Grave Secrets Read online

  There were no fireworks, no eerie mist and no organ music. She just lay back down and closed her eyes and I watched the damp salt leach away as though it had been sucked into the tiles.

  Wills was taking notes on a little lined pad. I thought he was wise not to commit his thoughts to electronic media. He looked up when he had finished.

  “I owe you.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome, bro.”

  He paused. I knew what he was going to say. He just couldn’t help it.

  “Do you want to have another go at Jane?”

  Ah, Jane Doe. His nickname for the morgue’s longest-standing resident. She had been in a refrigeration unit for three months. She had been stabbed, and then beheaded, and her hands cut off. Her corpse had been dumped behind a disused grain silo and only found some weeks after her death. Her head and hands had never been recovered. My brother’s team had no ID, no fingerprints, no motive, no murder weapon and absolutely no idea who had killed her or why. And they couldn’t stand it. Wills had brought me here on several Sundays when it was quiet, but it was no good. I didn’t know her name… so I couldn’t raise her.

  My brother had told me that in years gone by, police called unidentified male corpses John Doe, and the women Jane. They still do in parts of America, but these days in England a serial number is more common. Still, Jane Doe they had nicknamed her, and so she would remain until we found out who the hell she was and why someone had thought it worthwhile to kill her and mutilate her body so badly.

  “I’ll have another go, Wills, but honestly, I can’t see it working.”

  “Try? Please just try. For me…”

  “Alright, you win. But cover her up for me. I’m not looking at that again.”

  He walked to the rack of extra cold cabinets and slid Jane’s drawer out. I carefully looked anywhere else while he covered what was left of her with a sheet. Then I drew my third circle of the night, spraying it until it glistened. I jabbed my trusty pin into my thumb—ouch, thank you very much, brother of mine—and added a dozen drops of blood. And then I tried to summon her. It’s not easy to describe, but without a name there’s nothing to grab, nothing to catch; it’s like trying to knit with fog. I was scrabbling around in a big, dark place and getting nowhere. I could feel her, a little softer than the last time. With a name I knew I could have done it. Without? It wasn’t going to happen. After a few minutes I shook my head.

  “Not tonight, Josephine.”

  He looked resigned.

  “Thanks for trying. I just hate the thought that whoever did that to her is out there, scot free, and could do it again.”

  I patted his arm.

  “I know; me too.”

  “Thanks Toni. I feel we haven’t done enough, you know. Not you, but us here. There’ve been so many missing persons recently—you would know all about that because of Benson Hood and stuff…”

  I didn’t mean to interrupt him, but I failed to stifle the world’s biggest ever yawn.

  “Listen, bro, it’s nearly dawn, I haven’t been to bed yet and I’ve got a big day ahead of me.”

  “You head off home. I’ll clear up here and close up.”

  As I went, he was sweeping up salt and perfume. No summoning and no banishment, so it lay where I had scattered it. I walked back through the poorly lit building, unlocked my car and drove home. I cleaned my teeth and went to bed in my clothes. I hoped my makeup would rub off on the pillow. It usually did.

  Chapter Two

  I WAS SLUMPED asleep at my desk, drooling gently onto my keyboard when my boss Bernie wandered in through the glass entrance door to the office and slammed it loudly. I sat up with a jerk, and he looked amused.

  “God almighty, you look like death warmed up. Did you go eleven rounds with a bottle of vodka and a kebab?”

  I scraped a handful of tangles out of the way. God blessed me with pale English skin that burns under bright candlelight and curly tangerine-coloured hair that tangles when you are asleep. And when you are awake. And probably when you are dead. That morning it had a head start on me as I hadn’t been conscious enough to find a brush. I squinted at Bernie. He looked horribly awake and was wearing a rather grim mustard-coloured shirt with his usual navy suit. That morning, he had paired them with a tie featuring a selection of nubile women who had apparently given up lingerie for Lent one year and never got back into the habit.

  “I wish I’d done anything that much fun,” I told him. “That’s a really repulsive tie. Did you wake me up for anything in particular, or just because you’re a sadistic tosser?”

  “Mostly the latter, but if you can work this evening, I’ll let you go home and sleep the rest of the day?”

  “This evening? Have we finally picked up a vampire client?”

  “We have—or rather you have. He asked for you by name.”

  “That’s so exciting. God, I need coffee. But I don’t know any vampires. And don’t they all use Cadwallader & Penstone in Rugeley?”

  “They did, but the entire firm burnt to the ground last week in a mysterious case of spontaneous litigious combustion. Come on, you must know at least one?”

  I thought about it.

  “There is one, actually. Old Farmer Hugh from the Black Mitre.”

  “Your watering hole? You have a resident vampire?”

  “Yes, but don’t tell anyone. He’s been drinking there for years, long before the Heidelberg Accord, but no one realised. Since the Accord, he’s kind of come out, but he’s quite shy. Maybe he recommended me?”

  “Maybe. Anyway, if you can make a house call after the sun goes down, I’ll let you go home and pour Alka Seltzer down your throat.”

  “I wasn’t drinking.”

  “Of course you weren’t. And this tie isn’t sexist. Offer holds…”

  “Done. Done. I’ll work tonight instead. Give me the details.”

  He handed me a scrumple of paper. Our office often had ambitious plans to meet the modern age halfway, but they’d usually faded by lunchtime.

  “Can you be there by eight? He probably wants a house with extensive cellars…”

  “Ha ha. But yes, I will.”

  “Thanks. And Toni…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Brush your hair.”

  I made a helpful hand signal at him, one which I hoped gave general directions on how I felt he should spend the next hour or two. He smirked and promised to try.

  I didn’t hate Bernie, and he wasn’t actually the worst boss in the world. But our relationship had soured at the Christmas party, when he was newly single having split up with my friend Helen, and I was newly drunk, having consumed two bottles of champagne on an empty stomach. We had spent one of those hideously memorable nights together that both parties would rather forget, which hit a low point—after some sub-average shagging—when he suggested I should spank him. Lacking the sobriety needed for a really cutting response, I threw up on him instead. Two days later he got back together with Helen and they promptly got engaged.

  I wasn’t traditionally lucky in my choice of men. In the last term of school, my best friend Lawrence and I had decided that as we had failed to persuade anyone we actually fancied to help us lose our respective virginities, we would shed them together. Our resolution had culminated in a truly disappointing and rather gynaecological evening, during which the only fireworks that had gone off were at the golf club dinner next door. A week later, he came out, and shortly after moved in with a personal trainer called Hector.

  Not my finest hours, either of them. Actually, scratch that. On neither occasion had the shenanigans come close to lasting an hour. Welcome to my world. Aged eighteen, I drove my best friend gay and a decade later drove my boss into the arms of his ex. It wouldn’t be so bad if those events marked the low point of an illustrious career, but honestly… they were about par for the course. As I said, not great taste in men.

  But Bernie had made me a generous offer, and I jumped at it. I tucked the paper in my handbag and drove home. I made a cursory search for the hairbrush, assured it we had an appointment later, and flung myself under the eiderdown.

  When I woke later, the sun had a way still to go on its journey to the horizon. I took a leisurely bath, dried and plaited my hair, painted both finger and toenails a summery shade of gold, and added a few layers of lipstick and mascara. I tugged on black boots and a neon-green jumper—I called it a dress, but then I’m only five foot in my stockinged feet—and hunted around the bathroom floor until I found the address. It was less formal than expected, and written in our receptionist Bethany’s spidery script: “Please ask Ms Windsor to come to the Black Mitre,” it read. “Hugh will introduce us. Oscar Wolsey.” There was a mobile phone number at the bottom.

  It’s nice to get paid for going to your local. I walked the half mile through the village instead of driving. Colton isn’t the smallest village in the shire—it has a shop and three pubs—but it’s fair to say that nowhere is more than walking distance. I’d lived in the village all my life. The house had been my grandfather’s, and when he died, I’d stayed. Wills had already moved out by then, and was living in police accommodation. I don’t know how many people live in the house they grew up in, but in the heart of middle England, it’s not uncommon.

  The Black Mitre had never been much of a pub: one bar with a couple of ales on tap. If you wanted lager, it came in bottles. One night they might shock patrons and upgrade from pork scratchings to crisps, but I wasn’t holding my breath. Its unchanging nature was probably what had attracted Hugh to the place. He came every evening and nursed a lone glass of brandy. For literally decades everyone assumed the sunglasses were due to a sight impediment, and somehow no one noticed he’d been sitting at the
same table for more than seventy years, outliving four publicans, two breweries and three name changes as the Black Mitre became the Golden Boar and the New Inn before reverting back to form. He was lucky the table had lasted, but those old Singer treadles can weather the odd bar brawl without buckling. But tonight, for the first time in all the years I had been drinking there, he wasn’t sitting alone.

  I had chatted with farmer Hugh Bonner over a pint of Old Badger more than once, but our conversations had never run past general pleasantries and observations on the weather. We were English after all. Tonight, though, he stood up and very civilly shook my hand.

  “Miss Windsor, good you came.”

  His hand was ice cold. Of course it was. I looked up at his face, gently lined under white hair. He wore his sunglasses, as he always had. These days, though, I understood why.

  “You’re very welcome, Mr Bonner.”

  “Just Hugh is fine.”

  “Then you’re very welcome, Hugh. And in that case, you must call me Toni.”

  He nodded gruffly. He intrigued me, this man who’d been gifted eternal life but had only ever wanted the simple one that he already knew. A farmer to the core, he must have found it bewildering only to be able to watch his flocks at night. Yet he’d persisted. The decades had grown old around him, but he still ploughed his lands and raised his livestock.

  “Well then, Toni lass, this is Oscar.”

  At this, Oscar turned to look at me—and I almost wished he hadn’t because after that I found it very difficult to concentrate on anything at all. He was one of the best-looking men I’d ever met, and exactly my type. He had straight, pale gold hair, not cut too short, and the vivid blue eyes that are the giveaway of vampires—an almost unreal cerulean hue, the blue favoured by eyeliner manufacturers in the 1980s or graphic designers who Photoshop sea views for travel agents. He was tall and built like an athlete, with broad shoulders and slim hips, shown off well by black cotton chinos and a crisp white shirt. No tie, but cufflinks. I love cufflinks. I tried to look professional and not drool.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Windsor,” he said.

  He had a lovely light baritone voice with deliciously English vowels, and a rather formal way of speaking.

  “Toni, please,” I said on autopilot. “Everyone calls me Toni.”

  “Toni, then. But it’s still a pleasure. And you must call me Oscar.”

  I blushed. I actually blushed. Oh my gosh, for the first time in months I had met a man who could make me glow… and he was a vampire. Way to go.

  They did the very English thing of standing up until I sat down, standing up again when I went to the loo, and then insisting on getting me a drink before we could actually all three of us sit down together. I took a gulp of my beer and a bite of my pork scratchings, and attempted to remember why I was in the pub in the first place.

  “So, Oscar, what is it that I can do for you?”

  He raised an eyebrow, and I laughed. He was as charming as he was scenic.

  “Forgive my levity, Toni. You’re not quite what I expected when Hugh said he knew an estate agent. I’d pictured a dapper little gentleman in a chequered suit carrying a briefcase.”

  “And it’s clear I have never owned a briefcase?”

  “I have my doubts that you own a suit.”

  He was right. I didn’t.

  “Whereas you, I can tell, own many suits. Some of them black tie.”

  “Touché. I even have a white tie one left over from a visit to America.”

  “Do you have…” I left it open.

  “No. I do not have a full-length black cape lined with scarlet silk. Nor do I play the organ.”

  I snorted into my beer. Oscar rolled his eyes. Hugh sat back and watched us with some amusement.

  “But seriously, Toni, I’m moving into the area and I intend to stay. Since the Accord, we vampires can openly hold property.” He gave me a quirked eyebrow. “We no longer have to produce a fake heir every thirty years or so and pretend to be our own grandchildren.”

  “Have you actually done that?”

  “More than once.”

  “So—a two bed semi in Castletown?”

  “Not exactly. I am looking for a rural property…”

  I interrupted: “…with extensive cellars.”

  “As you say.” He looked a little embarrassed. “But no need for turrets full of bats. Or gargoyles.”

  “Not at all—I’m sorry I teased you. And I’m delighted to help you. But don’t you all use Cadwallader & Penstone?”

  “We... I should say, the vampire community... have had an affiliation with the firm, it’s true. But recent events have changed that.”

  “If you don’t like my bill, will our office mysteriously burn to the ground too?”

  “I assure you, disagreements over your hourly rate will not incur violent penalties.”

  Hang on, was he… Oh he was. He was almost definitely flirting with me. I batted my lashes hopefully.

  “You promise, Oscar, that you won’t be trying to light any fires at the humble premises of Bean & Heron?”

  “I promise you, Toni, the only flame I plan to kindle is in your heart.”

  OK, full on flirting. I suppressed the urge to fling myself on him and took notes. He wanted somewhere remote, stone built, ideally walled… it was quite a long wish list. Not that I would have a problem finding places that fitted the bill. People forget just how old the villages of rural Staffordshire are. You’d find more than one pub in the county claiming to have been in business since the 1100s, and almost every village had houses dating from the 1500s and 1600s. I could find him a dozen old walled manor houses with acres of cellars by throwing darts into an ordnance survey map. These days, I had to wonder how many of them had already been snapped up by the fanged brigade.

  We filled in a few forms and I noticed what beautiful cursive handwriting he had. My own looks like the mating ritual of the rare Amazon ink dancing spider, but he kindly didn’t mention it.

  “What’s brought you to Staffordshire, Oscar?” I asked, mostly to get him to speak again so that I could drown in his lovely voice. “Do you have family here?”

  “As it happens, I have no living relatives.”

  “No living relatives… how old are you?” It slipped out before I could gag myself with my own pork scratchings wrapper. Thankfully, he seemed amused.

  “Older than you, Toni.”

  In for a penny:

  “Are you too old to enjoy parties?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Would you like to go with me to my work party tomorrow night?”

  He didn’t miss a beat.

  “I would like that more than life itself.”

  Which was slick, but given that he was already dead, I decided not to read too much into it.

  “Thank you. You’ll probably regret it but I’m not going to tell you that in case you change your mind. It’s a grim industry event with a free bar, dodgy canapés and a local band.”

  “Well, I’ve spoken to your boss, remember. If we can avoid him all evening, that would probably be best.”

  I looked at my hands, terribly happy for some reason to discover that that my varnish was perfect. I looked back up at him to find him smiling. He had a smile that set my pulse racing.

  “And if you give me your address, Toni, I’ll pick you up a little after sunset.”

  “Thank you.”

  I wrote it down carefully on a beer mat and gave it to him, and he made a little show of tucking it carefully in his pocket. My heart, which was already somewhat gooey, melted a little further. Then he stood up and nodded to Hugh, who had not appeared to mind playing gooseberry to our flirting.

  “Hugh, thank you for arranging this evening. Toni, I will see you tomorrow. A very good evening to you both.”

  And he left. I watched his elegant figure shrug on a soft-looking wool coat, and stride out of the bar. Maybe I emitted a little sigh. I didn’t mean to. At some point I would have to ask my moral compass if it was OK to date dead people, but I wasn’t sure I’d drunk enough beer for that.

  I looked at Hugh shyly.

  “It was very generous of you to recommend me,” I said. “I appreciate it.”

  “You’re welcome, lass. You’ve a kind heart yourself, you know. You made no big fuss, but I did see it—how you still made me welcome, even after you knew what I was. Few were as quick, and there are plenty of folk who still won’t speak my name.”