Dead People. Ewart Hutton

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СКАЧАТЬ and started laying out my reasoning path for his benefit. ‘The ground is pretty compacted, and looks like it hadn’t been disturbed for a long time before the excavators arrived. No sign of any clothing, so it’s either been in the ground for long enough for it to have decomposed, or it was buried naked. There’s what looks like plastic sheeting present, so I would say that we’re not talking ancient, but not too recent either.’

      ‘So it’s unlikely that, as we speak, we’ll have the villain’s footprints scorching the mountain dust as he makes his escape?’

      ‘Highly unlikely, sir.’ I smiled; that wasn’t Bryn Jones-speak, it had to be a Jack Galbraith line that he had just recited.

      ‘And the clues are not withering on the vine?’

      ‘This particular vine resembles an opencast mine, sir.’

      ‘Not exactly a productive evidence farm then?’

      ‘No, sir.’ I knew where he was trying to lead me, but that was going to have to be their decision.

      ‘Capaldi …’ DCS Jack Galbraith’s heavy Scottish brogue boomed in. ‘We’ve got a SOCO team, the forensic pathologist and the forensic anthropologist all lined up. And I want to keep them as a happy and productive bunch. So is anything going to be served by them having to work under arc lights through a shitty night at the arse end of the known universe?’

      ‘I don’t know, sir.’

      ‘I do not have a young, ripe, virgin girl in a communion dress in that hole?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘I do not have a vast array of female relatives rending their garments and keening over the body?’

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘So, Capaldi?’

      ‘I don’t think I should make that decision, sir.’ I braced myself.

      ‘It’s your fucking corpse, Capaldi, you’re the finder. You’re supposed to be a professional, you make the call.’

      ‘I would think it could all wait until the morning, sir.’

      ‘Wise move, son.’ He chuckled, but even that managed to contain a threat in it.

      Wise move indeed. I had just saved them from a night of rain and bleak wide-open spaces. I just hoped it would be remembered and appreciated. But, knowing Jack Galbraith, I doubted it.

      By the time I came out of the hut, we were losing light, and the rain was sweeping in. Some strange vortex effect in the cwm bringing it up the hill at us. But Jeff’s men had managed to rig a tarpaulin over the crucial areas, the half-exposed skeleton and the mound of excavated material, and Hughes and Friel had taped off the rectangle I had prescribed for them.

      Vehicles were leaving, a procession heading down the access road. Jeff had obviously released his men. Mine were attempting their own escape, Emrys keeping his head down to avoid eye contact as he got into the passenger’s side of the patrol car. Which had been turned around and was now facing downhill, I noticed.

      ‘Sergeant!’ I yelled.

      He froze in his crouch, half inside the car. He wanted to ignore me, but a conditioned reflex had kicked in at my shout.

      ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I asked, approaching, as he unravelled himself. Inside the car, I could see Friel in the driver’s seat, craning past him to watch me.

      ‘We’re going back down to take up our normal duties,’ Emrys stated challengingly.

      ‘You’re supposed to assist me here until I release you.’

      His eyes narrowed meanly as he tried to remember when that one had popped up on the order book. ‘I thought your people were taking over.’

      ‘They are, but the SOCO team aren’t starting the investigation until tomorrow. Which means that we need to secure the site.’

      ‘It is secure. We’ve taped it off, the workmen have covered it.’

      ‘I need a watch kept.’

      He looked at me disgustedly, realizing now where this thing was going. ‘Isn’t that your responsibility?’

      I smiled at him. ‘That’s right, and that’s why I’m delegating it to you. I have other things to do to get this investigation started.’

      He almost shook his head in defiance. Instead, he thought better of it and smiled slyly. ‘Sorry, no can do.’ He tapped on the roof of the car. ‘We’ve just taken an urgent call requesting assistance. Haven’t we, Constable?’

      On cue, Friel leaned over. ‘That’s right. Extreme urgency, they said.’

      I took Hughes’s elbow. He resisted for a moment, then let me steer him away from the car. ‘Do you want me to write this one up,’ I asked him softly, ‘or are you going to be a good plod and do what I’ve instructed you to do?’

      He bristled. ‘Write what up?’ he asked, a sneaky streak of doubt cutting through the belligerence.

      ‘That you’ve spun me a fucking lie to evade your duty.’ I held my hand up in front of his face to hush his protest. ‘That landline I was on is the only communications tool available here. No radio, no phone signal.’ I made a show of gazing up at the heavens wonderingly. ‘And I don’t see any sign of Pegasus, or Mercury the Winged Fucking Messenger, having delivered your urgent summons.’

      He glared at me. I wondered whether I had taken him just too far. He had a short fuse, and had laid into me once before. Was he balancing the prospect of a reprimand against the instant gratification of realigning the side of my face? He snorted, and turned back to the car. ‘Get out of there, Friel,’ he snapped.

      I drove down the hill thinking that this was the investigative equivalent of the Phoney War. I hoped that the body we had uncovered didn’t mind – whoever and whatever they were – that the start for the search for justice was on hold for a brighter new morning.

      But I could feel the buzz starting. Much as my sympathy went out to all those poor tup lambs I had been seeing in their pens, huddled, stiff and ball-busted, this was a real case. Jack Galbraith had to let me in on it. It was what he had exiled me out here for. Like it or not, this was my country now, and I was his man in it.

      I stopped at the nearest farm entrance. COGFRYN FARM neatly inscribed on a slate panel. It looked tidy. I made a note of it. I would start there tomorrow. Then work outwards. Build up a picture of the neighbourhood. The people whose doors I would soon be knocking on. The difference around here, from what I had been used to in Cardiff, was that instead of shuffling onto the next doorstep or garden gate when you were making enquiries, the move could involve a couple of miles, a 500-foot climb, and a stretch of mud that required an embedded team of sappers.

      I turned onto the main road. The headlights swept the direction sign: DINAS. I smiled wryly to myself. Whoever would have thought that that would ever have meant going home?

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