Dead People. Ewart Hutton

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СКАЧАТЬ to hear the sadly familiar sound of bleating lambs in the background.

      ‘DS Capaldi?’ The voice was brusque and authoritative, with a North Wales accent. And familiar.

      ‘Yes,’ I answered warily, desperately trying to recall the voice. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’

      ‘Inspector Morgan.’

      Oh, shit … Emrys Hughes’s boss. A scowling red-faced man with a widow’s peak. He considered Jack Galbraith the Antichrist. And, as his perceived little helper, I also qualified for the rite of exorcism. ‘How can I help you, sir?’ I asked, pitching for amicable.

      ‘Who gave you the right to commandeer my men, Sergeant?’

      ‘I required their assistance to help secure a probable crime scene, sir.’

      ‘And subject them to exposure?’

      ‘There is shelter available, sir.’ I had an image of Hughes and Friel safely ensconced in the site hut, drinking coffee and choosing their favourite nipples from the drill-bit calendar.

      ‘That’s beside the point. What you have asked my men to do is totally unnecessary. You don’t understand the terrain. We don’t have the same problems that you do in the city. We don’t have the ghouls and the vandals, and an intrusive, prurient press. Tell me –’ I could hear the scorn building in his voice – ‘who do you think is going to turn out on a filthy night like this, in that wilderness, to dig up a pile of old bones?’

      ‘The person who put them there?’ I suggested.

      That silenced him for a moment. ‘Don’t be a smart alec, Sergeant. That site has its own security. Sergeant Hughes has informed me that there is a watchman.’

      ‘Yes, but with respect, sir, he is only responsible for the security of the construction site, not for a crime scene.’

      He leaped over that one as well. ‘And, in the meantime, while my men are suffering the vagaries of the elements, I find you well-ensconced in a public house.’ The reprimand came from deep within his soul and his faith.

      I looked over at David Williams. My local informant. ‘I am currently in active pursuit of the preliminary aspects of the investigation, sir.’

      ‘I am pulling my men out of there. And I am going to complain formally to Detective Chief Superintendent Galbraith.’

      ‘Yes, sir,’ I replied meekly.

      ‘You should have stayed in Cardiff where you belong, Sergeant Capaldi.’

      ‘I know, sir,’ I agreed wholeheartedly.

      ‘We don’t want or need your kind around here.’

      ‘No, sir.’

      David looked at me speculatively as I went back to the bar. ‘Trouble?’

      ‘I’ve just upset the local mullah.’

      I took a drink of my beer. Should I go back up to the site and make my own night vigil? No. Morgan had been right. Different rules applied here. And all I had ever really been doing was punishing Hughes and Friel.

      And I didn’t regret it.

      I did make a concession, though. I got myself up early in the morning, while it was still dark. There was no moon, the night was anvil black, the sound of the river kept up its own incessant dynamic, and an owl hooted, flitting from location to location like a trickster.

      I drove over the wooden-plank bridge out of Hen Felin Caravan Park. Jack Galbraith had forced me to live in Dinas, and I had chosen to stay in a caravan. Unit 13, to be precise. I needed the sense of impermanence, putting up with the cold, the mould spores and the intermittent electrical and water supplies, the very discomfort comforting me with the knowledge that this surely couldn’t last.

      This time, even in the dark, driving up the valley to the wind-farm site, I felt that I knew it better. Last night, when I had got home from The Fleece, I had studied the OS map and the electoral register. I had a loose fix on where people lived. There weren’t that many of them.

      It had been cold at the caravan, but it was even colder at the construction site. Higher, and more exposed to the raw wind that was whipping in from the northwest, but keeping the clouds moving too fast to rain. For the moment.

      The morning was showing itself as a weak aura against the ridge above the site. But the watchman was on the ball. He was out of his caravan with a torch before I had shut the car door behind me.

      ‘Detective Sergeant Capaldi,’ I introduced myself.

      He checked my warrant card under his torch beam before he looked up. ‘Hi, I’m Donnie Raikes, I take care of security here.’ He shook my hand firmly. He was shorter than me, but built better, and the light from the hut’s open door caught the gleam of two ring piercings in his right eyebrow.

      ‘All quiet?’

      ‘Nothing’s fucking happened here since the glaciers melted,’ he replied with a yawn. A Northern accent, Yorkshire, I thought.

      ‘We’ve got a dead body,’ I reminded him.

      ‘I saw it. It looks like something the glacier dumped.’

      ‘It’s probably a bit more recent than that.’

      He shrugged. ‘It’ll be a long-lost hiker, then. Nothing more dramatic. Take my word for it, mysterious shit doesn’t happen in places like this.’

      I nodded, acknowledging his wisdom, and looked round. Objects were beginning to take form. Machines, huts and the folds of the hills. ‘Where’s Jeff Talbot?’ I asked.

      ‘Asleep in his caravan.’

      ‘Alone?’

      Donnie grinned. ‘Don’t worry, we haven’t gone native yet, we haven’t resorted to the sheep.’

      I smiled dutifully at the tired old stereotype. I knew it was irrational, but the information soothed me. That Jeff wasn’t with Tessa MacLean.

      I waited it out in the site hut, drinking strong tea dotted with atolls of powdered milk, until the SOCO team arrived. The light was establishing itself now, but it was still early, and from the way they bitched about the cold as we backed ourselves into the wind to don our sterile suits I knew that they were letting me know that they had had an even earlier start than me.

      They looked even more miserable when I showed them the site.

      ‘Is it any better preserved under there?’ the leader asked me, bobbing her head at the tarpaulin.

      I shook my head.

      ‘Where are we supposed to start?’ she asked despairingly. ‘There’s no surface left.’

      I sidled away from her anguish, leaving them to unroll the tarpaulin and start erecting the tented canopy, while I went to greet a new car that had just driven up.

      Bill Atkins, the forensic pathologist, was СКАЧАТЬ