Since then she’d been seconded to King’s Lynn. Even quieter.
It was quiet now, thirty minutes shy of sunrise, frost heavy across the hawthorn and the oak, the dark ridges of ploughed fields. Sharon was hunkered down behind an ancient Massey-Ferguson tractor, with two of the other officers, passing back and forth a thermos of coffee unofficially laced with Famous Grouse. The coffee was hot and their breath, dove-gray in the clearing air, testified to the cold. She drank sparingly and passed it on; last thing she wanted to do, crawl off somewhere and squat down for a pee, difficult enough without wearing tights over her tights the way she was that morning.
“They’ll never bloody show,” one of her colleagues said. “Not at this rate.”
Sharon shook her head. “They’ll show.”
She had been working this investigation for five months now, ever since the first incident had been reported, seven pigs slaughtered on a farm this side of Louth, dragged off and butchered in the waiting van. Market stalls the length and breadth of Kesteven had flourished special offers of pork belly, legs, chump chops.
“Times like these,” Sharon’s governor said, “people do what they can.”
She supposed it was true: reports of sheep rustling on Dartmoor and in the Lakes had tripled in the past two years.
“Look! There!”
Her heart began to pump. Headlights, dull in the slow-gathering light, steered between the intervening trees. Sharon spoke into the radio clipped to the shoulder of her padded jacket, instructions that were concise and clear.
“Good luck,” somebody said as he moved swiftly past her.
The breath inside Sharon’s body threatened to stop. The lights were clearer now, funneling closer, the van shifting out of silhouette against the slowly lightening sky. Resting on one knee, the other leg braced and ready, Sharon’s mouth ran dry. Over by the sheds, a few of the animals moved around morosely, rooting at what remained of the straw that had been thrown on to the frozen ground.
The skin beneath her hair tingled as the van slowed and slowed again. Before it had come to a halt, three men jumped out, dark anoraks, black jeans, something bright in one of their hands catching what little light there was.
“Wait for it,” Sharon breathed. “For fuck’s sake, wait!”
Two of the men launched themselves at the nearest pig, one seeking to club it hard behind the head. The animal squealed, terrified, and slithered as the club came down again. Running to join them, the driver of the van lost his footing and went sprawling, longbladed knife jarred free from his hand.
“Go!” Sharon called, sprinting forward. “Go! Go! Go!”
“Police!” The shouts sang out around them. “Police! Police!”
Sharon jumped at the man who had already gone down, the heel of her trainer driving into his back and flattening him again into the ground. Satisfied, she carried on running, leaving whoever was in her wake to wield the handcuffs, drag the man away. The hardwood stave that had been used as a club lay in her path and, without stopping, she scooped it up.
Angry voices tore around her, curses and the sharpening clamor of the pigs. One of the thieves broke free and took off in a run towards the van. Sharon watched as two of her colleagues set off in pursuit, feet catching in the ruts that rose like frozen waves from the ground. Two of the others were involved in scuffles, while a third was already on his knees, head yanked backwards with a choke-hold tight about his neck.
The runner had managed to start the van and now it lurched towards them, one of the officers hanging from the side, an arm through the window, grabbing at the wheel. Sharon jumped back as the vehicle slewed round and stuck, the driver’s foot on the accelerator serving only to dig deep into the ground, showering black earth high into the air. A fist landed on his temple and a cuff secured him to the wheel as the ignition cut off.
“Sharon!”
A warning turned her fast, pulling back her head to evade the butcher’s cleaver swinging for her face.
“Nasty,” Sharon said, and struck out with the club, catching her attacker’s elbow as the arm came back, hard enough to break the bone.
Only when their prisoners had been properly cautioned, farmed out into different vehicles for the drive back to Lincoln, the sun showing at last, faint through the horizon of sparse trees, did Sharon wander back across the churned-up ground to where the pigs were rooting eagerly. It took no time at all for her to realize what was at the center of their attention was a human hand.
Forty-five
The pig farm had been made secure: diversion signs were in place on all approach roads; attached to four-foot metal stakes, yellow police tape, lifting intermittently in the northerly wind, marked off the area where the body had been found. Men and women in navy blue overalls were moving out in a widening circle from the spot, carefully raking over the ground. Others were examining the track, preparing to take casts of tire tracks, boot marks. Nancy Phelan’s body, freed from its shallow grave, lay in the ambulance covered by a sheet. In a maroon BMW, smeared with mud, the Home Office pathologist was writing his preliminary report. Harry Phelan, driven through the morning traffic by a grim-faced Graham Millington, had walked off across the farm track and into the adjacent field as soon as he had identified the body. Now he stood, stock still, hands in pockets and head bowed, while, back inside the car, his wife, Clarise, wept and wanted to walk out and hug him but did not dare.
It was still well shy of noon.
Resnick stood in topcoat and scarf, talking to Sharon Garnett, his face pale in the winter sun. Close to five nine and bulked out by the duck-down jacket she was wearing, Sharon was in no way dwarfed beside him. She had known about the disappearance from the television and posters which had been circulated with Nancy Phelan’s picture-not so many women missing, thankfully, that the connection didn’t spark fast in her mind. Well before her pork butchers had been driven away, she had made her suspicions known, found herself talking to Resnick within minutes.
“How long,” she asked, “do you think she’s been in the ground?”
“Difficult to tell. But my guess, not too long. The pigs would have found her otherwise, even in temperatures like these.”
“Does it help?” Sharon asked. “Finding her here?”
“To pinpoint the killer?”
She nodded.
“It might narrow down the field. It all depends.”
“But there’d have to be a reason, wouldn’t there?”
“Go on.”
“I mean, why here? On the face of it, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.”
Resnick looked around at the flat landscape of broad fields. “It’s out of the way, you’d have to say that for it.”
Sharon smiled a little at the corners of her mouth. “Everywhere round here is.”
“It takes time to bury a body,” Resnick said. “Even if it’s only a few feet deep. And if anyone threatened to disturb you, you’d see them from a long way off.”
“He’d have to know it, though, wouldn’t he?” Sharon said. “Know of its existence, that for long periods of the day there was nobody around. Stuff like that. I mean, you wouldn’t just drive along with a body in the back, see somewhere, think, oh, that looks a likely place.”
“You could.”
“Yes, but is that what you think?”