Dead People

Dead People Read Free Page B

Book: Dead People Read Free
Author: Ewart Hutton
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start for the search for justice was on hold for a brighter new morning.
    But I could feel the buzz starting. Much as my sympathy went out to all those poor tup lambs I had been seeing in their pens, huddled, stiff and ball-busted, this was a real case. Jack Galbraith had to let me in on it. It was what he had exiled me out here for. Like it or not, this was my country now, and I was his man in it.
    I stopped at the nearest farm entrance. COGFRYN FARM
neatly inscribed on a slate panel
.
It looked tidy. I made a note of it. I would start there tomorrow. Then work outwards. Build up a picture of the neighbourhood. The people whose doors I would soon be knocking on. The difference around here, from what I had been used to in Cardiff, was that instead of shuffling onto the next doorstep or garden gate when you were making enquiries, the move could involve a couple of miles, a 500-foot climb, and a stretch of mud that required an embedded team of sappers.
    I turned onto the main road. The headlights swept the direction sign: DINAS
.
I smiled wryly to myself. Whoever would have thought that that would ever have meant going home?

2
    If Dinas had been allowed to remain as an opportunistic collection of shacks on a dubious ford on a secondary river, it would never have known disappointment. But it hadn’t, it grew, and it got prosperity. Twice. Lead and sheep. And lost it both times.
    And then it got me.
    I didn’t have a choice about it. Dinas was prescribed for me. The day that Detective Chief Superintendent Jack Galbraith, obviously repaying my former superiors some deep Masonic favour, rescued me from disgrace in Cardiff, tucked me briefly under his wing, and then booted me out of the nest and into the boondocks. I was to be his piggy in the middle. His catch-all detective in the empty heartland. In which capacity, I was kept busy chasing down missing livestock, stalking stolen quad bikes and tractors, observing first-hand how the full moon fucked people up, and generally trying to avoid confrontations with the local cops.
    Don’t get me wrong, Dinas is not a bad place; it can even be quite quaint in certain lights. It also helps if you have somewhere else to keep on going to when you get to the far end. I didn’t, so I headed for the next best thing, the Fleece Hotel.
    I took a stool at the rear bar and nodded cursory greetings to the few men in the room. They were all regulars, so I was able to do that on automatic, a nod more to the zone than the person.
    David Williams, my best buddy in Dinas, and not just because he owned the pub, was busy serving at the crowded front bar. He saw me and smiled happily when he turned to the cash register.
    ‘Quite a crowd,’ I commented.
    He nodded contentedly. ‘They’ve all come down from the wind-farm site.’
    Then I realized that this was where I had seen Jeff Talbot, the site engineer, before. In the front bar. A figure glimpsed occasionally, drinking with his men.
    David finished up and came over and started pulling a pint for me.
    ‘So, what’s the verdict on the body?’ I asked, knowing that the Dinas rumour mill would already have digested, analysed and spat out its own theory.
    He winced. It was a warning, but it arrived too late. I turned in the direction of his almost imperceptible nod. A middle-aged couple in rain-slicked coats were standing in the archway between the two bars, staring at me. Their smiles were clamped into a rictus. I didn’t recognize them, but I did recognize anxiety.
    ‘Mr and Mrs Salmon,’ David introduced them.
    They flowed forward towards me like penitents released into a sanctuary. It was hard to put a precise age to them as the rain had smoothed and darkened their hair, and freshened their skin.
    ‘We heard about the discovery, Sergeant.’ Mrs Salmon spoke, her eyes glistening, scorching mine, already afraid of what they might find there. Her look was accusing, as if I was attempting to hide something from her.
    ‘Up at the wind-farm

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