Page 2 of Making a Killing (DI Fawley #7)

‘You don’t need to read to me. I can read it myself.’

Lily is looking at me the same way her mother does. A look that says ‘I have you completely sussed but I love you anyway’.

I smile at her, and gesture at the half-eaten boiled egg on her plate. ‘If you think you’re distracting me from the fact that you haven’t finished your breakfast, I have to tell you, you’re going to be very disappointed. And in any case, I’m not reading this for your benefit, I’m reading it for mine.’

Behind me, the kitchen door bangs open and Alex arrives in a rush of shampoo-scented air. She has a piece of toast in one hand.

‘You’ll get indigestion.’

She grins at me. It’s a well-played line. ‘I don’t have time to sit down – I have a meeting at 9.30 and I need to get Lily to G0Cre8 –’

Lily looks up and rolls her eyes theatrically. ‘I hate the school holidays. If I have to do finger-painting one more time I am going to scream – ’

Oh, to be six again. I catch Alex’s eye and smile. ‘It’s a life lesson, sweetheart,’ I say, ruffling Lily’s hair, which she hates but, rather like a cat having its tummy rubbed, will tolerate. Though as with the cat, you have to know when to stop. ‘A taste of what it’s like being a grown-up.’

‘Being stuck all day with stupid people doing boring things,’ she grumbles.

Which, to be honest, just about nails my job description. Counterterrorism isn’t as James Bond as it sounds, trust me. ‘Exactly. But this too will pass. And it’s pizza night tonight.’

Lily looks a little less disgruntled. Cheese and carbs have ever been the way to her heart.

‘Nice axe,’ says Alex, glancing over my shoulder at the book, on her way to the fridge. ‘The six-pack isn’t bad either.’

‘It’s Beowulf ,’ says Lily, picking up her spoon. ‘He fights a monster called Grendel. Only I know what happens.’

Alex gives me a mock-horrified face. ‘Isn’t that a touch grisly for six?’

‘It’s a kids’ version,’ says Lily solemnly. ‘But I know Grendel eats people. That’s what monsters do.’

‘OK,’ says Alex, trying not to smile, ‘well, I guess that’s OK, then.’

Lily is concentrating on her egg. ‘Daddy chases monsters too. That’s his job. Though he doesn’t have an axe. He has a computer.’

Alex drops a kiss on her daughter’s head and looks up at me, her eyes full of laughter. ‘The axe, I can take or leave. The six-pack, though, that’s a deal-breaker.’

Lily sighs and makes a sicky noise. ‘Yuck, not more snogging.’

***

Ten minutes later, Alex is trying to coax Lily out of the front door, and I’m faffing about looking for my car keys.

‘Will you be late tonight?’

‘Probably not. Unless something comes up.’

I pull her to me, smelling her hair, the coffee she never quite finished.

She sighs. ‘Whenever you say that, something always comes up.’

***

Margaret Collier comes to a halt in the clearing and stands still, listening. There’s a wren chirping beadily from the brambles ahead of her, wood pigeons pottering in the undergrowth, a gust of wind rattling the holly leaves. She read somewhere that Thomas Hardy could identify different trees just by the sound the wind made. She’s a long way off that, though it amuses her, sometimes, to try. But not today. Today she’s dog-sitting her daughter’s delightful but very high-maintenance labrador and there’s isn’t room for very much else. She can hear him now, rummaging about in the bushes, making cheery grunting noises. She sighs, hoping he hasn’t found more fox crap; last time the stink hung around the house for days.

She calls his name and pushes through the trees until she gets to the edge of Hescombe Mere. The water company are bringing in a hosepipe ban next week, and if the reservoirs look anything like this she can see why. The bank drops sheer to the water here, but the flat shore on the far side is like cracked concrete, a scatter of seagulls picking around in the receding mud. She turns and winds her way down the path along to what would normally be the water’s edge, the dog racing ahead, ears flapping. And even though she knows dogs are about as receptive to reasoning as career politicians, it doesn’t stop her trying.

‘Flynn! Flynn? Where are you? I don’t want you going in the water!’

Too late: the dog is yards out splashing about in the murky shallows, but after a moment or two he comes galloping back. She tells herself the training must finally be working, but she’s wrong. He has something in his mouth. He comes hurtling towards her and slithers to a happy stop at her feet, tail wagging, looking up at her in gleeful doggy expectation because hasn’t he been a good boy.

She knows you’re supposed to look grateful for ‘gifts’ (Or is that what you do with cats? She can never remember) but she can’t even pretend to be pleased with this disgusting article. The smell alone is turning her stomach.

Flynn crouches down on his front paws, barking now, nudging the thing with his nose. What is it with dogs and shoes?

‘Thank you, Flynn, but I think this would be happier back where it came from, don’t you?’

She extracts a poop bag from her pocket and picks the thing up gingerly between finger and thumb, trying not to focus too much on the scummy debris that’s caught inside it. She remembers only just in time to grab Flynn’s collar to stop him playing fetch, then heaves the vile thing as far out into the water as she can.

‘OK,’ she says, ‘home now.’

She retraces her steps along the shore and up the slope, then is distracted by a beech tree with a huge chicken of the woods fungus, which she’s never seen here before, so it takes her a moment to realize there’s no longer any sound from the dog.

‘Flynn? Where are you?’

Still nothing.

Stifling a prickle of unease – it’s not her dog, and she doesn’t want a disaster on her watch – she hurries a bit further along and breathes a sigh of relief when she hears grunts and snuffly noises from the thicket beyond that horrible old oak tree people are always going on about.

She calls again, but the dog still doesn’t obey. Which is annoying because she definitely isn’t dressed for hauling him through a hedge backwards. She pulls on her gloves, just to be sensible, and pushes through the brambles to a hollow beneath the old tree. It’s towering above her now, the trunk split in two and the ancient branches twisted out on either side like grasping fingers.

She can see Flynn busily hauling away at something and she starts towards him, then stops, frowning. She wouldn’t claim to be any sort of plantswoman, but surely this is weird. There are decades of fallen acorn shells crunching beneath her feet, scattered here and there with grey-green burdock. But the patch where Flynn’s digging is a riot of bright new nettles. And it’s not just that – it looks just like the raised beds in her garden, so regular, so tidily rectangular. And those dimensions – length by width – anyone would think it was a –

Flynn gives one last huge tug and his prize comes away with a lurch and hangs there, from his mouth.

Her scream sends the wood pigeons detonating into the sky.

***

‘Have you seen my trainers? I need them for practice.’

Janet Gislingham is on her hands and knees, distracted by the washing machine, which once again has developed a mind of its own. ‘I have no idea, Billy. Where did you last put them?’

He frowns at her. ‘I tried there. Someone’s moved it.’

‘Well, it wasn’t me.’ She bangs the machine door shut and looks up, suddenly concentrating. ‘Did you just say “it”?’

He nods.

‘So you’ve only lost one of them?’

Billy looks a little sheepish. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

‘Honestly, Billy, who loses only one shoe?’

He shrugs. ‘I didn’t do it deliberately .’

She gets to her feet, feeling her knees complaining.

‘OK, let’s go and find your dad – see if he can find it After all, he’s the one who’s supposed to be a detective.’

***

DS Triona Bradley crouches down next to the CSI. ‘OK, Markey, so what have we got?’

‘That old favourite, a shallow grave,’ she says, sitting back on her haunches. The top layer of soil has been carefully removed from most of the area, but there’s a deeper, more ragged hole where she’s crouching. Bradley can see the pale glint of bone, a tangle of dark hair.

‘We have the mutt to thank for finding it. As per.’

‘Ah, the doggy detectorists,’ says Bradley with a thin smile. ‘What would we do without them.’

‘Apparently it was digging about in this area, and when the owner came to drag him out, she spotted this nice grave-shaped nettle clump.’ She makes a face. ‘The partly decomposed hand was just the icing on the cake.’

Bradley nods. ‘Any idea how long it’s been here?’

‘Well, the pathologist should be able to make a rough guess. They’re aiming to do the PM first thing tomorrow. But if you’re asking if it’s Ellie –’

Of course she’s asking. And who else could it be? A student at one of the Cheltenham sixth-form colleges, out on a night with friends she never came home from. A bit of harmless high-spirited fun that ended up deadly. Her bright, confident face has stared out of the whiteboard at South Mercia CID ever since, but despite everything they’ve done, everywhere they’ve looked, they’re no further forward than they were on the first day. But if this is her – it’s horrible to think of that as ‘progress’, but for a police officer, a body is evidence, even if, for the family, it’s the ruin of hope.

‘Don’t let DI Tate get carried away,’ says Markey now, ‘but that nettle growth looks about right for a grave dug around a month ago. When soil is disturbed it’s always the nettles who move in first.’

‘You learn something new every day.’

Markey smiles. ‘I’ll get a botanist I know at Birmingham Uni to take a look. But like I say, just wait till the PM before you go off all guns blazing.’

Bradley straightens up again and looks around. Yellow evidence markers dot the floor of the clearing, like a grimmer grown-up Hansel and Gretel.

‘That far one’s where the hand ended up,’ says Markey, ‘if you were wondering. Our canine friend was understandably reluctant to let it go. The one over there is where the wrist cartilage dropped off.’

At the top of the slope a middle-aged woman is sitting on a fallen log, trying to restrain an excited labrador. She looks greenish, though the bright magenta T-shirt definitely isn’t helping. The rest of the clearing looks like a TV set. Blue and white tape, half a dozen uniforms doing a fingertip search. They’ll be on the news by nightfall.

Bradley turns back to the CSI. ‘How long is it going to take?’

‘To get the body out? I’ve got two colleagues on their way, but at least a couple of hours. So if you have somewhere else you need to be –’

She shakes her head. ‘No. Nothing that can’t wait. I’ll be in the car.’

***