Death Toll Read Free Page B

finger intact, had been laid across the heart.
    The pathologist began to work at the edge of the drape with a gloved hand, trying to reveal the bones beneath.
    Shaw walked away and stood by the empty grave to look down. It was dark down there, an almost magnetic black. He hoped the victim had been dead when the killers had tossed him into the grave, but knew the real crime was the knowledge, the near certainty, that they probably didn’t care.
    â€˜God.’ The word had come from the pathologist and as Shaw turned he saw the rapid supplication again, the hand moving swiftly in front of her face. She held her hands high, elbows down, like a surgeon. She’d parted the velvet drape and most of the bones beneath were broken, the left upper thigh, several of the ribs, the lower left arm – not just broken, but shattered, so that each was a jigsaw of fractures.
    â€˜Jesus,’ said Valentine. ‘She’s in bits.’

2
    Standing on the stone step of the cemetery chapel was DC Paul Twine, an iPhone glowing in his palm.
    â€˜Sir,’ he said, nodding at Shaw, catching Valentine’s eye, then freezing when he saw what was behind them: the impromptu funeral procession climbing the rise, appearing out of the mist, led by forensics-team pall-bearers carrying the black body-bag, then the open coffin behind. The mist closed behind them like a liquid, as if they’d risen out of a lake.
    Twine had his free hand on a gravestone, propped up against the wall of the chapel. There was a line of them, perhaps thirty, each leaning on each like folded deckchairs.
    â€˜This is our one …’ said Twine.
    Â 
    MARY TILDEN
    Â 
    Born 3 January 1948
    Died 13 February 1948
    Â 
    Cruelly taken, too soon, to God’s abode
    Â 
    NORA ELIZABETH TILDEN
    Â 
    Born 8 February 1928
    Died 1 June 1982
    Â 
    Loose the shoes from thy feet
    Â 
    Shaw noted the stonemason’s single addition: the double strokes of the Christian fish symbol which had been on Nora Tilden’s shroud.
    â€˜I ran the name through the system, sir,’ added Twine. ‘She’s got a file in records with a “V” number.’
    Shaw stopped in his tracks and studied Twine’s face. The DC had a ski tan and expensive skin and wore a body-warmer under a quilted jacket. Shaw had been on Paul Twine’s last two failed promotion boards and he recalled the CV: a philosophy student from Bristol with a mind like a Swiss watch, but in terms of life on the streets he didn’t know what time it was. But he’d already made a significant contribution to this inquiry: a ‘V’ number meant Nora Elizabeth Tilden was somewhere in the St James’s computer system because she’d been the victim of a serious crime. Her crushed bones, thought Shaw, were perhaps a testimony to that.
    â€˜But 1982?’ said Valentine, knowing that records from that time were still on paper in the basement under police HQ. The only reference on the computer would be the file number.
    â€˜I’ve got someone on it,’ said Twine. ‘An hour – maybe less. Plus, I know someone down at the Lynn News  …’ He held up his iPhone. ‘They’re tracking back through their computer archive. Might work. And the paperwork here gives us an address, sir – the Flask, the pub along the riverbank.’ He nodded to the north.
    Shaw looked again at the building he’d noticed when standing on top of the box tomb – the Gothic outline, floating over the mist, of the whalers’ inn.
    He led the way into the chapel through a door the shape of a church window. Within, coffins already exhumed by the council were laid out in military rows: six across, ten deep. Processed remains had been repackaged in small wooden ossuaries, stacked against one wall. On a set of three tables at the front skeletons had been laid out for examination.
    Twine explained, while using his thumb to text on the iPhone.