The Death on the Downs. Simon Brett

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СКАЧАТЬ her breath, she leaned forward to look inside the sacks.

      The bones were free of flesh, a greyish white and, when Carole did have to take another gulp of air, appeared not to smell at all. A cursory glance suggested that she was looking at the remains of one complete human body.

      Inside the two stridently blue sacks, the bones had been neatly stacked and aligned like a self-assembly furniture kit.

Chapter Two

      It was when she got back to the car that Carole realized she couldn’t just drive straight home and phone the police from there. Human bones were not like other bones, particularly when they had so clearly been moved by another human agency. There could not be an entirely innocent explanation for their presence in the barn. At the very least, sacrilege had been committed. And at the worst . . . Carole didn’t like to pursue that thought. All she knew was that the police had to be informed as soon as possible.

      Pity she didn’t have a mobile phone like Jude. Pity Jude wasn’t there. Carole wanted to talk to her, throw at Jude some of the ideas jostling for prominence in her mind.

      She was briefly tempted to delay contacting the police. The famed waterproofing of her Burberry had proved inadequate to the deluge and she was soaked to the skin. Also they looked to her like old bones. The fact that they had lain uninvestigated for years meant that another twenty minutes was not going to make a great difference in the cosmic scheme of things.

      But Carole couldn’t allow herself to be persuaded by such casuistical reasoning. She’d had a previous run-in with an unsympathetic policeman about delaying the provision of information.

      Stronger than that, though, was an unease that her grisly discovery had started in here. Not fully defined, and she didn’t yet want to probe into it too deeply, but she knew there was something wrong.

      The bones had not been in the barn for long. The fertilizer bags were relatively unsoiled, and little dust or moss had accumulated inside them. Whoever had found that makeshift hiding place beneath the planks had been taking a temporary measure – perhaps a panic measure. It happened to be Carole Seddon who had found the bones, but someone else would have got to them very soon. The barn was remote, but not that remote. Someone owned the land it stood on, and that someone might well still use the space to house machinery, or have a system of regularly checking in case of vandalism.

      So Carole knew that whoever had left the bones in the barn must have intended to return fairly soon to move them on. Indeed, she might have met the person. That thought sent down her spine a trickle much colder than rainwater.

      She drove into the centre of Weldisham, though in a village of some thirty houses she didn’t have far to go. There was a small grassy area, surrounded by a low railing, which she felt sure would be called ‘The Green’. A noticeboard displayed a few dampish posters behind glass. There was a map for walkers, a reminder that Weldisham was a Neighbourhood Watch Area, a faded orange flyer for line-dancing on Wednesday evenings in the Village Hall.

      And, sure enough, beside the board, was a public phone box. One of the old red ones – no doubt the Village Committee had rejected as unsightly any plans to replace it with a modern glass booth.

      Carole dialled 999 and was very calm when asked which Emergency Service she required. The police voice at the other end was a woman’s, solicitous, motherly. She took down the details Carole gave her, asked where she was and said how much it would help if she could stay there until her colleagues arrived.

      ‘I’m sorry it’s so wet,’ the woman said. ‘Is there somewhere you could go to wait out of the rain? The church perhaps.’

      ‘I’ve got my car. And actually the rain’s stopped for the moment. I’ll stay parked by the phone box.’

      ‘Very well. If you’re sure you don’t mind. It would help enormously if you could wait for our officers.’

      Carole gave a grim inward smile. Her last encounter with the police had been with the Bad Cop. Now she’d got the Good Cop. It was disorienting.

      The car was cold, so with a mental apology to the environment Carole switched on the engine to try and get some heat into her sodden body. The windows soon steamed up and, though she couldn’t be said to be comfortable, she felt strangely peaceful. There was an inevitability about what was happening now. Carole had no decisions to make. Everything was in the hands of the police.

      At one point she became aware of someone close by the car window. She swept a little circle in the condensation to reveal the face of an elderly woman with a beaky nose and a purple woolly hat pulled too far down her face. Carole smiled. The old woman continued to look at her with undisguised hostility. So much for the myth of everyone in the country being friendly.

      Doing her bit for the Neighbourhood Watch, Carole decided. A strange car parked, engine running, in the middle of Weldisham. It must belong to some burglar planning his or her next incursion. She tried another smile, her most unburglar-like one, and was about to wind down the window for reassurance when the woman abruptly walked away, dragging an unwilling black and white spaniel in her wake.

      Soon after, the police arrived. A liveried Range Rover with two uniformed officers in the front and a plain-clothes man in the back. Carole felt obscurely disappointed. She’d expected more. A full Scene of Crime team with all their paraphernalia. And yet why? No one knew that a crime had been committed. Even she couldn’t be sure. All the police had to go on was a call from a middle-aged woman who claimed to have found some human bones in a barn. She’d probably got it wrong, they got enough calls from cranks and the confused. Turn out to be sheep bones, cow bones, possibly even chicken bones left from someone’s picnic.

      The plain-clothes man got out of the Range Rover to greet Carole, profuse in his apologies for keeping her waiting on such a disgusting day. He introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Baylis. A thick-set man with short brown hair and a nose surprisingly small in his broad face, he had an avuncular manner beyond his thirty-five years. It should have been patronizing, but to Carole it felt immensely reassuring.

      After her Bad Cop experience, she now felt like the subject of a Good Cop charm offensive. Was it just down to individual officers, or had one of those Home Office directives about the police becoming more user-friendly really had an effect?

      DS Baylis checked the location of her find. ‘Sounds like South Welling Barn, Hooper. Go and see what you can find.’

      As the Range Rover set off towards the barn, Baylis squinted up at the louring sky. It wouldn’t be long before more rain fell. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Seddon, but I would like to check a few details with you.’

      ‘Of course. Would you like to come and sit in my car?’

      ‘Very kind, but I think I can do better than that.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Ten to five.’ He produced a mobile phone from his pocket. ‘Will Maples from the Hare and Hounds owes me the odd favour. I’m sure he can find us a warm room.’

      In case any visitor did not know what the small alcove by the bar was called, the word ‘Snug’, carved on an authentically rustic shingle, hung over the doorway. Will Maples, an efficient slender young man in a sharp suit, ushered them in and switched on the log-effect gas fire. Though its initial flare was blue and cold, it soon emanated a rosy flickering glow, rendered suspect only by the fact that the logs never changed their outline or diminished in size. Carole knew about fires like that; she had a similar, smaller one at home in Fethering.

      ‘Anything СКАЧАТЬ