Neil White - DEAD SILENT

Hunter looked into the living room to his left. Nothing unusual in there. Two sofas and a television hidden away in a wooden cabinet, crystal bowls on a dresser, nothing broken. There was a room on the other side of the hallway dominated by a long mahogany table.

‘No sign of a disturbance,’ he said. ‘What about the letters?’

‘These go back a couple of days,’ Roach said, flicking through them. ‘Bills and credit card statements mostly.’

Hunter went along the hall to the kitchen. It was a long room, with high sash windows looking along the garden. There was a yellow Aga and a battered oak table, and china mugs hung from hooks underneath dusty cupboards.

‘They hadn’t planned to leave,’ Roach said. When Hunter turned around, Roach was bathed in the light of the open fridge door, holding a half-empty milk bottle. ‘This is turning into yoghurt. They would have thrown it away.’

Hunter scratched his head. He ambled over to the window and looked out at the two lawns, green and lush, separated by a gravel path. There was an elaborate fountain in one corner of the garden, with a wide stone basin and a Grecian statue of a woman holding an urn, with a steel and glass summer house in the other. Hunter could see the bright fronds of plants.

Hunter looked downwards, at the floor and the walls, and then out at the garden again. He was about to say something when something drew his eye, a detail in the garden that didn’t seem quite right. He looked closer, wondering what he’d seen that had grabbed his attention, his eyes working faster than his mind, when he realised that it was the lawn itself. It was flat all the way along, green and even, but there was a patch near the back wall where it looked churned up, as if soil had been newly piled up on it.

‘What do you think to that?’ Hunter said, before turning around to see Roach kneeling down, examining the skirting and the wall. ‘What is it?’

Roach looked up, his brow furrowed, his cockiness gone. ‘It looks like dried blood,’ he said. ‘And there’s some more on the wall.’

Hunter followed his gaze; he saw it too. Just specks, and some faint brown smears on the white wall tiles, as if someone had tried to clean it away.

‘What do we do?’ Roach said.

Hunter pursed his lips, knowing that he was in a lawyer’s home, and lawyers can make trouble.

But blood was blood.

‘You can forget about your strawberries,’ Hunter said, and headed for the garden. As Roach joined him, Hunter lit a cigarette and made for the path that ran between the lawns.

‘Where are you going?’ Roach shouted.

‘Gardening,’ was the reply.

Hunter walked quickly down the path, towards the disturbed patch of grass at the end of the garden. He stopped next to the soil beds beside the high garden wall, just before the path wound round towards the summer house. Hunter pointed. ‘Can you see that?’

Roach looked and shrugged. ‘Can I see what?’

‘Soil,’ Hunter replied. ‘On the grass, and there on the path.’ He pointed at some more dark patches. ‘Someone’s been doing some digging round here.’

‘It’s a garden,’ Roach said. ‘It’s what people do.’

Hunter ignored him and strode onto the soil beds, dragging his foot along the ground, his face stern with concentration. Then he stopped. He looked at Roach, and then pointed downwards.

‘It’s looser here,’ he said. ‘Crumblier, less dense. And there’s soil on the lawn and the path. Perhaps they thought it would be rained away, but it’s been hot all week.’ Hunter pointed to an old wooden shed, painted green, on the other side of the garden. ‘Get some spades.’

Roach looked aghast. ‘We can’t rip up a barrister’s house just because we’ve found some old blood.’

‘Is that because he’s a barrister?’

‘Yes,’ Roach answered, exasperated, ‘because he can make trouble for us if we get it wrong.’

Hunter drew on his cigarette. ‘We can wait for the rest of the squad to arrive, and they can get the excavators in here because you saw spilled gravy.’

Roach looked uncertain.

‘Or we could dig a hole and then fill it back in again,’ Hunter said.

Roach waved his hand to show that he had relented. ‘Just the flower bed,’ he said, his voice wary, and then he walked 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.