Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(28)

‘No need, thank you, it’s only a case of walking around the edge of the fields. Am I right in thinking you don’t have any livestock in these four fields here off this lane?’

‘That’s right. Don’t worry, no bulls. There’s sheep in the next field but they won’t hurt you. I’ll be off, young fella, leave you to it, get home for my tea.’ Jones disappeared up the lane.

Maxwell took out his camera and walked in through the open gate. He stopped to turn and take it in. He wanted to get a feel for it: the quiet, the stillness, they didn’t bring peace, they brought tension.

Rachel McKinney was celebrating the end of the first year of her law degree at Bristol University and she intended to pack up the next day and head home to her parents in Plymouth for a long leisurely summer before coming back in October. She had drunk some shots and become separated from her friends when they moved on without her. She started making out with a man on the dance floor. But it had only been a kiss or two and, once she had a good look at him, she realised he was pretty awful. Her friends didn’t answer her calls so she went looking for them in the usual bars. Instead of finding them, she ended up in a private party with some other students she vaguely knew from the third year. At four in the morning she’d sobered up enough to realise she didn’t want to be there and decided to get home. She had no idea where she was and no battery left on her phone as she started walking towards what she thought was town.

She stuck out her thumb and a van stopped. It had a horse on the side of it and the inscription ‘Champion’. She looked in through the open passenger window at the sweet-faced man who sat at the driving wheel, leaning across at her and smiling.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Bristol centre.’ She didn’t notice the woman sitting just behind him.

‘You’re in luck, get in.’

Maxwell started walking up close to the hedge in the direction of the grave. He found it where Jones had described and lifted up the corrugated iron and rested it back against the hedge. Beneath it, the ground was bald. A slow-worm slithered away, deep copper-coloured against the red earth. The grave was protected by a plastic sheet inside and, although it had mostly collapsed, it wasn’t difficult to see where it had been.

Rachel McKinney shivered uncontrollably but she stayed conscious through the drug-induced world of fog and pain and no feeling, and she said to herself: ‘Listen . . . you are nineteen years old, you are about to die,’ and she listened to Douglas and his laboured breathing as he dug the earth, and she heard the sound of the soil as it crumbled and she heard the scraping of the spade and she heard him curse the hardness of the soil and she looked up at the moon and she said to herself: ‘You are nineteen and your life ends here, in this place, and no one will ever find you,’ and she touched her bare leg and she knew then she was sitting in a field as the grass enclosed her. ‘Wake up . . . wake up . . .’ words tried to reach her though nothing, no feelings, no hope, no self-preservation was left.

She turned her head at the rustle of an animal in the hedge and then she looked up and saw the distant fuzzy lights of a car and heard the rumble of its engine.

She looked at Douglas, he was still digging, deep now, she could just see his back as he bent over. Rachel McKinney said to herself: ‘You are nineteen, you are not going to die here, get on your feet, for Christ’s sake, and run!’

Rachel McKinney pushed herself to her feet in one massive effort and staggered as she ran down the field, trying to make her legs work.

In the minute after Douglas heard the car himself, and realised she had gone, he hopped out of the grave and ran after her. But the lights were stronger now, the engine louder and it was coming towards the crossroads and most likely turning this way. McKinney was too far ahead.

He turned around and ran back to his van, threw his spade in the back, slammed the doors shut and drove.

Maxwell stayed exactly where he was for several minutes, then he got out his camera and switched it to video mode and filmed as he walked up to the brow of the field to get a look at the area.

He dictated into his recorder:

‘The field rises gently away from the lane. Not overlooked, not easy to see into without entering field, cannot see the lane from where I am standing. Across the valley from here there is another farm, there is a dilapidated cattle shed on the hill in the distance, and old machinery abandoned in a field on Margery Farm.’





Chapter 18


Friday 26 May 2000


Douglas returned home later than usual that Friday night. Before he went into the house he took time to check the back of his van was secure. He had been too tired to deal with Darren’s body and had left him in his van all week. He would get it done tomorrow.

Douglas locked up the van and walked in at just before midnight and found Nicola having sex with Gavin in Douglas’s bed. He stood over them, watching, and Nicola smiled at him from over the shoulder of Gavin, who was unaware of him, and Douglas watched his naked rump and smiled. He contemplated joining in but he wanted a beer and a smoke after his long day, long week. He went into the sitting room, where a few people were dotted around the floor: Stephen and Cathy were there, and Yvonne. The air was thick with the smell of weed. The French doors were open now as the evenings were light and warm. It was the month before the longest day of the year, the disciples sat around and drank beer and smoked weed and the air was filled with heat and sex and summer. Outside the fire pit had clearly been lit hours ago and the logs on it were white hot. He looked across and saw there was movement in Ash’s van.