as you read, without enjoyment or taste. Food is fuel, that’s all. The most recent operation cured the nasal drip that blighted your childhood, but at a cost. By now your sense of smell is all but burnt out, reducing everything but the spiciest of foods to the blandness of cotton wool.

Finishing the tasteless sandwich, you put the book away. You’ve just gotten up from the bench when a screech of brakes is followed by a meaty thud. You look up to see a woman in the air. She seems to hang for a moment before crashing down in a sprawl of limbs, almost at your feet. She lies twisted on her back, face tilted to the sky. For a second her eyes meet yours, wide and startled. There’s no pain or fear in them, only surprise. Surprise and something else.

Knowledge.

Then the eyes dull and you know instinctively that whatever force had animated the woman has gone. What lies at your feet now is a sack of meat and broken bone, nothing more.

Dazed, you stand there as other people crowd round the body, jostling you aside until it’s screened from view. It doesn’t matter. You’ve already seen what you were meant to.

All that night you lie awake, trying to recall every detail. You feel breathless and shaken, on the verge of something immense. You know you’ve been given a glimpse of something momentous, something both everyday and profound. Except that for some reason the woman’s face, the eyes that seemed to burn into yours, now maddeningly elude you. You want—no, you need—to see that moment again in order to understand what happened. But memory isn’t up to the task, any more than it was when you stared into your grandfather’s casket. It’s too subjective; too unreliable. Something this important demands a more clinical approach.

More permanent.

Next day, withdrawing every cent of your college savings, you buy your first camera.

CHAPTER 6

DAWN WAS JUST a pale band on the horizon when we set off for the cemetery. The sky was still dark, but the stars were slowly disappearing as they were overtaken by the new day. The landscape on either side of the highway was starting to take form, emerging from the darkness like a photograph in a developing tray. Beyond the stores and fast food restaurants, the dark bulk of the mountains rose up as though to emphasize the flimsiness of the man-made facade.

Tom drove in silence. For once he wasn’t playing any of his jazz CDs, though whether that was because of the early hour or a reflection of his mood I wasn’t sure. He’d picked me up from the hotel, but after a wan smile he’d said little. No one looks their best at that time of day, but there was a greyness to his face that seemed to have nothing to do with lack of sleep.

You probably don’t look so good yourself. I’d lain awake into the early hours the night before, apprehensive about what lay ahead. Yet it was hardly my first exhumation, and certainly not the worst.

Years before I’d worked on a mass war grave in Bosnia where entire families had been buried. This wouldn’t be anything like that, and I knew Tom was doing me a favour in asking me along. By rights I should have jumped at the chance to take part in a US investigation.

So why wasn’t I more enthusiastic?

Where I’d once felt confidence and certainty, now there were only doubts. All my energy, the focus I used to take for granted, seemed to have bled out of me on to the floor of my hallway the year before. And if I felt like this now, what would it be like when I was back in the UK, working on a murder inquiry by myself?

The truth was I didn’t know.

The eastern horizon was streaked with gold as Tom turned off the highway. We were heading for the suburbs on the eastern fringe of Knoxville, an area I wasn’t familiar with. The neighbourhood was a poor one: streets of paint-peeling houses with overgrown and junk-filled front yards. The reflective eyes of a cat gleamed in our headlights as it broke off from eating something in the gutter to glare at us warily as we drove past.

‘Not far now,’ Tom said, breaking the silence.

After another mile or so the houses began to give way to scrubland, and not long after that we came to the cemetery. It was screened from the road by pine trees and a tall, pale brick wall. A wrought-iron sign proclaimed Steeple Hill Cemetery and Funeral Home in an arch above the gates. Cresting it was a stylized angel, its head piously bowed. Even in the half-light I could see that the metal was rusted, its paint flaking.

We drove through the open gates. Gravestones marched along in rows on either side, most of them overgrown and unkempt. They were set against a backdrop of darkly oppressive pine woods, and up ahead I could make out the outline of what must have been the funeral home itself: a low, industrial-looking building topped with a squat steeple.

Off to one side a cluster of parked vehicles announced our destination. We parked by them and climbed out. I shoved my hands in my pockets, shivering in the early morning chill. Mist hung over the dew-silvered grass as we made our way towards the centre of activity.

Screens had been erected in front of the grave, but at that time of day there was no one to see it anyway. A small excavator chugged and juddered as it lifted out another scoop of raw earth, clods dripping from the shovel as it deposited the soil on a growing pile. The air smelled of loam and diesel fumes, but the grave had been almost dug out, a gaping black wound in the turf.

Gardner and Jacobsen stood among a handful of officials and workmen who waited as the excavator cleared another load of earth. Standing slightly apart from them was Hicks. The pathologist’s bald head protruded from an oversized mackintosh that made the resemblance to a turtle more striking than ever. His presence was little more than a formality, since the body would almost certainly be handed over to Tom for examination.