over to the shed. When he returned, he was holding two spades. He rejoined Hunter by the soil bed and said, ‘Someone’s been ripping that shed apart.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just that,’ Roach replied. ‘All the slats from the back are gone.’
‘We’ll dig first before we worry about vandals,’ Hunter said, and thrust the spade into the dirt.
It was hot work: after twenty minutes of digging their shirts were soaked and they had wiped dirty sweat trails across their foreheads. They were about two feet down when Roach cried out in disgust, ‘What the fuck is all that?’
Hunter looked down. There was movement in the soil. Flies started to appear out of the dirt, their tiny wings making a soft hum around Hunter’s head. Roach scraped again at the soil, and then Hunter heard the soft thud of spade on wood. He looked at Roach and saw that he had gone pale, his sleeve over his mouth.
‘It stinks,’ Roach muttered, and that’s when Hunter caught the stench; it was one he recognised, like gone-off meat, beef left on a warm shelf.
Hunter grimaced and started to move the soil from whatever it was that Roach’s spade had hit. Another swarm of flies buzzed around Hunter’s spade; as the soil was removed, the thudding sounds from his spade became louder, acquiring an echo. They looked at each other, both sensing that they were about to find something they didn’t want to see.
When they had finished, Roach climbed out of the hole and looked down. ‘It’s the same wood as on the shed,’ he said.
Hunter took a deep breath. Their digging had exposed wooden planks, painted green, wedged into the hole. The planks had supported the soil, and the hollow sounds that came from beneath told Hunter that there was a cavity.
‘Who’s going to look first?’ Roach asked.
‘It might be a dog,’ Hunter said.
Roach shook his head. ‘That’s more than a dog.’
Hunter grimaced and then lay down on his chest so that he could reach into the hole. He moved the remnants of dirt from the end of the planks with his fingers, breathing through his mouth all the time to avoid the stink of whatever was in there and shaking his head to swat away the flies. He managed to ease his fingers under one of the pieces of wood and pulled at it, until he felt it move and was able to shove it to one side. Sunlight streamed into the hole and he heard Roach step away quickly before his lunch splashed onto the path nearby. Hunter clenched his jaw and swallowed hard, the smell making him gag.
The sunlight caught a body, naked, a woman with long dark hair.
Hunter pulled at another plank, and then one more, laying them on the lawn next to the hole, and then he stood up, taking deep breaths.
Roach turned back to the hole. ‘Fuck me,’ he whispered, wiping his mouth.
In the hole was a woman, crammed into the space, curled up on her side, her face green, her dark hair over her face, with blood on her shoulders and dirt on her bare legs. The hole was small, barely enough space to contain her, not enough room to stretch out.
As Hunter looked, he noticed something else. He lay on the floor again, just to have a closer look, and then he struggled to his feet. He looked at Roach. ‘It’s worse than that,’ he said, his face pale.
‘How can it be worse?’ Roach said.
‘Look at her hands,’ Hunter said, his face ashen. ‘Can you see her fingers, all bloodied and shredded?’
Roach didn’t answer, quiet now.
Hunter pulled the boards towards them and turned them over. ‘Look at the underside.’ Roach looked. ‘There are scratchmarks.’
‘I see them,’ replied Roach.
Hunter turned to Roach. ‘Do you know what that means?’
Roach nodded slowly, his face pale too.
‘She was buried alive.’
Standing at the door, I stretched and gazed at the view outside my cottage. Clear skies and rolling Lancashire fields. I could see the grey of Turners Fold in the valley below me, but the sunlight turned the tired old cotton town into quaint Victoriana, the canal twinkling soft blue, bringing the summer barges from nearby Blackley as it wound its way towards Yorkshire.
Turners Fold was my home, had always been that way—or so it seemed. I’d spent a few years in London as a reporter at one of the nationals, a small-town boy lost in the bright lights, but home kept calling me, and so when the rush of the city wore me down, I headed back north. I used to enjoy walking the London streets, feeling the bump of the crowd, just another anonymous face, but the excitement faded in the end. It didn’t take me long to pick up the northern rhythms again, the slower pace, the bluntness of the people, the lack of any real noise. And I liked it that way. It seemed simpler somehow, not as much of a race.
The summers made the move worthwhile. The heat didn’t hang between the buildings like it did in London, trapped by exhaust fumes, the only respite being a trip to a park, packed out by tourists.
The tourists don’t visit Turners Fold, so it felt like I had the hills to myself, a private view of gentle slopes and snaking ribbons of drystone walls, the town just a blip in the landscape.
But it has character, this tough little town of millstone grit. My mind flashed back to the London rush, the wrestle onto the underground, and I smiled as the breeze ruffled my hair and I felt the first warmth of the day, ready for a perfect June afternoon. I heard a noise behind me, the shuffle of slippers on the stone step. I didn’t need to look round. I felt sleepy lips brush my neck as Laura wrapped her arms around my waist.
‘I thought you were staying in bed,’ I said.
‘I want to take Bobby to school,’ she replied, her voice hoarse from sleep. ‘Early shift next week, so I won’t get a chance then, and I need to start revising.’
‘Sergeant McGanity. It has a good ring to it,’ I said.
‘But I need to get through the exams first,’ she said. ‘What are you doing, Jack?’
‘Just enjoying the view.’
Laura rested her head on my shoulder and let her hair fall onto my chest. She had grown it over the winter, dark and sleek, past her shoulders now. I looked down and smiled. Cotton pyjamas and fluffy slippers.
‘What about later?’ she asked.
‘I’m not sure,’ I replied. ‘I might take a look at the coroner’s court, see if there’s an inquest.’
‘Morbid,’ she said, and gave me a playful squeeze.
‘Where there’s grief, there’s news,’ I said. ‘And the Crawler has been quiet as well, so the paper needs to be filled somehow.’
Laura
