‘How many more did he kill? How long was he at it?’
‘Managed a good six feet down at the pig farm. It’s—’
The van’s sliding door rattled open, letting in a gust of wind that set jackets and paperwork and takeaway menus rustling.
‘Shut the door!’
Steel clambered in. ‘What did you think I was going to do? Sit here with it open?’ She hauled it closed with a thunk and collapsed into a seat. Sat there with her arms held out to her sides. ‘Freezing, sogging-wet, buggering horrorfest...’
Hardie made a little groaning noise. ‘Let me guess: Detective Sergeant Steel?’
She cupped her hands and blew into them. ‘Should’ve brought a thermos of coffee with us.’ Then she leaned forward and thumped Logan on the arm. ‘Why didn’t you think of that, you’re supposed to be in charge!’
Logan hit her back. ‘Get off me! And there’s a kettle in the equipment rack — plug it into the cigarette lighter and make yourself useful for a change. I’ll have a tea.’
She rolled her eyes, flipped him the Vs, then stood and slouched away down the van. ‘What did your last slave die of?’
Logan shifted the phone to his other ear. ‘Sorry about that. Look: we haven’t got definitive proof DI Bell killed anyone yet.’
‘Do you really think that matters? I know he did it, you know he did it, everyone and their bookie’s dog knows he did it.’
‘Yes. But...’ Logan sighed. ‘I worked with him for ten years and till we found his body in that car... A killer? I wouldn’t have believed you.’
‘Me neither.’
Steel made a show of hauling the kettle out of its rack, banging and clanging her way up the van clutching it and a two-litre bottle of mineral water.
‘Any ideas for motive?’
‘Maybe this is why he had to fake his own death? Something gets out of hand and next thing he’s got a dead body to get rid of.’
‘Buried six feet down where no one would ever find it.’
Steel filled the kettle with mineral water, then stuck it on the floor, jamming the adapter into the cigarette lighter slot like she was performing a vigorous sex act.
‘Until Bell discovers the Western Peripheral Route is going to stick a slip road right through the middle of his secret graveyard.’
She set it on to boil. ‘Where’s the teabags?’
‘I’m on the phone!’
‘Gah...’ Steel stomped off down the van again.
‘Post mortem?’
‘Knowing Isobel? Tomorrow morning? Maybe? If we’re lucky? Won’t find out for sure till she gets here.’ Logan tried for a smile. ‘At least we’ve got a body for her this time.’
That had to count for something.
Four spotlights lit up the marquee’s insides like a bright summer’s day. The effect was slightly spoiled by the big diesel generator roaring away in the corner, the stench of rotten flesh, the five figures in white SOC outfits, the dug-up heather, the waterlogged shallow grave, and the muddy peat floor, but other than that it was indistinguishable from a fortnight in Torremolinos.
Actually, scratch that. The one and only time Logan had been to Torremolinos, there had been shallow graves and dead bodies too. No one ever put that kind of thing in the brochures, though, did they?
Polly and Charlie were stuffing the dying heather plants into bags, while Shirley squatted at the side of the grave, looking up at Isobel. All of them glowing like aliens in the spotlights.
Logan stepped closer. Stared down into the grave.
A man-shaped mass of yellowy-white fat glistened at the bottom of the hole, liberally smeared with earth, peat, and mud. A lard golem.
‘Well?’ He pointed at the remains.
Isobel put her hands on her hips. ‘At least you’ve actually got a body for me this time.’
‘Yeah, I said that.’
She frowned at him.
‘Never mind.’
‘You’re extremely lucky I got here as quickly as I did. If it wasn’t for a fatal stabbing in Insch, you’d still be waiting.’
‘We need an ID soon as possible.’ Logan pointed. ‘Any chance...?’
‘You want me to do a post mortem today? On a Sunday evening?’
‘That would certainly help.’
Isobel stared into the grave for a bit. Then sighed. ‘All right, but I shall expect time off in lieu.’ She snapped her fingers at Shirley. ‘Get the remains bagged and back to the mortuary ASAP.’ Then she turned and swept from the marquee, leaving the tent flaps billowing behind her.
Shirley waited till Isobel was definitely out of earshot. ‘I hope your arse falls off, you rancid lump of yuck.’ She patted the adipose-encrusted remains with a purple-gloved hand. ‘No offence.’
32
Sally grips the steering wheel tighter, like that’s going to stop her hands shaking. Eases off the accelerator as the village limits glow in her headlights: ‘LYNE OF SKENE ~ PLEASE DRIVE SLOWLY’.
‘The Happy Pirate Jamboree’ bounces out of the CD player. Aiden’s favourite. His little face beamed every time she put it on and they’d sing along to the adventures of Captain Wonkybeard and his silly crew.
‘There was panic on the poop deck, as the Kraken he awoke,
Wrapped his tentacles around the ship, and the captain: he got soaked.’
Sally tries to join in... but it’s not the same without Aiden.
Nothing is.
She takes a left at the junction, past a row of small cottages and some new-build homes, lights shining from their windows as their occupants settled in for a nice Sunday evening in front of the television.
Out through the limits, into the countryside and darkness again.
A breath shudders out of her: sharp and painful.
She’s doing the right thing. For Aiden. It doesn’t matter how bad she feels about it, or how guilty — this is what she has to do to get her baby boy back.
She glances in the rear-view mirror, past the red-eyed woman in there with the big square of sticking plaster on her bruised forehead and the long curly blonde wig, to the Shogun’s boot. Separated from the rear seats by a heavy-duty dog grille, the boot cover pulled all the way across so no one can see what she’s got in there. ‘Not long now, I promise.’
Not long...
A track leads away into the woods — the junction marked by a teddy bear cable-tied to a tree...
Sally slows at the junction and stares at it. It’s different to the one in Skemmel Woods, but it means the same thing. Only this time she’s complicit.
And it’s too late to turn back now.
So she pulls onto the track, the engine growling as the Shogun rolls and bounces through the potholes, water rearing up over the wheel arches even though she’s keeping the speed down so Becky won’t get thrown around in the boot.
Deeper into the woods, headlights dragging trees from the darkness, before letting them fade away. Past the looming hulk of a collapsed metal structure. Past piles of logs and a thicket of brambles. Eyes glittering in the woods to either side, their owners lurking beyond the headlights’ reach.
Deeper.
A ruined cottage emerges from the gloom up ahead, sagging at the side of the road. No roof left, the windows nothing more than ragged sockets in the building’s skull. Walls smeared with moss and streaked with rain. A garden in front of it choked with weeds: brambles, bracken, docken, and the grey-brown spears of rosebay willowherb. Like something out of a Brothers Grimm tale.