The Grave Tattoo

Jane reached for her bag. ‘Then I might be back here begging.’

Professor Elliott gave her a sharp look. ‘I do hope not. I don’t want your record looking like that of someone who is not committed to the department. One never knows when cuts will be demanded.’

It was, Jane thought as she walked down the dingy corridor, the nearest she was ever likely to get to a wholehearted endorsement from Maggie Elliott. It wasn’t exactly an enthusiastic encouragement to get cracking and find what she was looking for, but it was a damn sight better than nothing.

Dusk had already fallen over the towering fells and dark waters of the Lake District when the hearse pulled up at the discreet rear entrance of Keswick Memorial Hospital. The doors swung open to reveal a black body bag on a hospital trolley, a porter at one end. River Wilde supervised the loading of the precious cargo into the hearse then arranged to meet the undertaker’s men back at the funeral parlour.

We make a pretty strange cortege, she thought to herself as she eased the bulk of her Land Rover out of its car park space and into the wake of the hearse. Talk about the odd couple. A body with no one to mourn it and a forensic anthropologist who wants to steal all its secrets. A limo and a Landie. Hell, I could just have loaded the body in the back and not bothered the guys from Gibson’s.

It would have been much simpler to have left the body in situ at the hospital, but the administration had been adamant that their mortuary was for the use of the recently dead, not those who had been in the ground long before the hospital had even been dreamed of. She had reminded them that they had already agreed to rent her time on their equipment, which would mean bringing the body back, ‘like a large and inconvenient parcel,’ but they were not to be moved. Unlike Pirate Peat, as she had privately dubbed him. She wondered if that was the sort of human touch the TV team would appreciate.

She was feeling pretty pleased with herself. An hour before, Phil Toner had called to say he had decided to go ahead with the project. A researcher would be with her in the morning to discuss the schedule and arrange filming. Not only that, but they’d also accepted her figures at face value and agreed to the fee she’d suggested. She pulled a rueful face. ‘You sold yourself too cheap, girl,’ she muttered under her breath. But at least she would be able to afford all the techniques required to paint the fullest picture possible of her mystery man. It was an unusual luxury, since the practical side of her job normally involved the minimum required to identify human remains. Mostly, her work was about bringing closure to the living; the relatives of soldiers, of civilians lost in massacres, of victims of natural catastrophe, of climbers lost on mountains, of bodies buried in shallow graves. Identity was all. This, however, would be a different matter altogether. This was about unravelling one man’s story. Identification would be a bonus.

She followed the hearse into the car park behind the imposing Victorian villa that housed Gibson’s Funeral Services and waited patiently while the men shifted the body on to a trolley then wheeled it inside to the embalming room. According to Andrew Gibson, the thirty-something great-great-grandson of the first Gibson, it had been installed when the house had been built in 1884 and little had changed since except for the installation of more modern plumbing. The walls were white, brick-shaped tiles, the faint craquelure of age lending them warmth. The embalming tables were solid mahogany, their original ceramic liners replaced with stainless steel. The counter-tops and the cabinets were all of the same wood. Through their glass doors she could see beakers and measuring columns that could have dated from the same era. It wasn’t hard to imagine men in wing collars and frock coats going about their business with the dead inside these four walls. River had loved this place the minute she’d clapped eyes on it. She just knew the TV team were going to feel the same. It would, she hoped, feel like a Sherlock Holmes drama, only for real.

The men loaded their burden on to one of the tables. River slowly unzipped the bag and exposed the body to the air. She gazed down at the stained skin, the wizened limbs and the dark hair and tried to conjure up a picture of what he must have looked like in life. Once those legs had carried him over the tracks of the fells; once, she wouldn’t mind betting, they had held his balance on the pitching deck of a sailing ship. Those arms had raised sail, climbed rigging, spliced ropes. They had held other warm bodies. That mouth had kissed as well as eaten, spoken as well as drunk. He had been a living, breathing human, just like her. Now it was her job to make him come alive all over again.

Three hundred miles away, Jane was wolfing a generous bowl of spaghetti in Trattoria Guido with Dan and Harry. The restaurant was Dan’s discovery; he’d found it tucked away in an alley off a side street near the university. It looked as if nothing had changed inside since the 1970s–checked red-and-white tablecloths, guttered candles stuck in Chianti bottles, badly executed murals of Sorrento all gave it that time-warp feel. The menu, too, had been untouched by culinary fashion. A diner would look in vain for balsamic vinegar, sundried tomatoes, mozzarella di bufala or rocket. Here, the staples were spaghetti, penne and tagliatelle, the favoured sauces Bolognese, carbonara, arrabbiata and marinara. But the food was tasty, the portions vast and the prices low, so it had clung to its clientele of office workers and the kind of students who favoured content over form. Jane ate there at least twice a week.

Harry spoke through a mouthful of lasagne. ‘Can’t believe Missy Elliott swallowed your tale, Jane. From what Dan’s said about her, I thought she was tough as old boots.’

‘She is,’ Dan said. ‘But she’s smart enough to want to be on board if Jane turns out to be on the money. So, Jane, what’s our plan of action?’

‘Start at the beginning,’ she said. ‘You’re teaching tomorrow and I’m going back to the Lakes to talk to Anthony Catto at the Wordsworth Trust to see if any other uncatalogued material has turned up lately. Meanwhile you can have a damn good look at the Wordsworth family tree and check out John’s descendants. The last thing we know about whatever it was that Mary found among William’s papers is that she sent it to John. For all I know, somebody in the family could have been sitting on it for the last hundred and fifty years.’

‘As if,’ Harry muttered.

‘Harry, this is a family that managed to keep William’s French lover and their illegitimate daughter secret for a hundred and twenty years,’ Jane pointed out. ‘There is no other poet in English literary history who made such a fetish out of the creation of his own image, and his family went along with that one hundred per cent. Nothing was ever said or done to contradict William’s picture of himself, even when that meant turning a blind eye to the most glaring omissions. The Prelude is an astonishing poetic achievement, but it’s also an early example of outrageous spin doctoring. It was Dorian Grey in reverse–the more time stripped William of his youth and powers, the more glossy The Prelude became.’

‘She’s right, you know,’ Dan said, filling up their glasses with Guido’s strong red wine that came to table without a label. ‘Wordsworth’s compulsive remaking of his life is one of the reasons why I think Jane might really be on to something. Of all the writers I can think of, Wordsworth is probably the only one capable of writing a major work only to decide nobody gets to see it because the circumstances of its composition reflect badly on him.’

‘Even so, you’d think somebody down the years would have been tempted to cash in on it, if it exists.’ Harry pushed his plate away, defeated by the final slab of pasta and meat.

‘Not this family,’ Jane said. ‘Reputation, reputation, reputation. It should be carved on their coat of arms.’

‘And you’re the woman to break the silence, Jane,’ Dan said confidently. ‘Now, where are we going to celebrate your mission?’

‘I was going to go home and pack.’

Dan made a dismissive noise. ‘Jane, Jane, what are we going to do with you?’

‘You’re getting middle-aged,’ Harry confirmed. ‘Dan’s right, we should go out on the razz.’

Jane groaned. ‘Oh, all right. But I’m not dancing till dawn like the last time. I’m going to turn into a pumpkin at midnight, and that is a promise.’

Three hours later, they were leaving a Soho pub, en route to a nearby club, tipsy but in control. The same could not be said of Geno Marley, whose senses quickened to alert when he heard the front door of the Marshpool Farm flat whisper open.

Tenille’s luck had just run out.

My friend fears for his safety, as who would not in his position. If he is taken, he will be hanged. Little doubt attends that. Although many years have passed since the sensational case of the mutiny on the Bounty & although few think of Captain Bligh now Admiral Nelson’s name is on the lips of all, there are still many who would smile even as the hangman slipped his noose over that tanned & sinewy neck. ‘Are we safe here from prying eyes?’ he asked. I told him that the garden at Dove Cottage is left to my exclusive use when I am working. There is what we call the New Door that gives on to the passageway, but none comes through it when they know I am at work. The garden itself is protected from the idle curiosity of passers-by with its thicket of rambling roses & honeysuckle. We are as isolate here as if we were on the very summit of Helvellyn.

8 (#u86e8445f-01f0-5922-83c2-7bb42df83cf0)

The banging, Jane slowly realised, was coming from outside her head. She growled in her throat as she tried to force her eyelids open. ‘Slapper,’ she berated herself, realising she’d fallen into bed without bothering to take off her make-up. She rubbed her lashes free of mascara and groaned. She pushed herself into a sitting position, wishing immediately that she hadn’t done so. Her stomach roiled and an acid burp joined the staleness in her mouth in an evil brew. There was a pain in her sinuses and, inexplicably, her legs ached when she tried to move them.

Somehow, she dragged herself out of bed and lurched for the door, snatching at her dressing gown as she passed. She wrestled with the arms, calling, ‘OK, OK, I’m coming,’ to whoever was trying to break her door down. The sound of her own raised voice made her wince. Jane unfastened the locks and chain securing the door and yanked it open. ‘What the hell…’ she began, but found herself addressing empty air as Tenille pushed past her and dived into the front room. Jane rubbed a hand over her face. It didn’t make anything clearer. With a sigh, she closed the door and followed Tenille.

Jane leaned in the doorway for support and took in the picture of frightened misery curled in the bean bag. ‘Before you open your mouth, Tenille, I need to tell you that I have the hangover from hell. So this better be good.’

Tenille shivered and pushed a knuckle into her mouth. Jane could see her teeth biting down hard on it. It took her a moment to figure it out in her messed-up state, but eventually she realised the child was fighting tears with every ounce of strength she possessed. That was shock enough to restore Jane to something approximating a normal state of awareness. In all the time she’d known Tenille, she’d seen her angry, frustrated, smarting under injustice, defiant and outraged. She’d never seen her anywhere near the verge of tears. She’d also never seen her look so young. Her eyes were wide, but the rest of her face seemed to have shrunk round the bones. The prettiness that threatened future beauty was in abeyance, replaced with a taut fragility.

Jane crossed the room and squatted down next to Tenille. She put a cautious arm round her shoulder. Physical contact wasn’t something they did usually, but she’d worried needlessly. Tenille slumped against her, body rigid. Jane said nothing, just let her free hand rhythmically stroke the girl’s arm. Then suddenly the barriers broke. Tenille burrowed into her side like a lamb butting up against its mother and the crying began. It started as a quiet weeping, then rose to a desperate, gulping sobbing that shook them both under its force.

Jane felt completely at a loss. She couldn’t remember any adolescent trauma that had reduced her to this state. She’d shed her share of tears, but never in this abandoned, helpless way. She found herself mouthing the traditional platitudes–‘there, there,’ and ‘it’s OK, Tenille, you’re OK with me.’ But they seemed helpless against this tide of anguish.

At last, the terrible sobs subsided and Tenille pulled away, wiping her eyes and nose with the back of her hand. Her eyelids were swollen and she was breathing hard through her mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said thickly.

‘It’s OK. That’s what friends are for,’ Jane said, despising herself for finding nothing but cliché. ‘You want to tell me what all that was about?’

Tenille looked away. ‘You was out last night,’ she said accusingly. ‘I came round, but you was out.’

‘I went clubbing with some friends,’ Jane said.

‘So I went back down the flat. I didn’t want to, because I knew he’d be there, but you was out so I didn’t have no choice.’

‘Who was there?’ Jane wondered if the drink had induced short-term memory loss. She seemed to be missing crucial logical steps in the conversation.

‘Geno.’ Tenille spat the word as if trying to rid her mouth of a bad taste.

‘Sharon’s boyfriend?’ The cold hand of apprehension took hold of Jane’s chest.

‘Sharon’s fucking bastard boyfriend.’

Oh shit, oh no, oh shit. ‘Wasn’t Sharon there?’

‘Sharon’s on nights. She says he has to stay over to make sure nothing bad happens to me.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘She’s too fucking stupid to see he’s the bad thing waiting to happen.’

Jane rubbed her back. ‘Has he been…bothering you?’

‘He looks at me. You know?’

Jane knew. ‘What else?’ She dreaded the answer.

‘He’s said things, when Sharon’s out the room. How he likes sweet young flesh, that sort of shit talk. Man, I knew he was just waiting his time till she was on nights.’

‘What happened, Tenille?’

She began picking compulsively at the zip on her jacket. ‘First couple of nights, he was pissed and passed out on the sofa. But last night he was waiting. Soon as I came through the door, there he was, standing in the doorway, undoing his trousers.’ She shuddered. ‘Told me it was time I tasted some real loving.’ Her lip curled in contempt. ‘Bastard. I tried to get back out the door, but he was too fast. He grabbed my arm and dragged me into the living room and threw me down on the sofa.’ She shook her head, as if to shake off the memory. ‘Then he got his cock out. Man, I never been so scared my whole life. I thought for sure he was going to rape me. Then I realise he wants me to blow him. Just the fucking idea made me want to throw up. So I grabbed the lamp off the table and I smashed him over the head with it.’