Whispers of the Dead

Whispers of the dead
by
simon Beckett

In America to escape London and the
violence that nearly killed him, forensics
expert David Hunter has returned to the
research facility where he trained - the
Body Farm in Tennessee. He needs to
know whether he's still up to the job of confronting death in all its strange and
terrible forms.

So when his former mentor asks him to
accompany him to a crime scene, he agrees.
He'll be there as an observer, so what could
possibly go wrong?

But even he is unprepared for what awaits
them in the remote cabin out in the woods.
The victim has been bound and tortured,
the body decomposed beyond recognition.
Although fingerprints seem to identify the
killer, Hunter is uneasy: nothing is quite as
it should be.

Then a second body is found. And it
becomes clear that the investigating
team faces a nightmare of deception and
misdirection. Hunter knows they're dealing
with a killer who is dangerously familiar
with the intricacies of forensics. As the
death toll rises and tensions mount, he is
pushed deeper into the heart of a desperate
manhunt. But has he met his match? This
time is David Hunter on the trail of a maniac
who simply cannot be stopped?

Shocking, cunning and heart-stoppingly
exciting, Whispers of the Dead is a crime
thriller of the highest order from a No. 1
international bestselling storyteller.
Simon Beckett is the best selling author
of three thrillers featuring forensics expert
Dr David Hunter - The Chemistry of Death,
Written in Bone and now Whispers of the
Dead. In 2002, he went on an assignment for
the Daily Telegraph Magazine to Tennessee's
world-famous Anthropological Research
Facility, the Body Farm. As well as providing
the inspiration for David Hunter, what he
saw and learned there, together with his
meticulous approach to research, helps make
his novels so frighteningly authentic.

Simon Beckett lives in Sheffield. To find
out more about him and his books, visit
www.simonbeckett.com
WHISPERS OF THE DEAD

www.rbooks.co.uk
Also by Simon Beckett
featuring David Hunter

THE CHEMISTRY OF DEATH
WRITTEN IN BONE

For more information on Simon Beckett and his books, see his
website at www.simonbeckett.com
WHISPERS OF THE
DEAD

SIMON BECKETT

BANTAM PRESS

LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY AUCKLAND JOHANNESBURG
TRANSWORLD PUBLISHERS
61-63 Uxbndge Road, London W5 5SA
A Random House Group Company
www.rbooks.co.uk

First published in Great Britain
in 2009 by Bantam Press
an imprint of Transworld Publishers

Copyright Simon Beckett 2009

Simon Beckett has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

This book is a work of fiction and, except in the case of historical fact,
any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.

A CIP catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.

ISBNs 9780593055267 (hb)
9780593055274 (tpb)

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,
by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out,
or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior
consent in any form of binding or cover other than that
in which it is published and without a similar condition,
including this condition, being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.

Addresses for Random House Group Ltd companies outside the UK
can be found at: www.randomhouse.co.uk
Tin- Random House Group Ltd Reg. No. 954009

Tin1 Random House Group Limited supports The Forest Stewardship
(louix'il (ISC'.), the leading international forest-certification organization. All our
lilies ih.it .ire printed on Greenpeace-approved FSC-certified paper carry the FSC logo.
()nr paper procurement policy can be found at www.rbooks.co.uk/environment

Typeset in 11.5/15pt Bembo by
Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Mackays, Chatham, ME5 8TD

2468 10 97531

>

Mixed Sources

C1996 Forest Stewardship Council
For my parents,
Sheila and Frank Beckett
Skin.

The largest human organ, it is also the most overlooked.
Accounting for an eighth of the entire body mass, on an average
adult it covers an area of approximately two square metres.
Structurally skin is a work of art, a nest of capillaries, glands and
nerves that both regulates and protects. It is our sensory interface
with the outside world, the barrier at which our individuality - our
self-- ends.

And even in death, something of that individuality remains.

When the body dies, the enzymes that life has held in check run
amok. They devour cell walls, causing the liquid contents to escape.
The fluid rises to the surface, gathering below the dermal layers and
causing them to loosen. Skin and body, until now two integral parts
of the whole, begin to separate. Blisters form. Whole swathes begin
to slip, sloughing off the body like an unwanted coat on a summer's
day.

But, even dead and discarded, skin retains traces of its former self.
Even now it can still have a story to tell, and secrets to keep.

Provided you know how to look.
Earl Bateman lay on his back, face turned to the sun. Overhead, birds
wheeled in the blue Tennessee sky, cloudless but for the slowly dispersing
vapour trail of a jet. Earl had always enjoyed the sun. Enjoyed
the sting of it on his skin after a long day's fishing, enjoyed the way
its brightness lent a new look to whatever it touched. There was no
shortage of sun in Tennessee, but Earl came originally from Chicago,
and the cold winters there had left a permanent chill in his bones.

When he'd moved to Memphis back in the seventies, he'd found
the swampy humidity far more to his liking than the windy streets of
his home city. Of course, as a dentist in a small practice, with a young
wife and two small children to keep, he didn't spend as much time
out in it as he might have liked. But it was there, all the same. He
even liked the sweltering heat of Tennessean summers, when the
breeze would feel like a hot flannel, and the evenings were spent in
the airless swelter of the cramped apartment he and Kate shared
with the boys.

Things had changed, since then. The dental practice had
flourished, and the apartment had long since given way to bigger and
better things. Two years before, he and Kate had moved into a new
five-bedroomed house in a good neighbourhood, with a wide, rich
green lawn where the growing brood of grandchildren could safely
play, and the early morning sunshine would shatter into miniature
rainbows in the fine spray from the water-sprinkler.

It had been on the lawn, sweating and cursing as he'd struggled to
saw off a dead branch from the big old laburnum, that he'd had the
heart attack. He'd left the saw still trapped in the tree limb and
managed to take a few faltering steps towards the house before the
pain had felled him.

In the ambulance, with an oxygen mask strapped over his face, he
had held tightly on to Kate's hand and tried to smile to reassure her.
At the hospital there had been the usual urgent ballet of medical
staff, the frantic unsheathing of needles and beeping of machines. It
had been a relief when they'd eventually fallen silent. A short time
later, after the necessary forms had been signed, the inevitable
bureaucracy that accompanies each of us from birth, Earl had been
released.

Now he was stretched out in the spring sun. He was naked, lying
on a low wooden frame that was raised off the carpet of meadow
grass and leaves. He'd been here for over a week, long enough for the
flesh to have melted away, exposing bone and cartilage under
the mummified skin. Wisps of hair still clung to the back of his skull,
from which empty eye sockets gazed at the cerulean blue sky.

I finished taking measurements and stepped out of the wire mesh
cage that protected the dentist's body from birds and rodents. I wiped
the sweat from my forehead. It was late afternoon and hot, despite
the early season. Spring was taking its time this year, the buds swollen
and heavy. In a week or two's time the display would be spectacular,
but for now the birch and maples of the Tennessee woodland still
hugged their new growth to them, as though reluctant to let go.

The hillside I was on was unremarkable enough. Scenic almost,
though less dramatic than the imposing ridges of the Smoky
Mountains that rose up in the distance. But it was an altogether
different aspect of nature that struck everyone who visited here.
Human bodies, in various stages of decay, lay all around. In the
undergrowth, out in the full sun and lying in the shade; the more
recent still bloated with decompositional gases, the older ones
desiccated to leather. Some were hidden from view, buried underground
or in car boots. Others, like the one I'd been weighing, were
covered by mesh or chain-link screens, laid out like exhibits in some
grisly art installation. Except that the purpose of this place was far
more serious. And far less public.

I put my equipment and notepad back into my bag, flexing
my hand to work the stiffness from it. A thin white line ran
across my palm where the flesh had been laid open to the bone, cleanly
bisecting the lifeline. Appropriately enough, given how the knife that
had almost ended my life the previous year had also changed it.
I lifted the bag on to my shoulder and straightened. There was
only the faintest of twinges from my stomach as I took the weight.
The scar underneath my ribs was fully healed, and in another few
weeks I'd be able to stop taking the antibiotics I'd been on constantly
for the past nine months. I'd remain prone to infection for the rest of
my life, but I counted myself lucky only to have lost a section
of intestine along with my spleen.
It was what else I'd lost that I was finding harder to come to
terms with.
Leaving the dentist to his slow decay, I skirted a body that lay
partially hidden by shrubs, this one darkened and swollen, and
followed the narrow dirt trail that meandered down through the
trees. A young black woman in grey surgical smock and trousers was
crouching by a half-hidden cadaver that was resting in the shade of a
fallen tree trunk. She was using tweezers to pick squirming larvae
from it, dropping each one into a separate screw-top jar.
'Hi,Alana,'Isaid.
She looked up and gave me a smile, tweezers poised. 'Hey, David.'
'Is Tom around?'
'Last I saw him he was down by the pads. And watch where you
step,' she called after me.'There's a district attorney in the grass down
there.'
I raised my hand in acknowledgement as I carried on down the
trail. It ran parallel to a high, chain-link fence that surrounded
the two acres of woodland. The chain-link was topped with razor
wire and screened by a second fence, this one made from timber. A
large gate was the only way in or out, on which was hung a painted
sign. In plain black letters were the words Anthropology Research
Facility, but it was better known by another, less formal name.
Most people just called it the Body Farm.

The week before, I'd stood in the tiled hallway of my London flat,
packed bags at my feet. A sweet chorus of birdsong sounded from the
pale spring dawn outside. I ran through my mental list of things I
needed to check, knowing I'd done everything already. Windows
locked, post put on hold, boiler switched off. I felt edgy and ill at ease. I was no stranger to travelling, but this was different.
This trip there wouldn't be anyone waiting for me when I came
back.
The taxi was late, but I had plenty of time to catch my flight.
Still I found myself restlessly checking my watch. A few feet from
where I stood, the black and white Victorian floor tiles caught my
eye. I looked away, but not before the Harlequin pattern prompted
the usual connection in my memory. The blood had long since been
washed off the area next to the front door, just as it had from the wall
above it. The entire hallway had been painted while I'd still been in
hospital. There was no physical reminder of what had taken place
here the previous year.
But all at once I felt claustrophobic. I carried my bags outside,
careful not to put too much strain on my stomach. The taxi pulled
up as I closed the front door. It shut behind me with a solid thunk that had a sound of finality about it. I turned away without a backward
glance and walked to where the taxi was chugging out its fug
of diesel fumes.
I took the cab only as far as the nearest tube station and caught the
Piccadilly line to Heathrow. It was too early for the morning rush,
but there were still people in the carriage, avoiding looking at each
other with the instinctive indifference of the Londoner.
I'd be glad to leave, I thought, fervently. This was the second time
in my life I'd felt the need to get away from London. Unlike the first,
when I'd fled with my life in tatters after the death of my wife and
daughter, I knew I'd be coming back. But I needed to escape for a
while, to put some distance between myself and recent events.
Besides which, I'd not worked in months. I hoped this trip would be
a way of easing me back into things again.
And of finding out if I was still up to the job.
There was no better place to find out. Until recently, the facility
in Tennessee had been unique, the only outdoor field laboratory in
the world where forensic anthropologists used real human cadavers
to study decomposition, recording the essential clues that might
point to when and how death had occurred. A similar facility had
now been set up in North Carolina, and also in Texas, once local concerns about vultures had been overcome. I'd even heard talk
about one in India.
But it didn't matter how many there might be: in most people's
minds the research facility in Tennessee was still the Body Farm. It
was in Knoxville, part of the University of Tennessee's Forensic
Anthropology Center, and I'd been lucky enough to train there early
in my career. But it had been years since my last visit. Too long, as
Tom Lieberman, its director and my old teacher, had told me.
As I sat in the departure lounge at Heathrow, watching the slow
and silent dance of aircraft through the plate glass window, I
wondered what it would be like going back. During the months of
painful recovery after I came out of hospital - and the even more
painful aftermath - the promise of the month-long trip had been
something to work towards, a badly needed fresh start.
Now I was actually on my way, for the first time I wondered if I
hadn't invested too much hope in it.
There was a two-hour stopover in Chicago before I caught my
connecting flight, and the tail end of a storm was still grumbling as
the plane landed in Knoxville. But it quickly cleared, and by the time
I'd collected my baggage the sun was starting to break through. I
breathed deeply as I left the airport terminal to collect my hire car,
enjoying the unfamiliar humidity in the air. The roads steamed,
giving off the peppery tang of wet tarmac. Against the slowly
receding blue-black of the thunderheads, the rainfall gave the greens
of the lush countryside around the highway an almost dazzling
vibrancy.
I'd felt my spirits lift as I neared the city. This is going to work.
Now, barely a week later, I was no longer so sure. I followed the
trail as it skirted a clearing in which stood a tall wooden tripod that
resembled a bare tepee frame. A body lay on a platform beneath it,
waiting to be hoisted and weighed. Leaving the trail - and remembering
Alana's warning -- I crossed the clearing to where several
rectangular pads of concrete were set into the soil, starkly geometric
in the woodland setting. Human remains were entombed in them,
part of an experiment to see how effective ground-penetrating radar
was in body location.
A tall, gangly figure in chinos and a floppy bush hat knelt a few
yards away, scowling as he examined a gauge on a length of pipe
protruding from the ground.
'How's it going?' I asked.
He didn't look up, peering through his wire-framed glasses as he
gently nudged the gauge with a finger. 'You'd think it'd be easy to
catch a smell this strong, wouldn't you?' he said by way of answer.
The flattened vowels betrayed his East Coast roots rather than the
curling southern drawl of Tennessee. For as long as I'd known him, Tom Lieberman had been searching for his own Holy Grail,
analysing the gases produced by decomposition molecule by
molecule to identify the odour of decay. Anyone who'd ever had a
mouse die under their floorboards could testify it existed, and it
continued to exist long after human senses failed to detect it. Dogs
could be trained to sniff out a cadaver years after it had been buried.
Tom theorized that it should be possible to develop a sensor that
would do much the same thing, making body location and recovery
immeasurably easier. But, as with anything else, theory and practice
were two very different things.
With a grunt that could have been either frustration or satisfaction
he stood up. 'OK, I'm done,' he said, wincing as his knee joints cracked.
'I'm heading over to the cafeteria for some lunch. Are you
coming?'
He gave a wistful smile as he packed away his equipment. 'Not
today. Mary's packed sandwiches. Chicken and beansprouts, or something
else disgustingly healthy. And before I forget, you're invited
over for dinner this weekend. She seems to have got it into her head
that you need a proper meal.' He pulled a face. 'You she wants to feed
up; me, I just get rabbit food. Where's the justice in that?' I smiled. Tom's wife was a great cook, and he knew it.'Tell her I'd
love to come. Do you want a hand with your gear?' I offered, as he
hoisted his canvas bag on to his shoulder.
'No, it's OK.'
I knew he didn't want me to exert myself. But even though we
walked slowly back to the gate I could see that the effort left him
breathless. When I'd first met Tom he'd already been well into his
fifties, happy to give encouragement to a fledgling British forensic
anthropologist. That was longer ago than I cared to remember, and
the intervening years had left their mark. We expect people to remain
as we remember them, but of course they never do. Still, I'd been
shocked at how changed Tom was when I saw him again.
He hadn't formally announced when he was stepping down as
director of the Forensic Anthropology Center, but everyone knew it
was likely to be before the end of the year. The local newspaper had
run a feature on him two weeks earlier that had read more like a
testimonial than an interview. He still looked like the basketball
player he'd once been, but encroaching age had lent a gauntness to
his already lean frame. There was a hollowness to his cheeks that,
with the receding hairline, gave him an air that was both ascetic and
worryingly frail.
But the twinkle in his eyes remained unchanged, as did his
humour and a faith in human nature that was undimmed despite a
career spent trawling through its darker side. And you're not exactly
unscathed yourself, I reflected, remembering the ugly striation of flesh
under my shirt.
Tom's station wagon was in the car park adjacent to the facility. We
paused at the gate, pulling off the protective gloves and overshoes
we'd been wearing before going out. With the barrier pulled shut
behind us, there was nothing to suggest what lay on the other side.
The trees behind the fence looked mundane and innocuous as they
rustled in the warm breeze, bare branches shading green with new
life.
Once we were in the car park I took my mobile from my pocket
and switched it back on. Although there were no rules against it, I
felt uncomfortable disturbing the peace and quiet inside the facility
with phone calls. Not that I was expecting any. The people who
might have contacted me knew I was out of the country, and the
person I most wanted to talk to wouldn't be calling.
I put the phone away as Tom opened the boot and slid his bag into
the back. He pretended not to be breathing heavily, while I pretended
not to notice.
'Give you a lift to the cafeteria?' he offered.
'No thanks, I'll walk. I need the exercise.'
'Admirable discipline. You put me to shame.' He broke off as his
phone rang. He took it out and glanced at the display. 'Sorry, got to
take this.'
Leaving him to answer it, I headed across the car park. Although
the facility was on the University of Tennessee Medical Center
campus, it was completely independent of it. Tucked away on the
wooded outskirts, it inhabited a different world. The modern buildings
and park-like green spaces of the busy hospital were bustling
with patients, students and medical staff. A nurse was laughing with
a young man in jeans on a bench; a mother was scolding a crying
child, while a businessman held an animated discussion on a mobile
phone. When I'd first come here I'd found the contrast between the
hushed decay behind the gates and the bustling normality outside
them hard to take. Now I barely noticed it.
We can grow used to almost anything, given time.
I trotted up a flight of steps and set off along the path that led to
the cafeteria, noting with satisfaction that I was breathing barely
harder than usual. I'd not gone far when I heard footsteps hurrying
behind me.
'David, wait up!'
I turned. A man about my own age and height was hurrying along
the path. Paul Avery was one of the center's rising stars, already
widely tipped as Tom's natural successor. A specialist in human
skeletal biology, his knowledge was encyclopaedic, and the big hands
and blunt fingers were as adept as any surgeon's.
'You going for lunch?' he asked, falling into step beside me. His
curly hair was almost blue-black, and a shadow of stubble already
darkened his chin. 'Mind if I join you?'
'Not at all. How's Sam?'
'She's good. Meeting Mary this morning to cruise around some of
the baby stores. I'm expecting the credit card to take a serious hit.'
I smiled. I hadn't known Paul until this trip, but both he and his
pregnant wife Sam had gone out of their way to make me welcome.
She was nearly at full term with their first child, and while Paul did
his best to appear blase about it, Sam made no attempt to hide her
excitement.
'Glad I saw you,' he went on.'One of my PhD students has gotten
engaged, so a few of us are going downtown tonight to celebrate. It'll
be pretty relaxed, just dinner and a few drinks. Why don't you come
along?'
I hesitated. I appreciated the offer, but the thought of going out with a group of strangers didn't appeal.
'Sam'll be going, and Alana, so you'll know some people there,'
Paul added, seeing my reluctance. 'C'mon, it'll be fun.'
I couldn't think of a reason to say no.'Well . . . OK, then. Thanks.'
'Great. I'll pick you up at your hotel at eight.'
A car horn honked from the road nearby. We looked back to see
Tom's station wagon pulling up to the kerb. Winding down the
window he beckoned us over.
'I just got a call from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
They've found a body in a mountain cabin out near Gatlinburg.
Sounds interesting. If you're not busy, Paul, I thought you might want
to come out with me and take a look?'
Paul shook his head. 'Sorry, I'm tied up all afternoon. Can't one of
your graduate students help out?'
'They could, I suppose.' Tom turned to me, a sparkle of excitement
in his eyes. Even before he spoke I knew what he was going to say.
'How about you, David? Care to do a little field work?'
The highway out of Knoxville streamed with slow-moving traffic.
Even this early in the year it was warm enough to need the car's air
conditioning. Tom had programmed the satnav to guide us when we
reached the mountains, but for the moment we hardly needed it. He
hummed quietly to himself as he drove, a sign I'd come to recognize
as anticipation. For all the grim realism of the facility, the individuals
who'd bequeathed their bodies there had all died natural deaths.This
was different.
This was the real thing.
'So it looks like murder?' Homicide, I corrected myself. It was a safe
bet, otherwise the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation wouldn't be
involved. TheTBI was a single-state version of the FBI, for whom Tom
was a badge-carrying consultant. If the call had come from them rather
than a local police department, then chances were that this was serious.