them, the snow unrelenting. ‘This could cut the place off,’ he said, gesturing at the weather. ‘We probably need to get going, otherwise the road from here could be impassable, too.’
‘Yeah, good idea,’ Henry agreed. ‘Shall we?’ He indicated the car.
‘But not just yet,’ Flynn said.
‘He needs to get somewhere warm,’ Henry said.
‘And I reckon I’ve got another ten minutes of looking,’ Flynn said.
Henry regarded him. His face felt frozen and unfeeling, his fingers inside his gloves like ice-pops, and all he wanted to do was defrost. ‘Just what the hell are you doing here?’ he asked. ‘What are you looking for? I’m here because an ill-judged jaunt went wrong, but you’re two thousand miles off your patch, aren’t you?’ If he was honest, he did not care what Flynn was up to or why, he was simply grateful their paths had collided, thankful for his assistance with Donaldson, and now he just wanted a hot bath, hot food and to get his friend sorted. He had no interest in Flynn’s circumstances.
‘I couldn’t resist a plea from a husky maiden,’ Flynn said, not giving Henry the additional reasons he’d left Gran Canaria, such as the possibility of an assault complaint, or the lack of work. ‘So I’ve turned up here and, to cut a long story short, I think I’m looking for a body.’ He pointed to the Shogun up the track. ‘That’s her car. Her keys and possessions were in it, but she’s nowhere to be found. I’m thinking bad things.’
‘And who is the dusky maiden?’ Henry said, playing along with reluctance.
‘Cathy James, the rural beat officer out here.’
Henry would have frowned, but the cold had made his forehead as smooth and fixed as if he’d had a Botox injection. ‘A police officer?’
‘You might remember her as Cathy Turnbull — if you know her at all.’
Henry’s internal light bulb flickered. ‘She married Tom James, a detective from Lancaster.’
‘The very one.’
‘He’s a good lad,’ Henry said. Flynn emitted a doubtful noise. Henry relented a little and tried to show some interest. ‘So what’s going on?’
‘Nutshell? I got a few frantic calls from Cathy — we go way back,’ he explained. ‘I turned up here and found she hasn’t been seen since a domestic ding-dong. Good lad Tom acts like he doesn’t give a shit and now I’ve found her car.’ He opened his arms helplessly.
‘Where does the dog come into it?’
Flynn gave Henry a pissed-off look. ‘Does it matter? Fact is, I can’t contact her, I’ve found her car in the middle of nowhere and I’m worried — as you would be,’ he concluded cynically.
‘But no sign of any body?’ Henry asked.
‘No… but I also know she might’ve been checking up on a report of a poacher on this land, so that’s an add- on worry. I mean, she could’ve come a cropper challenging a poacher, dunno. It’s happened before, hasn’t it? And as for the dog, it’s hers, so I borrowed him to look for her.’
Flynn was not one of Henry’s favourite people, and their history was one of conflict. However, as a cop, he felt some responsibility to act on Flynn’s story, half-baked as it was. He looked up at the sky, then at the Peugeot with Donaldson in the back seat. If he insisted on getting Donaldson to the village, there would be no light left at all, and as there was only a few minutes’ worth left anyway, he decided that he would humour Flynn. At least then he couldn’t be criticized. ‘Let’s have a look at the car, then.’
‘What about your mate?’
‘A few more minutes won’t do him any harm. It’ll be pitch black then anyway and there won’t be any time to look for anything.’
Flynn gave a short, grateful nod. He tugged Roger’s lead and the three of them walked back up to Cathy’s Shogun. Flynn took the opportunity to give Henry a few more details of what had been going on. Henry listened as he trudged. Flynn pointed the remote at the car and unlocked it as they got to it, the inner light coming on. Henry opened the driver’s door, leaned carefully in, checking the interior. He picked up the leather handbag Flynn had told him about and peered at the contents, glancing sideways at Flynn.
‘Admittedly, looks sus,’ Henry conceded. ‘If she was getting out to deal with a poacher, why would she leave this stuff behind?’
‘Maybe she didn’t get the chance,’ Flynn said.
Henry jerked his head in acknowledgement, and thought, Or maybe she didn’t feel the need to have the stuff with her, or maybe this is just the set-up of a hysterical person trying to draw attention to herself. He kept those musings to himself.
‘Did she actually say what the problem was with her and Tom?’ Henry asked.
‘Not really,’ Flynn said in a strained way. ‘But she did say something weird.’
Henry waited.
‘She said her husband was bent.’
‘As in gay, or cop?’
‘Cop.’
‘Mm, I find that hard to believe, knowing what I do of Tom James.’
‘You didn’t seem to find it hard to believe when you were investigating me,’ Flynn blurted, displaying deep- rooted resentment.
Henry blinked. ‘A million quid did go missing,’ he pointed out.
‘And I didn’t take it, as I’ve since proved.’
‘Let’s not go there.’ Henry raised his eyebrows.
Flynn pursed his lips and said, ‘Whatever.’
Henry reached back inside the Shogun and lugged out a big Maglite torch from the passenger footwell. ‘Let’s give it a once round the vehicle, say a ten-metre circle, the vehicle being the centre. I reckon we take a quick look and if we find nothing, we come back in the morning.’
Sullenly, Flynn nodded, unable to believe his own little outburst, still surprised at how much his past dealings with Henry still rankled with him. Scratch the surface, he thought bitterly, you uncover a cancer.
‘You want to try the dog again?’
‘On the whole, I think he might have lost the knack,’ Flynn admitted sadly, patting Roger’s head.
Henry switched on the torch. The strong beam cut through the gloom, the snow looking eerie as it fell through the light. He walked to the front of the car and tried to fix his mind on the situation. It didn’t help that all he wanted was to get off the damned hillside, not go scratting around in the undergrowth. Every bit of him was cold. His feet were sopping wet now, his gloves had been penetrated by the damp and although his outer clothing had done its job well, he was chilled to the marrow and fed up with it.
Truth was, he didn’t want to do this. His instinct was to remove Cathy’s property from the car, lock the vehicle up and leave it in situ overnight; get back to civilization, then start from scratch in the morning. What he was doing now was just a sop to appease Flynn, someone he didn’t like very much and who was developing a nasty habit of coming back into his life to haunt him.
‘I’ll have a look over there,’ he said, no enthusiasm in his voice.
‘Don’t try too hard,’ Flynn said, responding to Henry’s tone.
Henry set off from the front radiator grille of the Shogun. He intended to walk ten yards dead ahead, five yards to the left, left again, then back to the car, kicking up snow and dirt as he went. His feeling was that if Cathy had come to grief, and this wasn’t an elaborate ploy to get attention, the grief would have happened in fairly close proximity to the car. Not that her body couldn’t have been dragged further into the trees after the deed had been done.
As he walked forward, he wondered why he hadn’t switched on the car headlights. Brain freeze, he thought. Knackered. No time for this shit. Want to go home.
The snow got deeper the further he walked from the car. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the shadowy figure of Flynn covering the area on the nearside of the car, accompanied by what looked in the dark like a wolf.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t looking where he was going because he would probably have caught his foot and stumbled on the snow-covered root anyway. He kicked the obstruction angrily, but it wasn’t quite solid enough to be part of a tree, because it moved. Curious, he poked at it again with his toe and unearthed a frozen arm. He dropped to one knee, brushed away the snow until he revealed the white, frozen face of a dead woman.
