Corpse Road Page 3

  ‘No, you bloody well won’t,’ Harry said. ‘Not unless you’re calling me to come put you behind bars for the rest of your pathetic life!’

  No reply came, just the thin whine of a broken call.

  Harry roared then and punched the kitchen door hard enough to splinter a panel and bloody his knuckles.

  Chapter Four

  Kirsty woke with a start, her heart beating hard enough for her to see the rhythm counted out on the outer surface of her sleeping bag. At first disorientated, she quickly remembered where she was, reached for her torch, and switched it on. As to what had actually woken her, she wasn’t entirely sure, and for a moment the only sound she could hear was that of her blood thumping through the veins in her head. Around her, the tent seemed like a cocoon, a strange almost alien thing into which she’d been stowed, as though in some form of stasis, safe and secure not only from the outside world but from the life she’d lived up until just a few days ago. She remembered then, the sound of something hitting the outside of the tent, a sharp tap, like a solitary raindrop falling from the sky. At least that’s what she thought she remembered, but whether or not such a thing had happened, she had no idea at all, her mind sluggish from sleep and a polished off bottle of wine, the fading remnants of dreams already twisting into forgotten whisps of the imaginary.

  As she lay there thinking about the mysterious sound that she may or may not have heard, a yawn pushed itself out and Kirsty stretched as best she could, her hands pressing against the material of the tent, her toes doing the same as her heart rate started to slow. The ache in her muscles from the walk the day before had eased a little, but she was stiff now, and she rolled onto her front in an attempt to loosen up the tightness she felt through her whole body. Unfortunately, all that did was put weight on her bladder and Kirsty knew immediately that she would now have to venture out into the night to nip to the loo. Sitting up, Kirsty yawned once again, then unzipped her sleeping bag and the inner tent, and twisted round to ready herself to slip out into the outside world.

  Boots on, Kirsty slipped her head torch on, reached forward, and with a sudden awareness of the chill creasing the edges of the night air, unzipped the flysheet to stare out onto a dark and foreboding moor. She shuffled out quickly, her gaze drawn upwards almost immediately by the vastness of the black bespeckled heavens above. She checked the time, amazed to see that it wasn’t even gone ten yet. But it seemed so late and it felt as though she had been asleep for hours. The moment reminded her of being a child, of waking in the night to a silent house, the world so still she was sure it was listening in.

  Kirsty paused then, desperate to relieve herself, but at the same time equally as keen to not let this moment pass. She had seen dark nights before, yes, but none so bright and clear as this, the thick blanket of stars working together to make the blackness beyond them even more deep and endless. It was a wonder to behold and she was here to witness it because she had decided to take control of her life at last. In some ways it felt like a reward, Kirsty thought, as though the universe was rubber-stamping her actions by showing her just a little of what she had to look forward to now that she was free of Daryl.

  A shiver raked its nails down Kirsty’s back, and she pulled herself away from stargazing to deal with the fact that her bladder was about to burst. Served her right for drinking all the wine, she thought, but it had absolutely been worth it, if only to let her steal a private moment with the stars.

  A quick scan of the surrounding area with the torch gave Kirsty plenty of choice for things to duck behind, from old drystone walls to a few bushes and a gnarly, windswept old tree. But the wall won out and Kirsty raced over, hiding behind it from what exactly she had no idea, but right then she didn’t care. It was cold, dark, and more than a little bit spooky, so the sooner she was back in the cosy false security of her sleeping bag and tent, the better.

  Crouching down in the darkness, knickers round her ankles, Kirsty heard something behind her, a sort of faint, soft rustling, as though a curtain was being pulled back. She froze, her senses suddenly heightened to the world around her. The darkness seemed to rise around her then and fall inwards, a great and impossible wall to suffocate her. Her breath caught in her throat and the silence, right then, seemed to be overwhelming, deafening almost.

  Kirsty was up on her feet in a heartbeat, pulling her trousers back up as she hobbled forwards across the tufty grass back to her tent. She had no doubt that what she’d heard was a fox or a badger, perhaps even a deer, but it had still spooked her, and she sped up, the beam from her torch swinging back and forth, casting white light in front of her like spilled milk on the grass.

  Another sound this time, only it sounded like a growl. Or was it a laugh?

  Kirsty stopped, couldn’t move, afraid that if she did, then whatever it was that was out there in the darkness beyond would hear, and equally afraid that if she didn’t, if she stayed exactly where she was, then it would get her anyway. But what would get her? she thought. It couldn’t have been a growl, not up here on the moors. Yes, there were urban myths of big cats released by their rich owners to fend for themselves, but such legends were of other places, not here, not Swaledale! It was her mind playing tricks, an overactive imagination putting the willies up her, as her father would say. It wasn’t the best of phrases to use, and it had always made her laugh how completely incapable he was of seeing why it sounded so inappropriate, and yet here, right now, it seemed to fit better than anything else she could think of.

  Back to the tent, Kirsty . . . Back to the tent and get yourself back to sleep . . .

  Kirsty moved, her feet dancing out a flurry of fairy footsteps as she swept through the grass to dive headfirst into her tent, the cold air snatching at her as she fell forwards. Then, she was inside, the fabric cave enclosing her with a sense of security she knew to be misguided yet to which she grabbed on tightly anyway.

  Turning quickly around to face back out through the door, Kirsty stabbed at the darkness beyond her tent with the torchlight, using its beam to take scythe-like cuts at it, turning the gloom into ripped sheets of black. And out of it something shot forth, too quick for her to see, but powerful enough to smack into her left cheek and cause her to squeal out, not just in pain, but shock and fright.

  Kirsty rubbed her face where whatever it was had hit her and she turned around in the tent, expecting to find an unconscious wasp or bee.

  A sharp pain lanced its way up Kirsty’s back as something else smacked into her, the sting of it lighting her up with enough pain to elicit a flurry of swearing.

  Kirsty snapped around to stare out of her still open tent when once again pain coursed through her, this time from something bouncing off her forehead. The only difference was that this time she saw it land.

  Resting by her right hand, on the surface of her sleeping bag, small and innocuous, was a white ball no bigger than a few millimetres in diameter. Yet the fact that it was there at all gave it such weight that for a moment Kirsty felt as though she was being drawn down towards it, sucked in by an impossible gravity.

  Kirsty reached out towards the ball with her left hand. When she touched it, the ball jumped away, rolling to a stop further down her sleeping bag. She reached out again, pinched it between finger and thumb, then brought it up close to her face.

  The tiny, white sphere was plastic, Kirsty noticed, staring at it, as baffled by its presence as she was disturbed by it. It was the kind of ball she had seen in the toy guns one of her friends had bought for her two sons, except those had been bright red.

  A sharp tap of something landing against the inside of the tent had Kirsty staring at another of the balls. And at that point a thought, cold and sharp, pierced her mind: someone was out there in the dark, shooting at her. And she had a pretty good idea who it was.

  ‘Daryl!’ Kirsty yelled, thrusting her head outside of the tent, her torch beam sent out to cut the night in two. ‘Daryl, you pathetic bastard! Where are you?’

  The night h
ung above her, a breathless thing, expectant and full of threat.

  ‘Daryl? Daryl! Come on then and show yourself, or are you too pathetic to even do that, hiding in the shadows? Call yourself a man? You disgust me!’

  Pain lit Kirsty’s face as another of the small white balls pinged off her face. When Kirsty spoke again, her voice was years of anger and frustration and fear, and it clawed out of her throat, hacking its way out to scream at the night.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you? Shooting at me with a toy gun? Is that what you’ve come to? Is it, Daryl? Really? You’re that pathetic that you’d follow me out here just to scare me? Oh, you’re such a man, aren’t you? Such a powerful, strong man! Well, guess what? You’re not! You’re pathetic! You’re a weak, pathetic man with about as much backbone as a mollusc! Now sod off home, will you, and I’ll make sure my solicitor calls to say hello in the morning!’

  As the last word left Kirsty’s mouth something grabbed her hair and dragged her from her tent, and she was sure her scalp was being torn off. She twisted left and right and reached up to find a gloved hand hooked into her. Clawing at it did no good as she was dragged out into the open air then hurled forwards onto her face.

  Kirsty, the wind knocked from her, gave in to the pure, white-hot fury which consumed her, and twisted over onto her back ready to attack Daryl, torch in hand and shining out, as a weight slammed into her, crushing her to the ground, and then a sharp, impossible pain to her throat stole away her voice.

  Kirsty tried to speak, tried to move, but could do neither. In front of her face, the night seemed to have formed itself into a human shape, sketched out in the flickering beam from her torch. But all she could see of the thing’s face were eyes and a mouth, both glistening in the weak torchlight.

  She was afraid now, terrified, because something was wrong with her body, her everything. She was cold suddenly, as though the heat was draining from her, and all Kirsty wanted to do was to curl up inside her sleeping bag, to fall asleep, and to wake to a new morning. Yes, that was what she wanted, wasn’t it? Because this was a nightmare, a mix of tiredness, over excitement, too much wine, and her imagination taking a fast train to crazy.

  Then grey light slipped into her mind and Kirsty faded into it, folding into its deep, endless embrace, her eyes closing to the face before her, her last breath, still sweet from the booze, drifting out to be tasted by her attacker’s tongue.

  Laying the body down, the killer stood up, then set to work with the killing knife on one final task, every sweet moment recorded for his fans.

  Chapter Five

  Harry sat up so quickly his head spun, the violent trill of his phone ripping him from his dreamless sleep so violently that for the briefest moment he was pretty sure that someone had come into his bedroom to attack him with a dentist’s drill. Rubbing his eyes and mumbling a few profanities, he reached out and grabbed it, fully expecting to recognise the number from the call he’d received just a few hours before from his father. Only it wasn’t, which was a relief of sorts, except that he knew full well that a call at this hour was never ever good. No one ever rang someone in the early hours to say, ‘Hey, guess what! I’m going to give you a thousand quid!’ or, ‘Have a promotion and six months extended leave!’ No. It was always and without fail bad news.

  ‘Grimm,’ Harry answered, weariness in his voice, but the reply came in before he’d even finished saying his own name.

  ‘Boss, it’s Dinsdale. Did I wake you?’

  ‘Yes, of course, you bloody well woke me!’ Harry snarled back at the voice of Detective Sergeant Matthew Dinsdale, glancing at the time. ‘It’s half two in the sodding morning! What did you think I was doing? Watching the late-night shopping channels to try and grab a bargain?’

  Harry had given up trying to stop his team from calling him boss. At first, he hadn’t wanted the title because he’d been adamant that he wasn’t going to be around long enough to warrant it. Now, though, he didn’t really mind, and it was certainly a lot better than a good number of other things they could call him, and probably did when he wasn’t around.

  ‘We’ve found a body.’

  That news was enough to have Harry not just awake but alert and quickly out of bed. ‘Who has? Where?’ He checked the time. ‘How? I mean, it’s not even one in the morning!’

  ‘Swaledale Mountain Rescue,’ Matt explained. ‘Had a call out just before midnight. We’re up above Gunnerside.’

  Harry remembered Matt telling him about his role as a member of the local rescue team. But it wasn’t just people lost on the moors they dealt with, but folk who had somehow gotten themselves into trouble in one of the numerous caves and potholes in the area. Harry still couldn’t get his head around why anyone would use the word ‘fun’ to describe an activity which involved crawling on your belly in mud and water through tunnels deep underground.

  ‘So why are you calling me?’ Harry asked. ‘Death from exposure or falling off a cliff in the middle of the night isn’t really police business. You’re a DC. You can handle it.’

  ‘It’s a bloody mess, boss, that’s why,’ Matt said, and Harry heard the dead tone in his voice, one that told him his night of sleep was over. ‘Jim’s on his way to pick you up. I need you here ASAP.’

  Harry yawned, his body forcing out an involuntary stretch at the same time. ‘A mess in what way? How do you mean? What’s actually happened? What have you found?’

  ‘I think it’s best you see for yourself,’ Matt suggested. ‘I’ve secured the crime scene and no bugger’s going near it, that’s for sure. Not until you get here, anyway. I can’t make the call on what happens next, but I think we need to throw everything at this.’

  Harry sensed a headache coming on but forced it back down. And although he didn’t want to admit this to Matt, he was impressed with his professionalism for calling him in the first place. ‘You can give me more detail than that. What are we dealing with?’

  There was a pause down the line and Harry sensed that Matt was working out the best way to deliver the most information in the shortest amount of time.

  ‘Female backpacker, looks like a stab wound to the throat.’

  That was a new one on Harry. A murdered backpacker? He had a fleeting memory of the film American Werewolf in London, but quickly quashed it. ‘Anything about the victim’s identity?’ he asked. ‘Any ID?’

  ‘We reckon, well we think, I mean, well, it looks like she’s called Stacy,’ Matt said stumbling over his words.

  Harry was confused. ‘It looks like? What the hell does that mean, it looks like?’

  ‘Just that,’ Matt replied. ‘We think that her name’s Stacy.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  The pause from the other end of the line was thick and heavy.

  ‘Well?’ Harry pressed, already dreading where this phone call was leading.

  ‘Because,’ Matt said, his voice suddenly quieter, even more grave, ‘it’s been carved into her forehead and written on her tent in blood, which is probably hers, I’m thinking.’

  A cold so violent came over Harry that it was as though he’d been suddenly caught in the path of an avalanche. ‘Bloody hell.’

  ‘Yeah, exactly.’ Matt sighed.

  ‘Best you call Swift then,’ he advised. ‘If it’s as bad as it sounds then there’s no point delaying the rest of the team.’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Harry said. ‘And make it seriously bloody clear to everyone there right now that they tell no one. No friends, no family, not someone they’ve never actually met on whatever social media they’re on. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning to some a pile of bollocks in the press sparked by a careless message or some other horseshit nonsense on Faceshite, you hear?’

  ‘Yeah, I hear you, boss,’ Matt said. ‘See you in a bit.’

  No sooner had Matt hung up than there came a knock at Harry’s door.

  ‘Alright, just a minute!’ he shouted. ‘I’m not even bloody dressed yet!
’

  ‘It’s Jim!’ a voice called in through the letterbox.

  ‘I know it’s Jim!’ Harry snapped back, now wrestling to get stiff legs into his trousers which, by some dark and mischievous magic, had in the night somehow managed to twist themselves into impossible knots. ‘Who the bloody hell else would it be?’

  ‘I’ll wait outside, then,’ Jim called in, as Harry tripped and crashed down onto the floor.

  ‘Bastard trousers!’

  ‘Sorry, what was that, boss? You okay?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Harry hissed through gritted teeth. ‘Just give me five, alright? I’ll be out in a jiffy.’

  Back up on his feet, Harry couldn’t remember the last time he’d used the word ‘jiffy’, but use it he had, though he had no real idea how long one actually was.

  Dressed, at last, Harry went to the front door and opened it to find Jim standing outside as though on protective duty. He liked that about Jim; he was keen. He may have been only a PCSO in the eyes of most people, so not a real copper, but that seemed to have no bearing at all on how he worked. And Harry had grown to respect him as much as any of the others on the team.

  ‘Just need to put my shoes on,’ Harry said.

  ‘You’ll need your boots, not shoes,’ Jim said. ‘We’ll be out on the hills, like. Up by the old lead mines above Gunnerside. It’s not exactly muddy, but chances are you’ll snap your ankle if you go up in those.’

  Harry agreed, heaved himself into them, pulled on a jacket, then left the flat and followed Jim over to his Land Rover. ‘I’m assuming you or Matt have been in touch with the rest of the team, yes?’

  ‘Liz is away to a funeral,’ Jim said. ‘Gordy’s on leave for the week now, up in Scotland somewhere, visiting family I think.’

  ‘What about Jenny and Jadyn?’

  ‘Jenny and Jadyn will be in Hawes first thing,’ Jim said.