Death on Dartmoor Read online

  Sally Ellis tapped at the door. ‘Sorry boss, am I disturbing you?’ she asked, and took the seat opposite his desk.

  ‘No, just finished my report, Sal. I’m free as a bird.’

  ‘Not for long, you’re not. There’s an archaeologist at a site on Dartmoor. They’ve discovered what looks like human remains buried in the bog.’

  Dan sat up straight. ‘You being serious?’

  She looked down at her notes. ‘A Miss Elspeth Price found the remains. She called Droctor Pargeter first, then us, and that’s why he’s already there. He’s a doc of bio-archaeology at the university Archaeology Department.’ She looked up. ‘I think that means he can do forensics on old bones if necessary.’

  ‘Nothing like getting your priorities straight. Call them first. What’s happened to Prof. Ballard?’

  ‘Don’t know, sick maybe? Retired? Anyway, the remains might be old, or they might be new, so we have to attend in case it’s suspicious. I’ve alerted local police so they should be able to secure the scene while we get ourselves organised.’

  ‘Dartmoor. Will I need wellies?’

  She gave him a level look. ‘Haven’t you got an outdoor kit in your car?’

  Dan flushed. ‘Err… it’s just that she’s all pristine, and new and lovely. As soon as I start putting kit in, she becomes just another work car.’

  Sally shook her head. ‘Men. It’s just a car. Get over it. I’ve got a pair of Paul’s wellies in my boot that might fit you. Sort out gloves and suits and I’ll get the rest of the gang sorted. Thirty minutes, okay?’

  Dan saluted her generous rear as she disappeared into the main office to round up his team. Just a car? The woman had no soul.

  He rang Detective Chief Superintendent Oliver and got her secretary, Stella, to put him through. ‘How’s it going, ma’am?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’re referring to the shortlisting for a new DCI, slowly. If you’re referring to things in general, very well, thanks. You put a huge smile on the Assistant Chief Constable’s face with a successful result on the drugs case. So what are you after now?’

  ‘Just informing you of a possible case, ma’am. Human remains found on Dartmoor. Forensic archaeologist already on site and we’re heading over there now to determine whether it’s ours or Archaeology’s case.’

  ‘Intriguing. Okay, keep me informed. I’ll get back to reading applications.’

  Dan replaced the phone and peered through his tiny window. The sky was pale blue. Great day for a drive up on to the moor. He headed off to supplies to kit out his car. He’d been devastated when his previous Audi had been trashed by the runaway Latvian, and his left foot still hadn’t fully healed from having the car land on it. If he’d only been able to jump a little further…

  4

  The glorious morning had settled into a hazy, warm afternoon at Foxtor on Dartmoor. Neil Pargeter and Elspeth Price sat on the tailgate of his Land Rover drinking tea from Elspeth’s flask and munching on pasties Neil had bought at the shop in Princetown. Topsy sat between them, eating scraps and wagging her muddy tail.

  ‘It’s so unfair,’ said Elspeth. ‘They’ve cordoned off the whole area. We can’t see anything at all from here.’

  Neil shrugged. ‘There’s not a lot we can do until the Exeter police arrive. As soon as the rest of my team get here, and the doctor signs it off, we’ll start the excavation.’ He put his hand on her arm. ‘You did a great job finding this, Elspeth.’

  She smiled, and swung her feet, which were dangling from the tailgate. ‘It’s been such a dream to find a body. What if it’s as old as Lindow Man? And what if there are artefacts preserved with the body?’ she said, wriggling from one well-padded buttock to the other. ‘I knew I’d find something one day.’ Elspeth rubbed the top of Topsy’s head. ‘And Topsy did it, didn’t you, girl?’

  Neil looked across the moor to the cordon that had been erected by local police around the site, and the much wider outer cordon, which effectively blocked off an area a hundred metres square. One of the police officers stood there like a bloody Viking warrior at a wake, arms crossed, helmet pulled over his eyes, determined to keep Neil out until the detectives arrived.

  Engine noise disturbed the quiet. In the distance, Neil saw a large silver car followed by a police car winding along the road towards him. Whiteworks, where he had parked, had been converted into bunk accommodation for University field trip groups. He had used the centre himself when he had been a student. It gave them a good base for getting to the burial site. And toilets, for which Elspeth had been grateful.

  His phone pinged. It was a text from Laura Denning back in the department saying she had gathered a team, and they were grabbing sandwiches in Princetown. He reckoned they had about six hours of daylight left. He sent back a hurried, ‘Get a move on’, and put the phone back in his jacket.

  Standing, he stretched his arms wide and grinned. ‘It’s show time, Elspeth. Best if you stay here with Topsy while I meet and greet.’

  Dan and Sally parked in the Whiteworks car park. ‘Sally, this is glorious.’ Dan turned and stared out over the glowing heather, soaking in the purples, the curl of pale young ferns and the brilliant green of the moss. ‘I must get up here this weekend with the bike.’

  Sally grinned. ‘Yes, you could bring the lovely Claire,’ she said. ‘Everything still going alright there?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Very well indeed.’

  ‘I’m glad, Dan. Glad you’ve found someone.’ She dropped a pair of old green Wellington boots by his feet. ‘I spotted that you liked her straightaway, you know. When she was lying in that hospital bed. Felt like a right wallflower…’

  Dan laughed. ‘It took me a few weeks to pluck up the courage to ask her out, though, didn’t it?’ He removed his jacket and put his phone and wallet into a zip pocket. ‘I’m going to boil in this bloody thing,’ he muttered, clambering into the protective suit.

  ‘Doesn’t matter how long it took, you got her in the end.’ Sally finished zipping herself into her suit and turned her face up to the sun. ‘Sunshine, aah. It’s alright for you international travellers going abroad for your holidays,’ she said. ‘With my twinnies, a week in a caravan in North Devon is as good as it gets.’

  ‘You wouldn’t swap, though, would you?’

  She laughed. ‘Not on your life. My girls have made our lives complete.’

  Dan sighed and stared off over the glowing moor. One day…

  Sally waited until two uniformed PCs got out of the area car, sent one to take over guard duty at the outer cordon and the other to guard the inner cordon. ‘I’ve got a local team on duty until tonight. I’ll sort out a guard rota once we know what we’re looking at.’ She took the key to the hostel from the local PC and gave it to one of her team, then used the facilities while she had a chance.

  Two more cars arrived carrying four more PCs and Sergeants Bill Larcombe and ‘Ben’ Bennett, Dan’s evidence officer and scene of crime manager. Known affectionately as the flowerpot men, Bill and Ben had more years’ service between them than Dan had been alive. Larcombe had been asked to take the initial photos, and Bennett would supervise the site. Both of them were full of smiles because they were away from their desks, and because they had wound up the drugs case.

  Dan studied Doctor Neil Pargeter as he approached. Tall, very tall. Well over six foot, and thin, with a ratty ponytail and an open face. He held out his hand. ‘Doctor Pargeter?’

  ‘That’s me,’ Neil replied, giving Dan’s hand a firm, warm shake.

  ‘I’m Detective Inspector Hellier,’ he said, ‘and this is Detective Sergeant Ellis.’ Dan crinkled his eyes in the sun and squinted up at the archaeologist. ‘I believe you’ve found us a body?’

  Neil chuckled. ‘I’d like to claim credit, but it was that old lady perched in the back of my Land Rover who actually found it. She did ring you guys, but when she rang me, I thought we’d come up for a look.’

  ‘Sergeant Ellis,’ said Dan, ‘go and interview the
lady, please. Find out what she knows.’

  Sally nodded, and headed towards Elspeth Price.

  ‘You’ll need to wear one of these suits, if you haven’t brought your own,’ Dan said, ‘but I’m not sure it’ll fit.’

  ‘Oh, it’ll do. I’m used to my legs sticking out of the bottom of things – the legs will tuck inside my boots.’ He took the proffered suit.

  Dan looked sideways at Neil Pargeter as he rolled his suit up over impossibly long legs, and zipped it to the top. He plucked a couple of pairs of latex gloves from the box in his boot, and passed Pargeter a set. ‘My sergeant says you’re a bio-archaeologist. Is that right?’

  ‘Doing your homework on me, Inspector?’ He smiled. ‘Yes, I’m a rare breed. I took a forensic archaeology degree down at Bournemouth, but I also wanted to work on skeletal remains, so I followed up with a masters, and then my doctorate here in Exeter, enabling me to work both areas. It’s much more interesting that way.’

  Dan nodded and pushed down the lid on the boot of his car to lock it. They crossed the lane and headed towards the Mire. ‘So, are you Professor Ballard’s replacement?’

  ‘Ah, you know he’s ill, then? I’m standing in, running the department and still teaching all my classes. Headless chicken just about sums it up. We’re waiting to see if he takes early retirement, and then, well, the job is up for grabs, and I’m one of four people who can apply for it.’ He chuckled. ‘That’s why I took a punt on Elspeth this morning. It was an excuse to get away from paperwork for a couple of hours. I mean, she’s always turning up with bits of bone and pottery, and they’ve never been anything of interest. It’s sweet that she’s made her big discovery. Even if…’

  ‘Even if what?’ asked Dan.

  ‘Even if, as I suspect, this is a modern burial and not our own Exeter Lindow Man.’

  Dan nodded, ‘Which is where I come in.’

  They signed themselves onto the site, first names on the list.

  5

  Pargeter turned as he heard the laboured engine of the departmental bus struggle down the lane towards the Whiteworks car park. ‘I’ll go sort them out,’ he said over his shoulder, striding out for the road. He watched Laura, or rather Doctor Laura Denning, as she now was after a brilliant PhD which he had enjoyed supervising, emptying the minibus of barrels, buckets and the assorted paraphernalia they would need to excavate the body. He could hear her high Edinburgh tones as she ordered her team of two about, over the ridiculous tune of a soaring skylark off to his left. She’d love to get her hands on this, he thought. An entomologist’s dream. But I really want it, too. It was always possible to share the responsibility, of course. They could co-author the report. That was a very nice thought indeed.

  She was waiting for him, suited up, when he arrived. ‘Nightmare site,’ she said. ‘How are we going to avoid contamination out here?’

  ‘Afternoon, Laura. Yes, it is a beautiful day, isn’t it? And aren’t we lucky to be out here on Dartmoor and not in some dusty old cellar?’

  She blushed, her pale freckles fading into the pinkness. ‘Sorry, it just took ages to get ourselves organised.’ Neil thought the little team looked extremely well-organised and ready to go, just as he had expected.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Needless to say, but I’m going to say it anyway; tread carefully, be suited, gloved and booted up at all times. The peat is soft and easy to move, and I don’t want you accidentally shifting a bone out of place.’ Three experienced archaeologists looked back at him, their lack of response speaking louder than any complaint.

  ‘Okay, I don’t need to teach you your jobs. Still it’s exciting to have a body on our own turf, isn’t it?’

  ‘What does it look like at the moment?’ asked Laura.

  ‘Best guess is that this is a modern body. If so, it could be murder.’ He smiled at their expectant grins. ‘That’s not such a good scenario for us, actually. It would be amazing to find a really old body, but we’ll assist in any way we can if it’s a modern one.’ He cast an eye over the kit once more. ‘Laura, didn’t you bring arc lights and the generator in case we’re here late?’

  She shook her head. ‘They’ll be along later, I couldn’t get it all in, so Nat Solomon is driving the other bus with all that stuff and anything else we’ll need when he gets off work later. It was kind of him to offer.’

  ‘It was indeed,’ he said, raising an eyebrow at his colleague. ‘Right, I’ll give you a hand with the barrels. Load up, people, let’s get over there.’ He waved at Elspeth, sitting swinging her legs on the back of his Land Rover and enjoying giving her story to the sergeant.

  Dan stood with Sally and watched as the burial site was readied for excavation. Pargeter pulled moss away from the remains, and started a channel to take the water away from the site. Satisfied that the worst of the water would drain away, he stood back and tried to determine the extent of the initial grave cut just by looking.

  Laura Denning and her team set up their barrels, buckets and equipment outside the inner cordon and set up a ‘do not cross’ boundary for the police.

  Dan took the hint and moved back out of the way, but he wanted to be as close as he could. It was fascinating to watch them work, and he had never seen anything like this except on old re-runs of Time Team.

  The coroner’s car arrived an hour later. A stiff, elderly man, mouth twisted into an ugly scowl, poked his way across the moor in his Hunter wellies, using an umbrella as a walking stick. He took one look at the remains in situ and stated that it was a suspicious death, and probably modern, judging by the usual geology of Dartmoor, which had never yet yielded an ancient one. He and Dan shook hands. He ignored everybody else.

  Dan caught Neil Pargeter’s eye as the old man stalked away. ‘Nothing like a thorough investigation of the evidence,’ he murmured.

  ‘Indeed. Shame we had to drag him away from civilisation for this petty trifle, eh?’

  Dan called in the lead pathologist from the hospital, Doctor Campbell Fox. The death of Fox’s friend, Dan’s former boss DCI Ian Gould stood between them like a brick wall. The pathologist never mentioned it, but it had happened on Dan’s watch. It had been his fault.

  Campbell Fox rolled up half an hour later in a battered Jaguar, followed by two men in the plain black van that accompanied him to such sites for removal of the body. He got into his special over-sized protective suit and signed himself in, strode across hummocks and moss as if born to it, and stopped in front of Dan. ‘It’s a beautiful day, Detective Inspector,’ he said, his bass voice booming across the moor. ‘Reminds me of holidays in the Highlands when I was a bairn,’ he said, rubbing massive hands together. ‘Out of the way, people, let the fox see the rabbit,’ he said, and used Dan’s shoulder to help him get down close enough to examine the remains. He waved a hand, demanded a trowel and with utmost care, dug around the most exposed bone. ‘Ulna. Human, I’d say. Not fossilised or badly decayed. A tasty case of suspicious death for you, Inspector,’ he said. ‘Shall we get on with it, ladies and gentlemen?’

  Neil Pargeter began the plotting and measuring of the site. Sergeant Bill Larcombe moved in closer as the moss was shifted from what they thought would be the gravesite. He photographed the visible bones from several angles and stood back. Pargeter and Fox agreed the probable extent of the grave and marked it, aiming to exclude anything not connected to the burying of the body.

  ‘How do you know where to begin to excavate?’ Dan asked Pargeter.

  Pargeter looked up. He was kneeling in slowly oozing water, taking off the top layer of soil with a trowel and transferring it to a bucket held by Laura Denning. ‘If you look carefully, you can see that the peat has been damaged. Other materials have been introduced where it was originally dug over.’ He indicated a barrel. ‘In here goes what we call the overburden, which is all the matter that has built up over the top of the grave site since it was dug. Once that’s out of the way, we’ll dig around the remains, and see what we actually have.’ They continued their me
thodical lifting and filling.

  Finally Pargeter lifted the overburden barrel and moved it out of the way. ‘Now, we’ll begin to expose the body.’ He trowelled away soil and wet peat covering the arm bone, placing it onto a shovel to be transferred into another barrel. ‘It might not look like much to you, but forensic techniques can analyse the tiniest particles, fibres, hair. We save everything.’ He removed another trowelful, scraping with great caution.

  ‘We’ll collect everything we can today,’ said Campbell Fox, perching on a hump of sphagnum moss, and resting his fists on his thighs, ‘and take it back to the secure pathology lab at the hospital, rather than take it to the university, as it looks like it may be a modern burial.’

  He pursed his lips. ‘This could take some time,’ he said. ‘Could you find me something to eat?’

  Dan’s stomach rumbled at the mention of food. Fascinated as he was, it was half past three and he’d had no lunch. He called a local PC over and told him to buy food in Princetown, and bring it back. At the stricken look on the constable’s face, he dug into his wallet and brought out a twenty-pound note. ‘I’ll have a white coffee, and so will Sergeant Ellis.’ He glanced at Fox, who nodded. ‘That’ll be three coffees, then, and three pasties. You might want to see if anyone else needs anything, too. Quick as you like,’ he said, and turned back to the excavation just as Campbell Fox widened his eyes, rolled off his mossy perch and knelt beside the growing hole.

  ‘Will ye look at that?’ he said, directing Dan’s gaze towards the grave. ‘Step up, lad.’

  Dan moved closer, gently shifting Laura Denning to one side. Neil Pargeter had also stopped scraping. Everyone stared at the remains in front of them. Clearly it was a human arm. Very clearly, it was a human arm with no hand at the end of it. Bill Larcombe took a photo. There was a brief silence.

  ‘That puts things into a different light,’ said Dan. ‘Shall we see what the other arm looks like?’