When John came to, he was on his back and staring up at a blurry sky. He tried to move but seemed to be stuck hard under something. As his vision cleared, he discovered then that he was lying on grass, his body jammed under the wheel of his own double-axle trailer. Then pain hit him, and he realised that not only was he jammed, but that his right arm, which was stuck fully under the wheel of the trailer, was clearly broken.
What the hell had happened? Why couldn’t he remember driving up into the field? After all, that had been his plan, but he had no recollection of it, just the farmyard, a tightness round his throat, a suffocating darkness . . .
A hot stab of pain from his arm shot through John’s body and he roared, swore, and tried to free himself, but it was no good. His arm was stuck fast and, by the look of it, crushed flat.
John looked to his left and saw the rear of his old tractor, a David Brown with little if any of its original white paint showing thanks to years of rust.
He had to do something, get out from under the trailer, get to the doctors, John thought. Farm accidents were more common than most people realised, and he’d been pretty lucky down the years, unlike a fair few folk in the dales. Tragic tales all of them, with families mourning for years after.
A shadow revealed itself from behind the rear wheels of the tractor.
John stared up at it, brow furrowed as a field ploughed deep, confusion ripping a bloody tear through his mind.
‘What the bloody hell . . .?’
John’s words caught in his throat not because of what was in front of him now, but who was in front of him. Well, it just didn’t make any sense. And there was something odd about this shadow’s face, like there was paint on it, but perhaps that was just the early morning sun pricking his eyes.
The shadow said nothing, just stared down at John from behind narrow, mean eyes set in a face laced with beads of sweat, which rolled earthward like spilled diamonds.
John continued to stare, unable to find the words he needed. And when he eventually did, his voice was a thing cracked with panic.
‘Well don’t just stand there doin’ nowt!’ John spat, tugging at his arm, trying to roll away. ‘Get me out of here! Come on! Help me! Do something!’
The shadow cocked its head to one side, stared just a little longer at John as his swearing grew louder and more panic-fuelled, then turned back to the tractor and disappeared from view.
‘Hey! I was talking to you!’ John called out. ‘My bloody arm’s broken! Get me out of here!’
A creaking, ratcheting sound clanked from the tractor and John’s voice snapped in two. He recognised it all too well: a hand-break being released.
For a moment nothing happened. John lay in the grass, his arm in agony, his body trapped. The tractor sat motionless, the trailer waiting expectantly behind it. The sun burned down and the air, John noticed, was rich and sweet with the scent of cut grass, the aroma of summer burning its way to a still distant autumn. Sheep called to each other on the fells around him. It was, in many ways, a beautiful dales day, the kind that at points in his life had almost made John feel that being alive wasn’t too bad after all.
When gravity took hold of the tractor, John’s scream tore through the air, scattering a flock of pigeons resting just away from him in a tree sat in the middle of the field. The first trailer wheel rolled painful slow over his arm and then onto his chest, crushing the life out of him as shattered ribs burst through his lungs, blood spraying out of his mouth, his nose. The second trailer wheel, thanks to the tractor veering to the right just a little, came at John’s head. Not that he saw it, or perhaps he did, not that anyone would ever know. It eased itself over his skull, just above his jaw, flattening bone and brain, and sending the dying memories of a troubled, broken, mean-spirited man to bleed into the soil for one final time.
Far off, the sheep continued to call, as a killer carried out one final task before heading home in the sunshine.
Chapter Two
DCI Harry Grimm, having been in the dales for just over three weeks now, was, quite to his own amazement – and his body’s very apparent, noisy and painful disapproval – out on a run. And on a Monday of all days. What the hell was wrong with him?
There were better ways to start the week Harry was sure, but here he was, out in the cool early morning air, blowing like a dying steam train, the heat already burning up his face from the exertion.
Harry could count numerous reasons for him being out to pound the lanes, from needing to wake up after a bad night’s sleep, to giving himself something else to focus on beyond being a police officer, but the main reason, the one which really pushed his sagging, wobbly arse out of his bed and into the day, was that he was pretty sure he was on his way to being a bit of a fat bastard.
After waking early that morning, and having decided a couple of weeks back that if he was going to be in the dales for a while, then he was going to make the most of it. He’d also been enthusiastically pushed into getting back into shape by Jenny Blades, one of the local detective constables, a young woman who was as fit as a mountain goat. She’d even helped him pick out a new pair of trainers. And every time he’d worn them since, Harry had felt rather like an aging pensioner in a new sportscar; they were too bright,
