‘Where does the dog come into it?’
Flynn gave Henry a pissed-off look. ‘Does it matter? Fact is, I can’t contact her, I’ve found her car in the middle of nowhere and I’m worried — as you would be,’ he concluded cynically.
‘But no sign of any body?’ Henry asked.
‘No… but I also know she might’ve been checking up on a report of a poacher on this land, so that’s an add-on worry. I mean, she could’ve come a cropper challenging a poacher, dunno. It’s happened before, hasn’t it? And as for the dog, it’s hers, so I borrowed him to look for her.’
Flynn was not one of Henry’s favourite people, and their history was one of conflict. However, as a cop, he felt some responsibility to act on Flynn’s story, half-baked as it was. He looked up at the sky, then at the Peugeot with Donaldson in the back seat. If he insisted on getting Donaldson to the village, there would be no light left at all, and as there was only a few minutes’ worth left anyway, he decided that he would humour Flynn. At least then he couldn’t be criticized. ‘Let’s have a look at the car, then.’
‘What about your mate?’
‘A few more minutes won’t do him any harm. It’ll be pitch black then anyway and there won’t be any time to look for anything.’
Flynn gave a short, grateful nod. He tugged Roger’s lead and the three of them walked back up to Cathy’s Shogun. Flynn took the opportunity to give Henry a few more details of what had been going on. Henry listened as he trudged. Flynn pointed the remote at the car and unlocked it as they got to it, the inner light coming on. Henry opened the driver’s door, leaned carefully in, checking the interior. He picked up the leather handbag Flynn had told him about and peered at the contents, glancing sideways at Flynn.
‘Admittedly, looks sus,’ Henry conceded. ‘If she was getting out to deal with a poacher, why would she leave this stuff behind?’
‘Maybe she didn’t get the chance,’ Flynn said.
Henry jerked his head in acknowledgement, and thought, Or maybe she didn’t feel the need to have the stuff with her, or maybe this is just the set-up of a hysterical person trying to draw attention to herself. He kept those musings to himself.
‘Did she actually say what the problem was with her and Tom?’ Henry asked.
‘Not really,’ Flynn said in a strained way. ‘But she did say something weird.’
Henry waited.
‘She said her husband was bent.’
‘As in gay, or cop?’
‘Cop.’
‘Mm, I find that hard to believe, knowing what I do of Tom James.’
‘You didn’t seem to find it hard to believe when you were investigating me,’ Flynn blurted, displaying deep-rooted resentment.
Henry blinked. ‘A million quid did go missing,’ he pointed out.
‘And I didn’t take it, as I’ve since proved.’
‘Let’s not go there.’ Henry raised his eyebrows.
Flynn pursed his lips and said, ‘Whatever.’
Henry reached back inside the Shogun and lugged out a big Maglite torch from the passenger footwell. ‘Let’s give it a once round the vehicle, say a ten-metre circle, the vehicle being the centre. I reckon we take a quick look and if we find nothing, we come back in the morning.’
Sullenly, Flynn nodded, unable to believe his own little outburst, still surprised at how much his past dealings with Henry still rankled with him. Scratch the surface, he thought bitterly, you uncover a cancer.
‘You want to try the dog again?’
‘On the whole, I think he might have lost the knack,’ Flynn admitted sadly, patting Roger’s head.
Henry switched on the torch. The strong beam cut through the gloom, the snow looking eerie as it fell through the light. He walked to the front of the car and tried to fix his mind on the situation. It didn’t help that all he wanted was to get off the damned hillside, not go scratting around in the undergrowth. Every bit of him was cold. His feet were sopping wet now, his gloves had been penetrated by the damp and although his outer clothing had done its job well, he was chilled to the marrow and fed up with it.
Truth was, he didn’t want to do this. His instinct was to remove Cathy’s property from the car, lock the vehicle up and leave it in situ overnight; get back to civilization, then start from scratch in the morning. What he was doing now was just a sop to appease Flynn, someone he didn’t like very much and who was developing a nasty habit of coming back into his life to haunt him.
‘I’ll have a look over there,’ he said, no enthusiasm in his voice.
‘Don’t try too hard,’ Flynn said, responding to Henry’s tone.
Henry set off from the front radiator grille of the Shogun. He intended to walk ten yards dead ahead, five yards to the left, left again, then back to the car, kicking up snow and dirt as he went. His feeling was that if Cathy had come to grief, and this wasn’t an elaborate ploy to get attention, the grief would have happened in fairly close proximity to the car. Not that her body couldn’t have been dragged further into the trees after the deed had been done.
As he walked forward, he wondered why he hadn’t switched on the car headlights. Brain freeze, he thought. Knackered. No time for this shit. Want to go home.
The snow got deeper the further he walked from the car. He glanced over his shoulder and saw the shadowy figure of Flynn covering the area on the nearside of the car, accompanied by what looked in the dark like a wolf.
It didn’t matter that he wasn’t looking where he was going because he would probably have caught his foot and stumbled on the snow-covered root anyway. He kicked the obstruction angrily, but it wasn’t quite solid enough to be part of a tree, because it moved. Curious, he poked at it again with his toe and unearthed a frozen arm. He dropped to one knee, brushed away the snow until he revealed the white, frozen face of a dead woman.
‘Over here,’ he said, then louder, ‘Steve, over here.’
ELEVEN
Flynn stared incredulously at Henry. They were standing either side of the body in the snow and Flynn could not quite believe the words that had just spilled from Henry’s cold-hearted mouth.
‘Let me put this in simple terms,’ Flynn’s voice rose angrily. ‘I owe you at least one good punch in the mouth for the way you stitched me up way back when, and I’m damn sure I can get away with it out here. So, if you do what I think you want to do, I won’t hang back.’ He paused. ‘No way on earth is this body going to stay out here.’
Henry allowed Flynn his little rant and could not resist saying, ‘And when I hear shit like that coming out of your mouth, I realize Lancashire Constabulary is a much better organization without people like you in it.’
Flynn bridled like a prodded Rottweiler.
Henry went on quickly, sensing Flynn’s inner burning. ‘All I’m saying is that if we start messing around here and moving the body, we’re likely to lose evidence. You don’t get a second chance…’
‘At a crime scene,’ Flynn completed the sentence sourly for him, quoting the Murder Investigation Manual. ‘I know all that, but by implication you are actually suggesting that somehow her body should be left here until you can get the circus out to it. That could be… fuck knows when!’
‘I’m simply considering all the angles, pros and cons.’ Henry had to raise his voice against an ever strengthening wind. He jabbed his finger downwards at the body between them, already re-covered in snow after Henry had brushed some of it away only moments before. ‘She’s been murdered and I don’t want to lose any evidence that might help catch a killer. Especially as she’s a colleague.’
‘And that would mean leaving her here?’ Flynn demanded.
‘In an ideal world, yes. If the weather was fine and we could actually communicate with someone and I could get the circus out and I could protect it and leave it guarded — that’s exactly what I’d do.’
‘But none of those things apply.’
‘I know — but what I need to do is find out the true situation, OK? Our mobiles don’t seem to work out here, but are we actually cut off by road yet? Until I get to a landline and put a call through to headquarters I won’t know for certain. Can I get a helicopter up? Can I get a team here? Until I get those questions answered I won’t make a decision.’ Henry’s jaw jutted challengingly.