In Pursuit of the Proper Sinner (Inspector Lynley, #10)(14)

Worried that he'd encountered a hiker who was less than welcoming of his canine advances, Phoebe hastened towards the sound, through the remaining trees and into the circle. At once, she saw a mound of bright blue at the inner base of one of the standing stones. It was at this mound that Benbow barked, backing off from it now with his hackles up and his ears flattened back against his skull.

“What is it?” Phoebe asked over his noise. “What've you found, old boy?” Uneasily, she wiped her palms on her skirt and glanced about. She saw the answer to her question lying round her. What the dog had found was a scene of chaos. The centre of the stone circle was strewn with white feathers, and the detritus of some thoughtless campers lay scattered about: everything from a tent to a cooking pot to an opened rucksack spilling its contents onto the ground.

Phoebe approached the dog through this clutter. She wanted to get Benbow back on the lead and get both of them out of the circle at once.

She said, “Benbow, come here,” and he yelped more loudly. It was the sort of sound she'd never heard from him before.

She saw that he was clearly upset by the mound of blue, the source of the white feathers that dusted the clearing like the wings of slaughtered moths.

It was a sleeping bag, she realised. And it was from this bag that the feathers had come, because a slash in the nylon that served as its cover spat more white feathers when Phoebe touched the bag with her toe. Indeed, nearly all the feathers that constituted its stuffing were gone. What remained was like a tarpaulin. It had been completely unzipped and it was shrouding something, something that terrified the little dog.

Phoebe felt weak-kneed, but she made herself do it. She lifted the cover. Benbow backed off, giving her a clear look at the nightmare vignette that the sleeping bag had covered.

Blood. There was more in front of her than she'd ever seen before. It wasn't bright red because it had obviously been exposed to air for a good number of hours. But Phoebe didn't require that colour to know what she was looking at.

“Oh my Lord.” She went light-headed. She'd seen death before in many guises, but none had been as grisly as this. At her feet, a young man lay curled like a foetus, dressed head to toe in nothing but black, with that same colour puckering burnt flesh from eye to jaw on one side of his face. His cropped hair was black as well, as was the ponytail that sprang from his skull. His goatee was black. His fingernails were black. He wore an onyx ring and an earring of black. The only colour that offered relief from the black—aside from the sleeping bag of blue—was the magenta of blood, and that was everywhere: on the ground beneath him, saturating his clothes, pooling from scores of wounds on his torso.

Phoebe dropped the sleeping bag and backed away from the body. She felt hot. She felt cold. She knew that she was about to faint. She chided herself for her lack of backbone. She said, “Benbow?” and over her voice she heard the dog barking. He'd never stopped. But four of her senses had deadened with shock, heightening and honing her fifth sense: sight.

She scooped up the dog and stumbled from the horror.

The day had altered completely by the time the police arrived. In the way of weather in the Peaks, a morning that had been born into sunshine and perfect sky had reached its maturity in fog. It slithered over the distant crest of Kinder Scout, creeping across the high moors from the northwest. When the Buxton police set up their crime scene tape, they did it with the mist falling on their shoulders like spirits descending to visit the site.

Before he went out to join the scenes of crime team, Detective Inspector Peter Hanken had a word with the woman who'd stumbled upon the body. She was sitting in the back of a panda car, a dog on her lap. Hanken normally liked dogs a great deal: He was the master of two Irish setters who were almost as much his pride and joy as were his three children. But this pathetic-looking mongrel with his unkempt coat of mangy fur and his sludge-coloured eyes looked a likely candidate for the dog meat factory. And he smelled like a dustbin left in the sun.

Not that there was any sun, which lowered Hanken's spirits even further. On every side of him, he encountered grey—in the sky, on the landscape, and in the grizzled hair of the old woman before him—and grey had long had the capability of sinking his ship faster than the dawning knowledge of what a murder investigation was going to do to his weekend plans.

Over the top of the car Hanken said to Patty Stewart—a WPC with a heart-shaped face and breasts that had long been the objects of fantasy for half a dozen of the younger DCs—“Name?”

Stewart filled in all the blanks in her typical competent manner. “Phoebe Neill. She's a home nurse. From Sheffield.”

“What the hell was she doing out here?”

“Her patient died yesterday evening. She took it hard. She brought his dog out here for a walk. It helps, she said.”

Hanken had seen plenty of death in his years of policing. And in his experience, nothing helped. He slapped his palm against the roof of the car and opened the door, saying to Stewart, “Get on with it, then.” He slid inside.

“Is it Miss or Missus?” he said after introducing himself to the home nurse.

The dog strained forward against her hands, which she'd placed on his chest just above his legs. She held him in position firmly. She said, “He's friendly. If you'd just let him smell your hand …” and she added, “Miss,” when Hanken obliged.