Page 21

Here it was. Fucking North Street.

The road stopped abruptly in front of them, choked up with vans, some white, some branded with the Mason Construction logo.

A low growl of heavy machinery, shaking the ground and Jet’s truck with it, as a yellow digger rolled up the hill toward all that mud.

A rickety wire gate pushed off to the side, two signs attached to it: CAUTION: Construction Area and DANGER: Hard Hat Area.

They couldn’t get any closer than this, parking behind a tree less than fifty feet away from her phone’s last known location. Jet cut the engine and the truck sighed as she stepped out, Billy on the other side. The sound of their slamming doors was lost in the uproar of clanging metal.

Jet picked their way through the vans and sleeping machinery, heading toward the site, through the open gate.

‘There used to be two houses up here?’ Jet asked Billy, eyes ahead.

‘Apparently.’

Now it was just a field of mud and men in silly yellow hats.

They moved past a cement mixer, spinning and churning, being fed by the spadeful, one man doing all the work, another just watching.

‘This must be Luke’s big project,’ Billy said, scanning the chaos, avoiding a track of the sloppiest mud. ‘Sophia was telling me about it at the fair. His first project that’s all him, not your dad. That’s why he’s so stressed about it, needs it to go well.’

Jet shrugged. ‘Luke’s always stressed.’ The same thing she’d said to Sophia at the fair, shrugging her off too.

‘Well, this one’s important, Sophia said. Apparently, construction was already delayed a while back, a floor collapsed or something, so Luke had to change his plans. Decided to demolish, start again. I guess combining it with the lot next door. I get the impression that this is his baby.’

Jet wrinkled her nose; it didn’t look like much.

An outline of wooden trenches carved out of the mud, buttressed by planks.

The new foundations. Fucking hell, Luke, this was going to be a stupidly big house, look at the size of that.

Most of it was just an empty track right now, only one small section at the front filled with concrete.

Looked like they were getting ready to fill the rest.

‘Maybe that’s why he was being extra assholey at the fair,’ Jet said.

‘Yeah, Sophia said he was nervous because they were starting on the foundations – no going back now.’

‘And yet, according to Andrew Smith, Dad isn’t even going to let Luke have the company.’

Billy chewed his lip. ‘Well, I don’t think Luke knows that.’

No, he definitely didn’t. And it probably wasn’t even true.

‘Hey!’ a voice cut through all the noise. Uh oh, they’d been spotted.

A man was hurrying toward them, in a neon jacket that clashed with his hard hat, waving his arms. It wasn’t a hello, but Jet made it one, waving back with a grin.

‘What are you doing here?’ the man yelled, catching up to them. ‘You can’t be here. This is a construction area.’

‘Yeah, I saw the signs,’ Jet told him.

The man pushed up his hard hat, falling into his meaty eyes.

‘I’m going to have to ask you to leave. This is private property, and it isn’t safe.’

He pointed them back toward the road, a hand on Jet’s back.

‘I’m going to have to ask you to stop asking us to leave,’ Jet countered, pulling away. ‘Scott Mason is my dad.’

The man hesitated. ‘And Luke, he’s –’

‘– My brother, yeah,’ Jet said.

The man nodded, retracted his arm. ‘He’s not here right now.’

‘That’s OK.’ Jet smiled. ‘It’s you I came to see.’

His mouth folded down, merging with his chin. ‘M-me?’

‘What’s your name, sir?’

He pointed to his own chest, a silent question. Jet nodded.

‘It’s Jimmy.’

‘Hi, yes, Jimmy,’ she said. ‘Just the man I was looking for. You’re the foreman, right?’

‘Right?’

‘Great,’ she said, moving toward the outline of the new house, through the mud. Her poor Birkenstocks. ‘I’m just here to ask you a couple of questions about the site. It’s a company policy thing.’

‘But I –’

‘– That gate across the road.’ She pointed. ‘I assume that’s shut and locked at night?’

‘I – Of course.’

‘But it’s not like there’s a fence around it, so even if nobody can drive through, you could easily walk around, onto the site.’

‘Yes, well, Luke didn’t think we needed a fence, as these are the only properties up here and it’s not a through road. No one ever comes up here.’

Jet pursed her lips. ‘But if they did, you guys got any cameras set up here? You know, for security?’

A blank look on Jimmy’s face. ‘Why would we need cameras?’

‘A great question. Billy, my associate, will write that down.’

Billy’s face stirred, taken aback.

‘He’s new,’ Jet said to Jimmy, in a loud whisper behind her hand.

‘If you’re on site, you really should be wearing hard hats. It’s the rule.’

Jimmy doubled back to an open van, grabbing two yellow hard hats from the pile.

‘Your associate?’ Billy whispered out the side of his mouth, watching Jimmy return.

‘Don’t talk back to your boss.’

‘Here.’ Jimmy passed one to Billy, one to Jet.

‘Accidents happen all the time on site. We had a floor collapse here a while ago, brought some of the roof down with it, some guy still working inside. I wasn’t here then, wouldn’t have happened if I was here.

But my point is, anything can happen. Gotta protect those heads. ’ He knocked against his own hard hat.

Billy blew out his cheeks, something he did when he was uncomfortable, hadn’t grown out of it yet. He rammed the hard hat onto his head, avoided Jet’s eyes.

Jet dropped hers in the mud. ‘I’m not putting this on, Jimmy, because, quite honestly, it doesn’t match my outfit. And I don’t see any roofs that might collapse anytime soon – doesn’t even have foundations yet.’

And there was no way she was forcing that hat over her bandages, to press against the pain, magnify it. There was only so much the codeine could do.

‘Speaking of the foundations,’ Jet continued, breezing past the horrified look on Jimmy’s face, ‘when did you start pouring the concrete? It’s already set here, on this front part.’

The point closest to the road and what Jet imagined would be the future driveway, about fifteen feet across, blockaded at the corners by more wood.

‘Yeah, that’s the garage we started on,’ Jimmy answered, but that’s not what she had asked.

‘When did the concrete go in, Jimmy?’

Because what if it was –

‘– Saturday morning, I think,’ Jimmy said, speaking over her thoughts.

‘Finished the trenches Friday afternoon. We started on this’ – he pointed to the channel of hardened concrete – ‘Saturday morning. Would have finished too, but the boss wanted to be here, and he had to take a couple of days, for personal reasons.’

‘Hi,’ Jet said, ‘I’m Personal Reasons.’

Jimmy narrowed his eyes, clearly had no idea what she was talking about and didn’t want to know. ‘We’re only just back today, really,’ he said, for something to say. ‘I can make up the time, don’t worry.’

‘What time did you start work on Saturday – start pouring the concrete?’

Jimmy shrugged. ‘Probably about eight a.m.’

‘Great,’ Jet said, grin widening with the word, trying to cover for her eyes, for her quickening heart. This was something, she knew it. ‘And it’s just mud underneath, right? You’d already dug the trenches, so you wouldn’t have known if there was anything in the mud?’

Jimmy stared at her, confused. ‘Did you lose something?’

‘Only my mind. Could you give me and my associate two minutes, please, Jimmy? Yeah, you go just over there, that’s great.’

‘Jet?’ Billy looked down at her.

‘You thinking what I’m thinking?’ she hissed.

‘Probably not.’

‘That concrete was poured, what, like nine hours after my murder? And we know the killer was here with my phone. Like, right there.’ She pointed beyond her truck, to the street.

‘If you knew that was going to happen, that the foundations were going in the next morning, wouldn’t this be the perfect place to hide it? ’

‘Hide the phone?’ Billy eyed the concrete.

‘And the other thing missing from the scene,’ Jet said. ‘The murder weapon. If they’re under concrete, in the foundations of a house, who would ever find them?’

‘Ah, shit.’ Billy fiddled with his hair, tucked it under his hard hat. ‘Should we call the cops?’

‘And let them have all the fun?’

Jet winked and Billy swallowed, her eyes tracking the movement, the lump in his throat, up and down.

‘Why are you smiling like that? You can’t be serious?’ he hissed.

‘Dead serious,’ she said, and not just to make him nervous, though that was fun too. ‘The police would have to wait, apply for warrants or something. Could take days. Longer.’ She patted Billy on the shoulder. ‘I don’t have time for paperwork, bud. Sorry.’

Billy’s head dropped back, blinking at the sky. ‘You’re not sorry, though, are you?’

‘Hey Jimmy!’ Jet called, mud squelching, soaking into her socks as she ran over to the man. ‘How deep does that concrete go?’

Jimmy looked even more confused now. ‘About three feet deep. Why?’

‘Three feet,’ Jet muttered to herself, studying the new foundations. ‘That’s doable. OK, guys!’ she called, cupping her hands to send her voice farther. ‘Break time! Everyone take five. Or … a few fives. Hey, shut that digger off!’

‘You can’t tell them to do that,’ Jimmy said, his confusion thawing, melting into something like anger.

‘I just did. You’re working too hard, Jimmy. Go grab a coffee, or go take a piss, I don’t care. Hey, you!’

Jet stopped a young-looking guy who was walking toward one of the vans, a sledgehammer in his hands.

He widened his eyes, deer in her headlights.

‘Hey,’ Jet said. ‘You mind if I borrow that?’

He didn’t say anything. Passed it over and skittered away, into the safety of his van.

The sledgehammer was heavy.

Jet held it with two hands, the handle sleek and orange, rubber grips at the end. The dense metal end was well used, marked with scratches and dents.