it had lasted this long was because no vandal could be bothered to take the kind of exercise required to reach it. The area in front had been cleared and levelled, but it was rutted and potholed now, and self-seeded birch and spruce saplings were collaborating with gorse in an effort to take over.
They had called it a shooting hut. On the drive up here, I had imagined something with rustic pine supports and trophy antlers nailed to the walls. This was more like a stalag way past its sell-by date.
I stood outside trying to get a feel for the place. Imagining it was night. Why would they come here?
Because it was so far off the edge of the world that anything could happen, and no one would ever be any the wiser?
I buried the thought. I went back to the facts. The minibus driver had said that the men didn’t seem to know the girl. So she wasn’t local. This location had to be the choice of one or all of the six men. It’s night, it’s cold, it’s late, and it’s a long way into a labyrinth. Why here? And why walk? Why not use the minibus? Why park it way the hell over where we found it? Because you were all so fucked-up that it seemed like fun at the time?
Because your party was still flowing?
I opened the door and met the party. Beer bottles and cans mainly, some wine, one bottle of vodka. All empty. But all stacked neatly. Tidied up. With empty crisp and snack packets crumpled and stuffed into a supermarket carrier bag.
The place had the damp, earthy smell of fern roots. I was standing in a vestibule. To my left was a small room that would have functioned as an office or foreman’s room, to the right a larger room, door hanging open: the mess quarters. In front of me, opposite the entrance, was a toilet cubicle with no door, and a cracked WC pan.
I went through the open door into the mess room. The floor had been swept. Not thoroughly; scrappy piles of old pine needles, twigs and other debris that had blown in through the broken windows had been pushed back against the wall. The other homely touch was six – I counted them – sawn log rounds arranged as seating. It all implied organization.
But when? Had this been set up before they arrived? Premeditated? Or had they all piled out of the minibus and set to making an impromptu den? And why only six pixie stools for seven people?
None of the log rounds had been recently cut. I touched the nearest one. It was still damp. But in this atmosphere so was everything else. I looked out of the windows. There were no other log rounds in sight. No imprints of any in the soft ground around the hut. It was possible that they could have ranged out with torches and collected these in the dark. Or they could have had them here already. But only six? Almost but not quite knowing how many were coming to dinner.
I nearly missed it. Running a last check before I backed out of the room I caught a glimpse of white behind the door. White and clean – alien matter in this place. I picked it up carefully. It was a crumpled paper tissue, slightly damp from absorption of the moisture in the atmosphere. I took a deep sniff. A complex background of unidentifiable fragrances. Opening it out I saw black smudges. The lessons from a fractured marriage informed me that these were smears of ruined mascara. Tears of fun or tears of terror? Another thought to bury.
I had made contact. My first meeting with the woman. I sniffed the tissue again to fix the esters in my olfactory library, and then fitted it carefully into an evidence bag.
I went back to the vestibule. The door to the small office was stuck. A clean section of arc in front of it showed where someone had tried to push it open and given up. Or had they? I put my shoulder to it and leaned in hard. It screeched horribly against the floor and opened with difficulty. The space was dark and even mustier than the mess room. Some damp Hessian sacks had been nailed over the windows. I pulled one away, grimacing at the slimy feel of it in my hand.
There was so much crud piled on the floor that I looked up reflexively, wondering whether this section had lost its roof. It hadn’t. But, even if it had, dead bracken did not usually tumble out of the sky in quantities like this. This had been imported. It had been heaped against the far wall, and it looked as though it had been compacted. To make some kind of a nest?
Another thought struck me.
To make a rudimentary bed?
DCI Bryn Jones was smoking outside the Methodist Church Hall in Dinas when I drove up. In the absence of a police station the hall had been commandeered for the occasion.
I ran up to him. ‘I’m sorry I took so long, sir. I got lost trying to find my way out of the forest.’ It wasn’t a lie. It was late afternoon now, almost dusk.
He just nodded, slowly exhaling smoke through his nostrils, a slightly ambivalent smile forming. ‘Thanks for your contribution to my Sunday, Sergeant Capaldi.’
Bryn Jones was short, but big in breadth. With tight black curly hair, happy green eyes, and a massive face that looked like it had been formed by pounding putty into place. He had a neck that seemed reluctant to narrow, and in the dark blue suit he appeared more constrained than dressed.
I gestured inside with my head. ‘Is DCS Galbraith in there working on them?’
‘Notice an absence?’
I looked around, puzzled. Not getting it at first. And then it hit. There was no one here.
‘Wives and girlfriends, concerned family …’ Bryn confirmed, seeing it dawn on me.
‘Where are they?’
‘Gone.’
‘Have you taken them in?’ I asked, surprised, wondering whether to start feeling vindicated. ‘Is it turning out to be more serious than we thought?’
‘They’ve gone home. All of them.’
I stared at him for a moment, perplexed. ‘Even the men?’
He nodded. ‘Even the men.’
I shook my head, trying to clear a path to my next question. Then the inner voice of self-preservation sideswiped me. ‘DCS Galbraith – has he gone home too?’ I asked, trying to conceal the hope in the question.
Bryn dropped his cigarette end, crushed it underfoot, and then shook his head. Not unkindly. ‘No. I’m on lookout duty.’
I didn’t have to ask who the smoke on the horizon was.
Jack Galbraith was sitting at a stacking table at the end of the hall, an empty plastic chair beside him, and an identical one opposite. He was having a cigarette under a sign that read Please refrain from smoking under the eyes of the Lord.
He looked up when I entered, closed his eyes, and steepled his fingers. I hoped that he was looking for guidance. Trying to find the strength to stop him swearing under the eyes of the Lord.
‘Fuck you, Capaldi.’ His eyes flicked open. ‘Where do I fucking start?’
Bryn Jones slipped into the empty chair beside him.
Even seated, you could tell that Jack Galbraith was tall. He had light brown hair swept back in a swagger behind his ears, a strangely effeminate frame for the firm, square-boned face with its deep-set, incisive, brown eyes. He looked as though he had been built for stamina, for distance and endurance, and you could tell from his bearing that he thought that he still had it, just hadn’t tried it
