Now he watched men emerge from cars and vans, eerie figures in white suits, white masks across their faces, gliding across the white landscape, all armed with picks and shovels they knew were unlikely to be up to the task of breaking the ground that held Barbie’s remains. That was why the heavy artillery was also getting wheeled in. Two big cops were hauling a pneumatic drill through the mist, their breath exploding and freezing before them with the effort of crossing the graveyard. Behind them, two uniformed constables, the only ones not in boiler suits, stood guard at the cemetery gate to deter any locals awakened by the noise that was about to disturb them at that ungodly time of the morning.
For the moment, after Croy’s censorship of the two moaning cops, all was silent but for the sound of feet crunching on snow and the quiet whirr of a camera shutter. Winter knew that all he was getting were overexposed shots of white on white as mist enveloped grey light but he loved every frame. Sometimes the burly men traipsing in and out of the graveyard would look at him suspiciously, others would glare but mostly they had their heads down and their minds on the grim task ahead.
It was a bizarre scene being played out under the dis approving frown of the rugged cliffs that had glowered over Brig o’ Turk since the hamlet first emerged. Also watching, from the other side of a wall, were two bemused but unconcerned deer. It was unlikely that either the cliffs or the deer had ever witnessed anything like this reluctant resurrection.
The gang was all here: Rachel; Croy, the Stirling DI; the local coroner and Procurator Fiscal; a small gaggle of press tipped off, no doubt, by the local cops; and Addison. He stood alone to the side, his face mask hanging loose below his chin to accommodate the cigarette in his mouth. Addison’s enforced sabbatical from front-line duty had come with dire warnings from his doctor about not overdoing it, cutting down his alcohol intake and certainly not smoking. Typically perverse, Addison had reacted by taking up fags again for the first time in nine years.
The trail of smoke that was disappearing into the mist above Addison’s head was joined by puffs of breath as he muttered away to himself. Addison had insisted on getting out of the office to witness the exhumation but that obviously wasn’t stopping him from grouching. The rest of the cast, the two sentry constables apart, were inside the tent and Winter strolled over to join his mate on the periphery of the graveyard.
‘Colder than a witch’s tit,’ Addison grumbled. ‘But you’ll be loving this, of course, you sick fucker. All this digging up the dead will be right up your street.’
‘I’m just an impartial observer. Just doing my job.’
‘Ach, don’t give me your shit, wee man. I know you.’
Winter didn’t bother denying it a second time and the two men stood and looked around them. The tent that covered the would-be graverobbers looked as if it had landed from Mars, absurdly inappropriate against the rural backdrop, serving only to highlight the affront against nature that was about to take place.
‘Going in?’ Winter asked him.
‘Aye, in a minute. I was just letting the eager beavers in first but there’s no show without Punch.’
‘So, what? You’re just staying out here to piss off the locals because they can’t start without you?’
‘Something like that, wee man. The yokels need to know who’s really in charge here. Okay, let’s go.’
Addison squeezed the end of his cigarette and threw it on the ground, pulling the protective mask over his face.
They didn’t say another word as they made their way across the snow. All they could hear was their own footsteps and the wind that whistled through the cemetery and froze their ears. Not another sound until they reached the tent and Addison turned to face Winter and winked at him.
‘Show time, wee man,’ he murmured. ‘Show time.’
They pushed their way inside and were met by expectant and impatient faces. If the looks were intended to chastise Addison, then they clearly didn’t know him.
‘Morning, gentlemen. Let’s get on with it, shall we?’
Winter was glad of the mask hiding the grin that had spread across his face. There was little Addison relished more than pissing people off.
‘Good idea, Inspector,’ Croy responded, clearly irritated. ‘We’ve had a couple of investigatory prods with the shovels while we were waiting for you and they aren’t going to do the job. We’re going straight in with the jackhammer.’
‘Fair enough,’ Addison replied, clearly still at the wind-up, ‘I agree.’
Winter noticed that Rachel, standing to the side of the group, didn’t look impressed by her DI’s cheek. Instead, she looked at him wearily as if he were embarrassing her in front of her new friends. Winter wasn’t entirely sure he liked that.
Croy nodded at his men and they began to bring the pneumatic drill forward.
‘Just a minute,’ Winter interrupted. ‘I want a shot of the headstone first.’
There were tuts of exasperation all around as the Stirling cops showed their continued annoyance at the Weegie interlopers. The short bespectacled woman whom Winter and Addison knew to be the local Procurator Fiscal looked back at Croy and simply shrugged. Winter hadn’t waited for permission anyway. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he had crouched at the far end of Barbie’s grave and framed a full-length shot.
He inched closer, ignoring the scowls that peeped out at him between mask and protective hoods, and filled his view-finder with Barbie’s headstone. It was a simple stone, much newer than the vast majority in the cemetery, solid grey and not yet beaten by wind or rain.
UNKNOWN
Died circa November 1993
I will fear no evil for thou art with me
Rest in Peace
The inscription managed to be poignant in its sparseness and touching in its message of hope beyond rationale. The top line was simply the reason they were there — to try to turn the unknown into the known. The last line was maybe a forlorn hope until then but the labours that were to follow perhaps gave Barbie a chance of peace after all.
Winter circled the stone, taking it from far more angles than was necessary, knowing full well it was increasing the impatience of the boiler suits and he would see the results of their irritation on their faces. Many Strathclyde cops had grown wise to Winter’s fixation for trying to include them in scene-setting shots but this lot were suitably naive for his purposes and a few cute tilts of his camera went straight over their heads — metaphorically at least. It rewarded Winter with hard stares and angry glares above Barbie’s headstone, fittingly furious by her grave and only he would know they were fuming at him rather than Barbie’s killer.
Finally, he stood back and let the cops about their business, having toyed with them long enough for his own purposes. As he did so, he caught a glint in Addison’s eyes that managed to express both approval and distaste. He glanced at Rachel and got only half of the look he did from Addison. She didn’t seem best pleased.
A brawny cop paced round Barbie’s grave, pushing to manoeuvre the gathered throng back, reserving a particularly violent gesture for Winter, in order to clear safe space for the pneumatic drill to begin its work. Once they were far enough back, Croy surveyed the room like a magician ready to perform his greatest trick but waiting until he was satisfied that his audience were suitably in awe of his talents. Croy looked towards the two other senior figures in the tent.