Page 27 of Gone in the Night (Detective Morgan Brookes #16)

TWENTY-SEVEN

Sammy had been told to go check the campsite and move the woman on who’d only paid for two nights and was still there last night, four nights in total.

That meant he had to ask her to move or get her to pay for the last two nights.

Man, he hated this kind of stuff. When he’d taken the job as groundsman, he hadn’t realised it entailed booting people off their pitches when they overstayed.

Thankfully it didn’t happen often, but a couple of times was too many for him.

He wasn’t the confrontational type and never had been.

If the job description had said part-time bouncer, he’d have run a mile and not applied.

As he parked next to her Suzuki jeep, he silently begged her to come out of the tent to see who was there. There was no sign of life. A couple camping on a pitch at the opposite end were walking past with their hiking boots, backpacks, and with Ordnance Survey maps around their necks.

He smiled at them. ‘Morning.’

They nodded and both replied, ‘Morning,’ in London accents.

He paused, looking up at the tent, there was a funny smell, but he wasn’t sure where it was coming from. ‘Hey, have you seen the woman whose car this is?’

They shook their heads and carried on walking. He watched them, thinking how rude they were, snotty southerners who only cared about themselves. Sammy let out a big sigh and shouted, ‘Hello, are you in there?’

He was greeted by complete silence. He waited a minute in case she was asleep, but there was no sound of shuffling around, so he thought maybe she wasn’t inside.

She may have taken ill and left the tent, what and walked herself home, you idiot?

He ignored the voice inside his mind. She may have called an ambulance, it was a possibility, or there could have been some kind of emergency.

His shoulders dropped. What if she’d got lost walking and was stranded somewhere?

‘I’m coming in, sorry if you’re inside and I give you a heart attack. Hopefully you’re not in there though, but my boss will kill me if I don’t check on you.’

He stood on the ladder and unzipped the tent, pulling the flap wide open. He didn’t quite know what he was looking at but the smell was enough to make his mouth fill with water as he felt his gut wrench.

He realised that the woman was dead. She had to be, people who were living and breathing did not smell this way.

There was a sheet covering her, but he could clearly see something sticking out of her chest through it.

He reached out to poke her in the arm and it was then that he let out a scream; she was stiff and cold.

He fell backwards, forgetting he was on the ladder, and landed with a heavy thump against the side of his car.

He didn’t realise he was still screaming until the couple who hadn’t got very far came running back to see what was wrong with him.

He knew he should phone the police, he knew he should do something, but right now he could only keep screaming.

The woman calmly walked up to him, raised her hand and slapped him hard across the cheek. The screaming stopped and the sound of her hitting his flesh replaced it. He cupped a hand to his face and stared at her.

‘You hit me?’

‘You were screaming like a banshee.’

The guy she was with was staring into the tent. He didn’t need to stand on the ladders as he was tall enough to peer in, and Sammy heard him say, ‘Oh my God.’

He took out his phone and must have dialled 999, because Sammy heard him asking for the police and an ambulance. The woman who had turned her attention to what was inside the tent stood on the ladder, and he grabbed her arm, pulling her back.

‘Don’t, it’s a crime scene.’

She glared at him, but he took no notice. He moved closer to the tent then and quickly turning on his phone, he began to snap photos of the 4x4, tent and the body inside.

Sammy who had regained his composure yelled, ‘Hey, you better not do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Give her some respect, man, what you going to do, post them all over Facebook for some sympathy likes?’

The guy shook his head. ‘No, I’m a reporter, I’m doing my job.’

Sammy glared at him. He knew he didn’t like him, what a jerk. Realising he should be taking charge, he stood up straight and in front of the guy.

‘Stop it now. Get away from here, the police are on their way, and you’ll get arrested for messing around with a crime scene.’

His partner grabbed his arm. ‘Come on, Fin, don’t be stupid.’

They walked a short distance away from the car.

‘We’re going back to our tent,’ she called over her shoulder to him, and he was glad.

He rubbed his cheek, which was still smarting, and thought he better phone his boss and tell him the reason the woman in the roof tent had overstayed.

He figured she had a pretty good excuse, although his boss was an arsehole and would probably still try and claim the money back from her family somehow.

Surely that would shock him enough to make him feel bad for the woman who’d been murdered? Or at least he hoped it would.