Dead People. Ewart Hutton

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СКАЧАТЬ your wife yesterday.’

      He held up his forearms, showing me the uterine gloop and iodine on them to let me know that we wouldn’t be shaking hands. ‘She mentioned it. So what can we do for you this early in the morning?’

      ‘I’d like to borrow that, if I could,’ I said, nodding in its direction.

      He looked puzzled. ‘Borrow what?’

      ‘That.’ I pointed this time. ‘The tractor.’

      He flashed me an anxious look.

      ‘It’s for official business,’ I explained reassuringly.

      ‘That’s an old bugger, we just use it as a yard scraper. We can spare you a newer one if you need a tractor.’

      We walked up to the tractor. It was old and grey and had a metal seat covered with dusty sacking. But it was the hydraulic attachment with the wide bucket at the front that had caught my attention.

      ‘This is exactly what I need,’ I said, tapping the bucket with my foot.

      He looked at me dubiously. ‘Would you know how to use that?’

      ‘No.’ I smiled at him. ‘But I think I know a man who would.’

      Driving the tractor was like perching on top of a giant crab with a grudge. It buckled and scuttled and slewed up the track, while I bounced up and down on the metal seat that acted on my backside like a solid trampoline.

      And it made a big, unhappy noise. So much so, that by the time I rounded the last bend, Jeff and Donnie were outside the huts watching anxiously for whatever was coming their way. And their faces didn’t exactly break out into great big smiles of relief when they saw that it was only me.

      ‘What the fuck is that?’ Donnie yelled.

      I killed the engine. It protested with smoke, and fluttered out. ‘It’s a digger,’ I informed him.

      Jeff shook his head sagely. ‘No, it’s not.’

      ‘How far have you come on this?’ Donnie asked.

      ‘Only up from the valley.’

      They shared a glance, and then, in unison, turned to look up at me with overelaborate smiles. ‘You should have called,’ Jeff said soothingly, ‘I would have come and collected you.’

      ‘I didn’t have a phone, Jeff. You took it with you.’

      He looked at me, puzzled. ‘You asked me to. Said that you wouldn’t be able to use it in hospital and asked me to look after it for you. It’s up there in the office.’ He looked at me appraisingly. ‘Are you sure they said it was okay to leave?’

      The memory lapse was worrying. But now I understood Jeff and Donnie’s reaction. Imagining the picture I presented, with a big dressing stuck on one side of my head, and lurching up the hill on an old tractor that I evidently couldn’t control. They probably thought that my mental faculties were still back there in the hospital, sedated and resting in a locker.

      ‘Jeff, honestly, I’m okay, but I do need your help.’ I explained my theory. That the diggers had been sabotaged to prevent us from using them to uncover the missing skull and hands.

      It was Donnie who saw the obvious flaw. ‘The site’s been closed down, so why go to the bother?’

      ‘Because Jeff here might just take it on himself to sneak in a bit more work while we’re not looking.’

      Jeff flushed guiltily. ‘But what do they get out of the spoiling tactics? At best it’s only a temporary respite.’

      I had already thought this one through. ‘Desperate measures probably, but they might be hoping for an opportunity to get in here and recover them. Remember, they know where they’re buried, they just need a pickaxe and shovel.’

      Jeff looked up at the line of stationary plant. ‘We haven’t got a digger, and we don’t know where to look.’

      ‘I’ve just brought you one.’

      He laughed, but I noticed him looking at the tractor again. As I had hoped, the engineer in him was rolling up its sleeves, and nudging the sceptic out of the light.

      ‘I suppose …’ He walked round to the front of the tractor, dropped to his knees and squinted. ‘It’s a bit crude, but it could work in a fairly primitive way. As long as we didn’t encounter rock.’ He looked up at me, something new crossing his mind. ‘Is this official?’

      I looked back at him for a moment. Gauging. How stuck on rules was Jeff? ‘What else have you got to do?’

      He laughed. It was the answer I wanted. He faced the hill. ‘But where the hell do we start?’

      I followed his gaze. The hillside, still mostly in shade, rolled up massively in front of us. This was the nightmare I had avoided envisaging back at the hospital. But now I had had a little more time to think it through. ‘You start where you would have if you were carrying on with the job.’

      ‘The roadway?’

      ‘We have to be close. Something rattled them into action.’

      He shook his head. ‘The shale level’s rising that way.’

      ‘Is that bad?’

      ‘No, it’s good. Good for us,’ he corrected himself. ‘It means that we can get a firm base down without having to go too deep. But it’s bad for you.’

      By which he meant that it was not ripe grave-digging strata.

      ‘What about over there?’ I pointed to where a large rectangle had been pegged out where the ground sloped away from us. It was dotted with tussocks. The grass, reed and heather cover was charred. There had been a fire over this area. ‘Is that deeper soil?’

      He nodded cautiously. ‘Probably. That’s the next turbine base to be excavated. But it doesn’t fit in with your theory.’

      ‘How?’

      ‘The roadway access to this turbine goes round the top.’ He described an arc in the air with his finger.

      His deflation was catching. I felt my energy levels sag. Then I looked down at the pegged-out area again without a civil-engineer’s hat on. ‘They wouldn’t know that.’

      ‘Wouldn’t know what?’

      ‘That you wouldn’t excavate until you had the roadway in above it.’

      I ran down to walk the perimeter of the base while Jeff brought the tractor over. I looked at it again, trying to see it the way a guy who was already pissed off with digging would see it. A guy with a bag over his shoulder, the hefted weight of a human head and a pair of hands in it.

      I looked behind me and got a fix on the tent that covered the grave. Taking a straight-line bearing on it I walked slowly away. I stopped when the ground began to rise. I tried to get into the guy’s mind. You’ve already dug one big hole, you’re weary, so СКАЧАТЬ