Skeleton Plot Read Free

which Joe had told him to dig. He’d get it out, though, set it on the grass beside the plot to show Granddad what he’d extracted and how diligent he’d been in his work on the new vegetable plot.
    It was at that moment that he saw it.
    The skull lay at the bottom of the trench, staring up at him with sightless eyes as though it was startled to see him, as if it was questioning why its rest had been disturbed.
    Damon went to the back door and called softly inside for Granddad Joe. He didn’t want Nana Pat: this was a sight which was not fitting for a woman, even an old, experienced woman who had always seemed unshockable. He was surprised how light and uncertain his voice sounded as he called for his grandfather. It was almost as if the voice didn’t belong to him, as if this sudden horror in the bright sunlight had affected his power of speech.
    Damon found that he couldn’t tell Joe what he’d discovered. Instead, he led him slowly across the grass of the new paddock to where he’d been digging, scarcely hearing the old man’s compliments on how well he had done. He had half-expected the skull to be gone, vanished back into the ground whence it had come. But it lay exactly where he had left it, at the bottom of his final trench.
    Granddad Joe hadn’t seen it; he was still congratulating his grandson fulsomely on the work he had done. Damon could think of no words which were not banal. He said, ‘I found this.’
    Old Joe looked at the skull without speaking, as if he could not credit the presence of such a thing in his ground. It seemed a long time before he said, ‘You’d best not dig any more, lad. The police will need to know about this.’
    It was confirmation to Damon that it was real, that this awful thing which had thrust itself into the climax of his day was what he’d known it was as soon as he’d seen it. As he gazed down at it, a worm slid out silently through what had once been an eye, then back in through what had once been a mouth. Damon watched as if under hypnosis. Then he turned and vomited up Nana’s lunch into the other end of the trench.
    He stumbled back across the grass with the old man’s arm around his shoulders, their strengths suddenly reversed. Damon felt a compelling need to speak, to say something, anything, to break the silence as they approached the door of the bungalow. ‘You must think I’m a wimp, Granddad Joe!’
    ‘Nay, lad, you’re never a wimp! You’re sixteen, that’s all.’
    Less than half an hour later, two police cars drove into the quiet close.

TWO
    B y the time Detective Chief Superintendent Lambert and Detective Sergeant Hook arrived from Oldford police station, the bones had already been accorded a status they had not enjoyed since their interment.
    The end section of Joe Jackson’s recently erected fence, which had separated his newly acquired paddock from the farmland beyond it, had been carefully removed. The trench where the skull had been found and the area beyond it were being examined with the minute attention required in a case of unexplained death. However old these bones might prove to be, they would be accorded the status of a suspicious death until the full facts of the demise could be ascertained.
    Whether those facts would ever be established was a matter of speculation in these first hours of the investigation. The remains were human, but nothing was yet established beyond that. No one knew how old the skull was or whether the rest of a body was here as well. No one knew whether the victim – it would be treated as a victim until any more innocent explanation could be provided – was male or female. No one knew how long the skull had been here. It hadn’t even got a nickname yet. Policemen who deal with death in all its harshness and finality usually give nicknames; they bring levity and relief to things which can make life very grim. This head had been the operating centre of a human being, the body part which distinguishes a person