A Place To Bury Strangers (Atticus Priest Book 2) Read online

  A Place to Bury Strangers

  An Atticus Priest Mystery

  Mark Dawson

  Contents

  Prologue

  I. Monday

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  II. Tuesday

  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

  III. Wednesday

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  IV. Thursday

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  V. Friday

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  VI. Saturday

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  VII. Sunday

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  VIII. Monday

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  IX. One Week Later

  Chapter 81

  Chapter 82

  Chapter 83

  Acknowledgments

  Want more Mark Dawson?

  Also By Mark Dawson

  In the John Milton Series

  In the Beatrix Rose Series

  In the Isabella Rose Series

  About Mark Dawson

  Prologue

  Salisbury Plain stretched out beneath a slate-grey sky, the sun obscured by clouds that promised yet more rain after a week of wet days. It was just after dawn, and Jan Lewandowski had brought his dog to the Plain for a walk while it was dry. There had been no other cars in the lay-by where dog walkers often parked, and there was no one visible as far as he could see. The wide-open space was desolate, the emptiness interrupted by the occasional beech and stand of fir and clumps of saw-wort, ox-eye daisy and milkwort.

  Lewandowski’s dog was Coco, an enterprising two-year-old spaniel who needed a lot of exercise to prevent her causing disruption at home. Lewandowski wrestled the tennis ball from her mouth and fitted it into the plastic launcher. He drew back his arm and fired the launcher out, sending the tennis ball arcing high through the air. It bounced once and then a second time against the damp ground and rolled to a stop beneath the branches of a hawthorn bush. Coco bounded after it, her tail wagging with unbridled enthusiasm. She reached it and then stood there, stock-still, ignoring it. She cocked her head as if taking a sniff of the air, and then launched ahead, leaving the ball behind her.

  “Coco!”

  The dog sprinted to the north, ducking beneath the slats of a post and rail fence and continuing into the field beyond. There was a flagpole next to the gate in the fence that allowed access to the field, and a red pennant flapped from the top. Salisbury Plain was owned by the Ministry of Defence and was used by the army for training. The red flag denoted that live-fire exercises were possible.

  “Coco!” Lewandowski yelled. “Get back here!”

  The dog ignored him, hurrying across the field until she disappeared into a depression. Lewandowski cursed, jogged over to the fence and clambered over it. The ground had been churned up by tank tracks, and he had to hop over deep troughs that were filled with muddy water. He scanned the landscape, looking for any sign that might indicate that an exercise was taking place. There was none, but, even so, he had served in the Polish army before he moved here and remembered his old corporal warning new recruits to be cautious in places like this; it wasn’t impossible for rounds to land without detonating.

  He took the dog’s lead from his pocket and hurried across the field. “Come here, Coco.”

  The dog showed no interest in heeding his call. Her attention was clearly fixated on something else and, as Lewandowski watched, she dipped her head and picked it up.

  Lewandowski reached the dog. “What are you doing?” he said, reaching down to clip the lead to her collar. “What have you found, girl?”

  There was a long white bone in Coco’s mouth. Lewandowski guessed that it was forty or fifty centimetres long, with a cylindrical head at one end and a smooth, shallow trough at the other. He tried to take it from her, but she growled and tugged to keep it.

  “Drop it, Coco. Put it down.”

  The dog laid the bone down, locked it in place with her paws and started to gnaw at it.

  Lewandowski knelt down so that he was closer to the bone. He had assumed it belonged to an animal, but, as he looked at it, he realised that he couldn’t think of any animal on Salisbury Plain with a bone that looked like that. It was too long for a fox or a badger and surely too short for a cow or a horse.

  He felt the first sting of panic and looked around, in the hope that there might be someone whom he could call out to, someone who might be able to persuade him that he had not discovered what he feared. He saw no one; they were quite alone.

  He reached into his pocket with trembling fingers, pulled out his phone and dialled.

  “Nine-nine-nine—what service do you require?”

  “Police,” Lewandowski said. “I think I’ve found human remains.”

  Part I

  Monday

  1

  Detective Chief Inspector Mackenzie Jones led the way across the uneven track, stepping over the ruts that had been left by the tanks that regularly exercised on this part of the Plain. Professor Allan Fyfe, the Home Office pathologist, kept pace alongside her. The rain had turned the track into something of a quagmire, with ankle-deep puddles and long stretches of mud that threatened to suck the boots straight off her feet. At least she had her boots, she thought as she stepped around a particularly treacherous patch of mud. She always kept a pair in the boot of the car, just in case. Fyfe had not had the same foresight and was complaining loudly at the state of his brogues and the bottoms of his trousers. He was carrying a square case with a strap that he wore across his shoulder; the case bumped against his hip with every step.

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  Mack pointed to the hawthorn hedge. “There’s a depression on the other side of that bush.”

  “I’m not really dressed for this kind of terrain.”
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  Fyfe was an irascible man who had not been pleased to have been called out on short notice. Mack had worked with him before and found him to be something of a handful; he was intelligent, although perhaps not quite as clever as he liked people to think, with a short temper and a sharp tongue that he directed against those who he felt were not following his directions with the necessary speed.

  Fyfe wasn’t the only person to have had their diary upended. Mack had been due in court for the conclusion of the case against Allegra Mallender and Tristan Lennox. The proceedings had, as far as she could tell, been going well and had gone some way to make up for the farrago that had preceded it. It had been Atticus Priest who had unravelled the evidence she had assembled against Ralph Mallender; he had also provided the evidence that had led to the charging of those whom they now believed to be the true culprits behind the Christmas Eve Massacre. It was an important trial and had drawn the press to the court in numbers that had not been seen in Salisbury for years. Chief Superintendent Beckton had given clear instructions that Mack was to attend every day until the defendants were convicted; he had then countermanded his own orders when the bone had been found, realising that DI Robbie Best was on leave and that there was no one else of sufficient seniority to handle the discovery. It had to be Mack.

  Fyfe slipped and almost lost his footing. “Bloody hell.”

  “Nearly there,” Mack said.

  The dog walker who had found the bone had called 999, and uniformed officers had been sent to take a look. They had called CID to take a look, and those officers, suspecting that the bone might be human, had summoned the forensic medical examiner. She had shared their conclusion as to the bone’s origin, and that had led to Mack and Fyfe being here now.

  “Did you speak to the MoD?” he asked her.

  “I did. They’re not exercising today.”

  They followed the track through the field until they could see the site of the discovery. The area had been secured, with uniforms guarding the boundary and a loggist taking down the details of those who went beyond the tape.

  “Down there,” Mack said.

  Their details were noted in the scene log, and they clambered down the sloping side of the depression. The bone was visible at the bottom, half of it in the puddle of water that had gathered there. The pathologist placed the box of equipment down, unlatched the lid and opened it. He put on a pair of nitrile gloves and carefully picked up the bone with both hands. He turned it over, examining it carefully.

  “What do you think?” Mack asked him.

  “Human,” he said.

  “How confident are you?”

  “I’ll need to speak to Simon Chester to be one hundred per cent sure, but it looks like a femur.”

  “Simon Chester?”

  “Forensic anthropologist,” he said. He turned the bone so that the bulbous head was at the top and pointed to it. “I’m a generalist—I’m not trained to analyse skeletal remains, although, if you pushed me, I could give you my uneducated first impressions.”

  “Please.”

  “It’s a bone from the right leg. Slightly arched—convex at the front and concave behind. You see the head—here? It articulates with the acetabulum of the pelvic bone.” He turned the bone so that the head was visible. “It looks like it’s been scavenged. The scoring marks here and here were most likely caused by an animal.”

  “It was found by a dog.”

  “And it might have had a little chew before its owner rescued it,” he said. “But some of the marks look older than the last few days.”

  “Male or female?”

  “That’ll be one for Simon, but from the length of it, I’d put my money on female.”

  “How long has it been in the ground?”

  He shrugged.

  “Best guess?”

  “Years. Look at the state of it.” He held it up. “I’ll get it to Simon, and he can tell us what he thinks. But we’ll need to find the rest of the body in the meantime. Nothing around here?”

  “Nothing obvious, but we haven’t looked properly yet. I’ll arrange for reinforcements.”

  She left Fyfe with the bone and clambered up out of the depression. Her sergeant, Nigel Archer, was making his way along the track toward her.

  “Bloody hell, boss,” he said. “It’s like the Somme.”

  “Fyfe says it’s human,” she said.

  Archer rolled his eyes. “Wonderful.”

  “We’re going to need to get as many bodies here as we can,” she said. “The rest of the remains must be here somewhere. Can I leave that to you?”

  “Course, boss. I’ll call the nick and have them round up a posse.”

  “Fyfe was talking about finding a forensic anthropologist to come down and take a look. Make sure he gets everything he needs.”

  “Will do, Mack.”

  A light shower of rain started to fall, and, as they both looked up, Mack saw a skein of lightning crackle through the purple and black clouds.

  Great, she thought. Stuck out on the Plain during a storm. They were going to get soaked.

  2

  The atmosphere in the courtroom was sharp with anticipation; counsel for the prosecution and the defence shared anecdotes about previous trials, the reporters scribbled notes on pads, and the family members of the two defendants—Allegra Mallender and Tristan Lennox—kept a scrupulous distance from one another, reflecting the schism that had opened up between the two former lovers as they had turned upon one another in desperate attempts to save their own skins. The room was quickly full to capacity; Atticus Priest took his seat in the public gallery and looked around to see if Mack was present. She wasn’t. Ralph Mallender, the husband of the first defendant, was just in front of him, dressed in an understated but obviously expensive suit; Atticus saw that the nails of both hands had been gnawed down to the quicks, as sure an indication of his unease as anything.

  There was a buzz of excitement as the defendants were led into the dock. It didn’t take any great skill to read the hatred that burned between them. Allegra Mallender, dressed in a white shirt with matching blue skirt and jacket, sat at one end and grasped the rail so tightly that Atticus could see the whitening of her knuckles. Tristan Lennox sat on the other side of the box, as far away from Allegra as it was possible for him to be. He looked out into the courtroom, his eyes flicking over the people who had come to observe his fate.

  The jury were led inside next. Atticus looked from face to face for anything that might give him an indication of the decision that they might have arrived at, but before he was able to reach a conclusion, the clerk instructed them all to stand. Mr. Justice Somerville came inside and sat down, wearing the red robes that the judiciary wore during murder trials. The judge was a short-tempered septuagenarian who had been given the trial after the first prosecution had collapsed. The acquittal of Ralph Mallender had been front-page news, and Atticus was in no doubt that the failure of the case had led to difficult conversations between the Crown Prosecution Service and the judiciary. That Atticus was responsible for those difficulties might have amounted to a first strike against his name; his propensity for rhetorical flourishes and showboating during the delivery of his evidence had been another. Somerville had gone so far as to warn him against showing off. Atticus had apologised, but, of course, it had always been his intention to draw a little of the spotlight onto himself and his business and, as he had hoped, it had worked out rather well.

  The clerk of the court stood and cleared his throat. “Both defendants, please stand.”

  Allegra and Lennox did as they were told.

  The clerk spoke again. “Members of the jury, will your foreman please stand.”

  The juror at the end of the line of seats stood up. Atticus watched him and, to his surprise—and concern—he saw the classic signs of nervousness. He reached up to stroke the side of his neck in a typical demonstration of self-soothing, then brought his hands together and started to pick at his nails. It was possible that it
was the gravity of the verdicts that he was about to deliver, but Atticus didn’t think so. There was something else that was making him anxious and, for the first time, Atticus wondered whether the trial was going to go the way everyone had expected that it would.

  “Please answer the following question yes or no. Have you reached a verdict upon which you are all agreed?”

  The foreman nodded. “Yes.”

  The courtroom hummed with tension. Here it was: the investigation, the abortive and farcical first trial and now this one, with the two duelling former lovers. It was all about to come to an end.