Стюарт Макбрайд - All That’s Dead

The trees closed in on either side of the car.

Tufty grimaced at the canopy above them and shuddered. ‘Not meaning to put the jinx on it or anything, but last time you and I went for a drive in the woods, things didn’t end so well.’

‘Yes, thank you , Officer Quirrel, for bringing that up.’

‘What I mean is we should be extra-super careful this time.’

‘You keep this up and it won’t be Mhari Powell or rabid Druids you have to worry about. It’ll be me.’

The car lurched and rolled along the uneven track, suspension making ominous thunking noises with every pothole. Heading deeper into the dark-green forest depths.

Even with the morning sun blaring down, it was dark in here — the light blocked by thick layers of leaves overhead. On either side of the track, the earth was a blanket of pale grey needles, spread between the trunks. Blaeberry bushes lurking in the shadows.

The car’s speakers crackled and burred for a bit, announcing an incoming call as the word ‘CONTROL’ appeared on the display. Logan hit the button. ‘What’s happening with my Thugs, Dogs, and Guns?’

‘Inspector McRae, safe to talk?’

‘Are they on their way?’

‘OK, so I spoke to the Duty Superintendent and she wants to know why you haven’t done a risk assessment, resource allocation request, and filed a—’

‘Because it’s an evolving situation! Because I’m trying to catch a killer.’ Getting louder. ‘And because Mhari Powell isn’t going to sit on her backside waiting for me to fill out four tons of bloody paperwork!’

There was a pause, then, ‘I see. And you’d like me to pass that on to the Superintendent, would you?’

‘Yes. And feel free to add some expletives!’ He stabbed the ‘END CALL’ button. ‘AAAAAAARGH!’

Tufty grimaced. ‘So they’re not on their way?’

A fork in the track up ahead.

‘Left or right?’

Tufty consulted his phone. ‘Left.’ He fidgeted in his seat. ‘You know, maybe we should wait for backup?’

‘Be irresponsible not to.’

‘Only I don’t want Mhari Powell capturing me, cutting bits off, and posting them to the BBC. I need my bits. All my bits. They’re very nice bits. Kate’s quite fond of some of them.’

‘No one’s cutting bits off anyone.’ A sigh. ‘But if we sit on our thumbs, waiting for backup, and she kills Gary Lochhead...?’

‘I know. “Blundering on regardless” it is.’

The woods opened up on the right, turning into a patchy scrub of felled stumps and bushes. A fox hopped out from them, onto the track, and froze, staring at the approaching wreck of Logan’s Audi, before padding across and away into the wood on the other side.

Logan put on a reassuring voice. ‘Besides: Steel’s right. We’re probably wasting our time. There’ll be nothing here.’

‘Ooh, and that means we can go for great big breakfast butties at...’ His face did a distressed-frog impersonation. ‘Oh dear.’

A filthy Transit van sat at the side of the track, two wheels up on the needle-strewn verge. Rusty, streaked with mould. The kind of van you found dismembered body parts in.

Tufty licked his lips. ‘Is it me, or does that look hella ominous? I think it looks ominous. It looks ominous, right?’

Logan parked behind the ominous van and killed the Audi’s engine. Well, put it out of its misery anyway. ‘Might not be hers.’

‘Yeah, right, right. Maybe it’s just Druids? They like stone circles, don’t they? Like in Asterix and Obelix ? Nice, friendly Druids.’

‘Thought you said Druids were going to sacrifice us to the elder gods?’ Logan climbed out into the morning heat. Barely gone six and it had to be at least eighteen degrees — the warm air thrumming with the sound of insects and birds.

Tufty emerged from the car, talking into his Airwave handset. ‘I need a PNC check on a white Transit...’

Logan left him to it and picked his way over to the van instead. The side door lay open, but the only things inside were two empty cardboard boxes — one for a camera tripod, the other for a phone-mount, going by the packaging.

He turned.

A path led away into the woods, right in front of the van’s open door, narrowing as it went. Swallowed by the gloom.

Logan checked the van’s cab: nothing but an empty Twix wrapper and a crumpled tin of Irn-Bru. When he stepped down onto the track, Tufty was waiting for him.

‘Van belongs to one Jeffrey Moncrief — same guy who owns Ceanntràigh Cottage. No valid tax, insurance, or MOT.’ Tufty kicked the front wheel. ‘Tyres are bald too.’

He took a step towards the path, then stopped. ‘Tufty? No risks, OK? If it all goes wrong, you don’t play the hero, you get the hell out of there and wait for backup.’

‘OK. But only if you put on that stabproof vest and Belt-O’-Many-Things I got you.’ He held up a hand before Logan could say anything. ‘No point me stealing it, otherwise, is there?’ A small cough. ‘Well, not stealing , stealing: borrowing. You know, what with you being Professional Standards and all. Borrowing. Definitely not stealing.’

‘Deal.’

The path into the woods barely deserved the name, it was so overgrown and lumpy. Outside, in the real world, the sun was blazing down, but in here gloom ruled. The scent of pine sap, sticky and thick in the dusty air.

Four feet from the ‘path’, the forest floor was shrouded in a darkness that swallowed everything. And they’d only been in here a minute.

But at least they knew they were going the right way: a pair of parallel indentations scoured the tracks through the fallen needles beneath their feet — thin and about a metre apart. The kind of marks you’d make with a wheelchair.

Tufty sniffed. ‘Course it might not be.’

Logan kept going, slow and careful. ‘Shut up.’

‘Might be a couple of kids out on their bikes.’

Something moved in the shadows off to the right and they froze. Maybe it was that fox again? Or a homicidal maniac with a dirty big knife... The sound faded. Tufty puffed out a long, slow breath.

Onward.

A clump of blueberry bushes beside of the path, the fruit a hard, unripened green. A wheelchair lay on its side, abandoned next to it.

‘Kids on bikes?’ Logan pulled the wheelchair upright. Across the back, in big white letters, were the words, ‘PROPERTY OF RAVENDALE ~ DO NOT REMOVE FROM SITE’. Bit late for that.

Drag marks led from the chair away into the woods proper.

Tufty shuffled his feet. ‘Should I check on our backup, Sarge?’

‘We did that ninety seconds ago, you muppet.’

‘Ah. Right.’ He eased his extendable baton from its holster, sniffing the air. Dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Can you smell that?’

Logan took a deep breath... A warm, crackling smell familiar from years of bonfire parties. ‘Wood smoke.’

‘The world’s most horrible barbecue...’

Oh sodding hell.

Logan snapped out his baton. ‘We’re too late!’ Charging into the woods, shoving branches out of the way, stumbling over the uneven ground, breathing hard.

They burst out from the trees into a wide clearing full of knee-high grass and weeds. Clumps of reeds. Scrambling coils of brambles reared like frozen explosions, punctured by the vivid-green curl of ferns. And, at the centre of the clearing: a ring of stones, their grey surfaces speckled with lichen and moss. Most of them had fallen over, but a few still stood as tall as they had five thousand years ago. Ancient and feral.

The recumbent stone lay on its side at the opposite end of the circle, like an altar, flanked by a vertical on the right and a fallen stone on the left. A fire crackled beside it, coiling out pale grey wood smoke. But it was what loomed behind the altar that really caught the eye: a rough wooden tripod, fashioned from fallen trees — about twelve foot high and tapering to a point. The individual trunks weren’t that big around, barely more than you could encircle with one hand, but together they were clearly sturdy enough to support Gary Lochhead’s weight.