Burton’s face had turned from grey, to red, to deathly pale. For a moment, the only sound was the patter of the rain.
‘Sir –’ said Fleet, and Burton raised a palm. Slowly, he let it fall, and then he stepped so he and Fleet were toe to toe.
‘The only reason I’m not suspending you right now,’ he said, his voice low but full of venom, ‘is because it would be tantamount to admitting we messed up just as badly as everyone is saying we did. As they’re saying you did, in fact, Detective Inspector Fleet.’ Burton leaned closer still. ‘And as much as you deride those little figures you believe I’m so obsessed with, you seem to forget that, without them, neither you nor any copper out here would have a job in the first place. You’d be swigging cider, sponging from the state, just like every other middle-aged male in this decrepit pisshole of a town.’ He jabbed a finger at Fleet’s chest. ‘Do not. Fucking. Forget that.’
The superintendent opened his mouth to say something more, but stopped himself when a pair of uniformed officers who were crossing the clearing came within earshot. When they noticed the expression on Burton’s face, they dropped their eyes and veered away.
Burton let his hand fall to his side. He took a breath, and exhaled audibly through his nostrils.
‘We’re wrapping things up,’ he said. ‘Here, at the river. The search teams have uncovered all they’re going to.’
‘And Sadie?’ said Fleet.
‘Will be found, eventually. Probably by a bunch of mushroom pickers a month from now if she’s really out here in the woods, or else washed up on a beach twenty miles along the coast. In the meantime, there will be a press conference at the station this time tomorrow, at which you will announce that Mason Payne has been arrested for the suspected murder of Sadie Saunders, and for whatever charge you can come up with that will put a lid on the debacle out here in the woods.’ Burton pulled back his shoulders and straightened his cap. His tone, when he went on, was dangerously even. ‘And in case you’re struggling with the figures, Detective Inspector, that gives you twenty-four hours to clean up your mess. If you don’t, I swear to God … you’re going to wish you hadn’t left me to do it for you.’
DI Robin Fleet
It didn’t take long for the clearing to empty. By the time Fleet and Nicky had got there, the search itself had already been concluded, and now only a few stragglers remained at the scene. The superintendent was long gone, taking his entourage with him. Even Nicky had headed off towards the cars, to try to get a signal on her phone.
After turning his back on the access path, Fleet was able to picture the group of buildings as Sadie’s friends would have seen them when they’d stumbled across them. He had to ignore the POLICE DO NOT CROSS tape sealing off the structures, of course, as well as the boot prints that had turned the area into a goalmouth on a municipal football pitch.
Conscious of the few fading voices behind him, he moved closer to the buildings. There was nothing much to the cabin any more. The roof was cracked, like an egg caved in by a spoon, and the walls had a drunken tilt. There was nothing inside that Fleet could see through the glassless windows except rotten floorboards and treacherous shadows.
The barns were more substantial. There were two, one set back slightly from the other, and each was about the size of a modern block of flats – the type developers slotted into every available space on prime residential streets, with rooms the size of cupboards but plenty of them. Whatever the buildings had once been used to store, they were largely empty now, save for several pieces of broken machinery – a plough in one barn, an engineless tractor in the other – and various bits of junk that had washed up on the tide of passing time.
Beyond the buildings, the forest immediately thickened, so much so that Fleet could barely see beyond the first row of trees. Except …
He edged closer, moving between the two barns and into shadow that was almost as thick as night. Amid the rain, water dripped from the gabled roofs in heavy drops, and one found the gap between Fleet’s coat collar and his neck. The feeling as it ran down his back was of an ice-cold finger tracing the length of his spine. He shuddered.
On the far side of the buildings, he paused, and checked again towards the trees. Briefly, before, he thought he’d seen movement, and for a moment he could imagine precisely how Sadie’s friends had
