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
