Simon Beckett - 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.

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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.