Donaldson emerged from cover, gave Henry a sheepish smile. ‘Feel slightly better.’
‘OK to push on?’
‘No choice, is there? Can hardly stay up here.’
A sudden gust of wind caught the two men, almost knocking them over with its ferocity. It carried sleet with it, slashing across Henry’s exposed face as though he was being pebble-dashed. It hurt. He tugged his bob cap down over his ears and pulled his jacket hood over too. He turned so his back was against the wind. Ahead was a sheep track, heading due north.
‘Need to be going in that direction.’ He pointed.
‘Yeah, let’s go, pal.’
Flynn knocked. The dog barked louder. He knocked again, bent down to the letter box and flipped it open to peer through. The whole of the rectangular gap was filled by the snout and menacing, bared, snarling teeth of a very large German shepherd dog. Flynn jumped back with a little squeal as the dog snapped nastily at him.
‘Nice doggy,’ he said. He took a couple of steps backwards and checked the front of the house. It had probably been built in the 1960s and was of typical design for a police house of that era, with the exception that it had been extended on one side for the office and on the other by a double garage with a bedroom above. Flynn knew that the force had done its best to get rid of all the rural beats covering far-flung countryside areas where nothing much seemed to happen and the cost of policing was disproportionate to the results achieved. The powers that be had managed to close a lot of the rural stations, but Kendleton had remained open because of vociferous public and parish council pressure. And the fact that Cathy did a fantastic job. She had been single — newly divorced — when she took up the post before the cost-cutting started. Within a year she had wormed her way into the heart of the community and got quantitative results as well as the touchy-feely stuff. When the force tried to close the beat down, there had been severe ructions from the tribal elders and they had to back down.
She had also done a deal to buy the house, with the promise she would continue to stay on as local beat officer. The house, considered prime real estate, had cost a fortune, but marriage to Tom, a DC in Lancaster, had eased the pain of purchase.
Flynn thought about this as he walked along the front of the house, past the huge bay window of the lounge, down the side then through the unlocked gate into the back garden. It was a massive, unkempt chunk of land. Flynn walked along the back of the house, peering into the windows, seeing no one. However, by going on tiptoe he could see into the garage and there was a car parked inside, a VW Golf. For some reason, he thought this was likely to be Tom’s car. When he got back around to the front, he started knocking again, clattering the letter box and generally driving the dog bonkers.
Jack Vincent had a pen in his hands, a cheap ball-point, holding it between the thumb and first finger of both hands.
The cabin door opened and the lorry driver called Callard stepped in. He had just returned from his third delivery of aggregate of the day. His vehicle was now going through the power wash. He had done his last run.
Vincent’s eyes refocused from the pen to Callard’s nervous figure. ‘What?’
‘I want out,’ Callard spluttered.
Vincent’s lips twisted into a cruel grin. ‘You want out? Out of what?’
‘This.’ He made a sweeping gesture with his hands. ‘This whole fucking thing.’
Vincent looked at him for a few moments, licked his lips, then placed the pen down slowly on the desk without a sound.
‘I can’t do it,’ Callard admitted. He’d been taking a big chance that day, knowing the cops and the ministry were out and about. The evening before he had got seriously drunk down at the village pub and had continued drinking once he got home, only flopping into bed at 4 a.m., horrendously pissed. His alarm had gone off at six, but a shower, shave and copious amounts of coffee had done nothing to alleviate his condition. So he had driven drunk and had continued to sip from a bottle of whisky throughout the day, maintaining the level.
Drinking had been Callard’s problem before, the reason why no one else would touch him with a barge pole. Since Vincent had taken him on, he’d kept himself sober for the driving, but last night had tipped him over the edge again. And the reason he got drunk wasn’t connected in any way to the demons that haunted his past: the divorces, the depression, money troubles, the deaths.
The reason for last night’s bender was helping to clear up a blood-soaked crime scene.
Two dead black guys. One with his throat blasted out, the other with half the side of his face missing. And the fibreglass walls of the cabin splattered with blood, gore and brains.
And the shotgun had still been in Jack Vincent’s hands, literally still smoking.
Callard had just been under the crusher at the quarry, refilling his lorry with hardcore, had driven to the weighbridge and was ready to get back on the road when Henderson swung up on to the footplate and leaned in the driver’s window.
‘We need some assistance.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘Switch off, come with me.’
Callard shrugged. He got out, followed the big fitter to the cabin. Vincent was standing at the door, talking to the woman who did the admin at the other cabin. She was a wiry woman in late middle age called Penny. They stopped talking as the two men approached and Penny took a step back, angling herself to one side to let the men stand in front of Vincent. It was then that Callard noticed the shotgun hanging loosely in Vincent’s right hand, at his thigh, a wisp of smoke coming from the barrel.
‘Been some bother,’ Vincent said. A major understatement. He stood aside. Henderson went past him, looked down the cabin, then glanced at Vincent and sniffed up.
‘Crusher?’ he asked efficiently.
‘One of ’em, the other’s cat food.’
Callard had no idea what they were talking about. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Take a look,’ Vincent gestured in a ‘be my guest’ kind of way.
And from Callard’s reaction, Vincent knew that he was going to be a problem. Drunks always were. Untrustworthy, self-absorbed and pathetic.
Vincent now looked at his driver, having expected something like this. He wouldn’t have minded, but he knew of Callard’s past. There was violence in it, he’d once been a minder for a low-level drug dealer, had broken fingers in his younger days, made people squeal for mercy. Now he was an alcohol-riddled wimp. He said, ‘It’s gone beyond that, Larry. You’re too much a part of it now. All that drug transporting, now helping me to dispose of two bodies, one of which you took in the aggregate this morning.’ He smiled at Callard, his eyes hooded. ‘Accessory to murder at the very least. You’re locked in, pal.’
‘Jack, I won’t say anything… I just…’
‘Look, come in proper, don’t stand there. Let’s chat. This’ll be OK. Seriously. No worries.’
Callard hesitated, then stepped into the cabin, his eyes quickly moving to the far back wall on which most of the flesh and blood of the dead men had been splattered. Now you couldn’t tell. Once the bodies had been dragged out and disposed of, Vincent had set Callard to work with a power washer inside the cabin. As the furniture in that section was all cheap plastic, it hadn’t mattered about it getting soaked. Callard had covered his wooden desk with a plastic sheet, pulled open the drain plug in the cabin floor and got to work, hosing it all away. He’d gagged at first, then gone on to autopilot. Dazed, shocked and simply doing what he’d been told to do, terrified of the consequences of refusal. The washer had done a good job and Callard had spent extra time spraying the water jets into the nooks and crannies, transfixed as the resultant liquid mix gurgled away down the plughole.
And that was after he’d helped to get rid of the bodies.
He and Henderson, who had been completely unaffected by the task, had dragged the first body all the way to the stone crusher. Henderson adjusted the machine to spew out the finest grade of rock and then they’d hauled the body on to the conveyor belt, switched it on and watched it feed in.
The second body was more of a conundrum as far as Callard was concerned. He could see the reasoning in getting rid of a body through a crusher. It was pounded to nothing. Spat out on to a pile of hardcore, then tipped into a lorry and would eventually be part of the foundations underneath the stretch of motorway the hardcore was dumped at.
No body. No evidence. A very good way of disposing of it. Even Callard could see that.
But the second body?
