Dead People Read Free Page A

rending their garments and keening over the body?’
    ‘No, sir.’
    ‘So, Capaldi?’
    ‘I don’t think I should make that decision, sir.’ I braced myself.
    ‘It’s your fucking corpse, Capaldi, you’re the finder. You’re supposed to be a professional, you make the call.’
    ‘I would think it could all wait until the morning, sir.’
    ‘Wise move, son.’ He chuckled, but even that managed to contain a threat in it.
    Wise move indeed. I had just saved them from a night of rain and bleak wide-open spaces. I just hoped it would be remembered and appreciated. But, knowing Jack Galbraith, I doubted it.
    By the time I came out of the hut, we were losing light, and the rain was sweeping in. Some strange vortex effect in the cwm bringing it up the hill at us. But Jeff’s men had managed to rig a tarpaulin over the crucial areas, the half-exposed skeleton and the mound of excavated material, and Hughes and Friel had taped off the rectangle I had prescribed for them.
    Vehicles were leaving, a procession heading down the access road. Jeff had obviously released his men. Mine were attempting their own escape, Emrys keeping his head down to avoid eye contact as he got into the passenger’s side of the patrol car. Which had been turned around and was now facing downhill, I noticed.
    ‘
Sergeant!
’ I yelled.
    He froze in his crouch, half inside the car. He wanted to ignore me, but a conditioned reflex had kicked in at my shout.
    ‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I asked, approaching, as he unravelled himself. Inside the car, I could see Friel in the driver’s seat, craning past him to watch me.
    ‘We’re going back down to take up our normal duties,’ Emrys stated challengingly.
    ‘You’re supposed to assist me here until I release you.’
    His eyes narrowed meanly as he tried to remember when that one had popped up on the order book. ‘I thought your people were taking over.’
    ‘They are, but the SOCO team aren’t starting the investigation until tomorrow. Which means that we need to secure the site.’
    ‘It is secure. We’ve taped it off, the workmen have covered it.’
    ‘I need a watch kept.’
    He looked at me disgustedly, realizing now where this thing was going. ‘Isn’t that your responsibility?’
    I smiled at him. ‘That’s right, and that’s why I’m delegating it to you. I have other things to do to get this investigation started.’
    He almost shook his head in defiance. Instead, he thought better of it and smiled slyly. ‘Sorry, no can do.’ He tapped on the roof of the car. ‘We’ve just taken an urgent call requesting assistance. Haven’t we, Constable?’
    On cue, Friel leaned over. ‘That’s right. Extreme urgency, they said.’
    I took Hughes’s elbow. He resisted for a moment, then let me steer him away from the car. ‘Do you want me to write this one up,’ I asked him softly, ‘or are you going to be a good plod and do what I’ve instructed you to do?’
    He bristled. ‘Write what up?’ he asked, a sneaky streak of doubt cutting through the belligerence.
    ‘That you’ve spun me a fucking lie to evade your duty.’ I held my hand up in front of his face to hush his protest. ‘That landline I was on is the only communications tool available here. No radio, no phone signal.’ I made a show of gazing up at the heavens wonderingly. ‘And I don’t see any sign of Pegasus, or Mercury the Winged Fucking Messenger, having delivered your urgent summons.’
    He glared at me. I wondered whether I had taken him just too far. He had a short fuse, and had laid into me once before. Was he balancing the prospect of a reprimand against the instant gratification of realigning the side of my face? He snorted, and turned back to the car. ‘Get out of there, Friel,’ he snapped.
    I drove down the hill thinking that this was the investigative equivalent of the Phoney War. I hoped that the body we had uncovered didn’t mind – whoever and whatever they were – that the