again to within six feet. The head was, like the moon itself, only half lit. But the moonlit side, tilted up and slightly towards the front, showed the damage that the gunshot had wrought. Below the eye a hole gaped, sheared away from the teeth and jaw. The black blood obscured the exposed neck below, and the teeth glittered like quartz in rock. In the frosty air the head steamed, and Dryden smelt the iron of blood on the air.
One of Dryden’s knees gave way and he slumped to the side, supporting himself with a hand thrust out into the damp soil of the trench. He heard his heartbeat racing in his ears and a necklace of bright lights obscured his vision, a warning he might pass out. He willed himself to stay conscious and looked again at the corpse.
He waited as the moon’s flight shed more light on the kneeling victim. A rough rope was revealed around the neck, and just behind it Dryden could now see the square-cut end of a wooden post. That was why the corpse looked upwards, the skull carried the weight of the body below, the chin the latch which held the rope. Dryden forced himself to stand, his knees buckling out of synch, and edged himself forward to circle the body, noting the hands bound too with the same length of rope, but oddly loose, and the nail driven through the post which held the neck ropes high.
He completed the circle like a pilgrim at a sacrifice. His muscles shivered, and he tasted gall in his throat which made him retch, lose his breath and then gulp in another lungful of air, this time laced with drifting cordite from the gunshot. He gagged again, feeling the contents of his stomach fold over and lurch again. In his pocket he fingered the mobile phone he wanted so much to use. But could he speak, or would he scream?
The mutilated head dripped blood down the body’s left side, over the shoulder and forearm, until it fell from the perfectly manicured fingers to the ground. The chin held the body’s weight, but as the muscles stiffened with rigor mortis the torso twisted by millimetres, giving an illusion of creaking life. The rope twisted too, and an occasional rivulet of blood shot out obscenely from the neck. The legs were buckled in the zigzag semaphore of death, the feet turned on to their sides.
Where was the killer? It was the first coherent thought he had been able to construct for many minutes. As Dryden asked the question he saw again the pitch black crucifix of the trenches, and the floodlights. Had someone run for cover after the gunshot? After his shout? Or were they still here, with him? He spun on his heel and looked back down the long trench. Nothing. He turned back and watched Valgimigli, motionless for a second, but then the rope and nail finally gave out and the corpse fell forward, its arms swinging round in what looked like a final attempt to embrace the living, before it fell to the ground. One hand touched Dryden’s shoe, leaving a bloody fingerprint. Dryden, immobile with fear, listened to a distant scream for several seconds before realizing it was his.
19
Dryden had been in the incident van for three hours. It was windowless and preternaturally white: heaven’s waiting room. Apart from two hard chairs, a single interview table provided the only furniture. It was attached with brass hinges to the wall and on it stood a row of six polystyrene coffee cups, marking Dryden’s imprisonment in half-hour instalments. The WPC who had stood watching him had opened the door once, revealing that the fog had returned with the dawn, and that in a featureless landscape the only detail was the distant dull reflection of the scene-of-crime tape, and faintly, a silent revolving blue emergency light. The cold frost had rushed in too, making him shiver more violently. But he could not fool himself: the sudden jolting of his limbs was due to fear, and his inability to mask it. His nervous system hummed, as if permanently attached to a low-voltage power source. A muscle below his eyelid fluttered and his stomach lurched, oiled by the coffee.
He looked at the statement he had dictated to DS Bob Cavendish-Smith. He had stated the bald facts in a monotonous style he felt suited the occasion. No time for rhetorical flourishes, just the mechanical details of his arrival on the site, his failure to find Professor Valgimigli in the office and his discovery of the corpse, kneeling but roped to the wooden post. He was unsure how long these events had taken, and especially how long he had stood, rooted, before the butchered body. He’d fled the site eventually, energized by the fear that he was not alone in the trench. Then he’d phoned Humph from a call box, pathetically, telling him everything at once, spilling it out to try and distance himself from the reality of death. Humph had phoned the police before driving to the dig, where they’d waited, the Capri’s dim interior light providing some solace until the patrol car pulled up alongside, the two PCs clearly certain they were dealing with a hallucinating drunk. Once they’d seen the corpse at close range the picture rapidly changed. By the time they’d got Dryden into the mobile interview unit there was a helicopter overhead and a mobile canteen just outside the gate. Humph’s cab was unseen, but Dryden knew he’d be there, just out of sight.
The door opened and Dryden smelt the distant aroma of bacon, thought immediately of Valgimigli’s steaming, riven, head and gulped some more cold coffee. Cavendish-Smith gave him a replacement cup and pulled up a seat on the opposite side of the table. Dryden noted he had his own takeaway version: the aroma of cafe latte was in the air, with nutmeg. The cold neon beat down on them like a fridge light, an industrial freezer perhaps, waiting for a consignment of split carcasses to hang on hooks.
He shivered again, setting off a series of involuntary jerks which made him put the coffee down hurriedly. Cavendish-Smith read the statement again. ‘Fine. Thanks. Bit of a detective, aren’t we?’
‘More than some,’ said Dryden. ‘It’s my job. Finding stories. We’re the same in that respect.’
Cavendish-Smith looked horrified at the comparison. He stood, holding a second statement lightly in his hand. ‘You were unlucky. According to his wife, she dropped him off at the site at 8.30 – half an hour earlier you’d have found him alive.’
‘Where did you find her?’ asked Dryden, already mapping out how he could wrap up the story for that day’s paper. An interview with the widow was the top priority.
‘Never mind that. I want you to walk me through every inch of what you did last night. Every last inch. Come on.’
‘Right,’ said Dryden, tired of the neon-lit room. The WPC had left the unit first when the DS had arrived, and now Cavendish-Smith led the way, giving Dryden just enough time to get sight of Louise Beaumont’s statement on the interview table. Dryden, now familiar with the layout of the standard witness form, noted the address.
Outside the fog was thinning, moved on by a light wind. Across the site a line of police officers were down on their hands and knees, edging forward, putting anything which caught the eye into evidence bags.
‘So,’ said Cavendish-Smith. ‘Where do we start?’ Dryden retraced his steps: his entry into the camp, the knock on the caravan door, and up to the point when he heard the shot, then to the edge of the trench, dropping down using the foot ladder and jumping the last three feet. They went north to the crossroads, passing the spot where Valgimigli had found the chariot rein rings. A larger trench had been dug since Dryden’s last visit, with various protruding pieces of metal and wood marked with fluorescent number tags. Two PCs stood guard.
Cavendish-Smith beckoned one of the PCs closer: ‘Once the scene-of-crime team has been through, and the pathologist has removed the body, I want one of the diggers brought here. Right here. I want to know if anyone has dug down here – if anything is missing.’
