‘Next time? You think there’s gonna be a next time after this?’
Scott marched away, ready to leave this power-crazed arsehole and his bumbling staff behind and not look back. Warren blocked his way through. ‘What?’ he yelled. Warren looked past him and at Barry.
‘My fault, Baz.’
‘What?’
‘I said it’s my fault. I got the manifest wrong, not him.’
‘Ya bloody idiot. Get ’em on the truck.’
Scott watched Warren scuttle away then glared at Barry, waiting for an apology that didn’t come.
‘You’ve a quick temper and a foul mouth, Scott. You should fit in nicely here, long as you don’t piss me off. I’ll come with you and make the drop at Ken’s. I’ll phone him now and say we’re on our way. We’ll give him a hand with his fence, make up for the delay.’
Barry returned to his caravan office, leaving Scott alone in the middle of the yard, stunned by the ineptitude of pretty much everyone he’d so far met in Thussock.
The drive back to Potter’s house seemed to take twice as long second time around. Maybe it was the fact Scott knew this trip was unnecessary, or maybe it was just because Barry was with him. Whatever the reason, Scott would have rather done this on his own.
‘Ken’s a good friend, but he’s always been a bit of a bugger,’ Barry said. ‘It’s ’cause he was a teacher. Taught most folks round here, actually. He likes things done jus’ right, know what I’m saying?’
‘I get it,’ Scott said. He could see why he was such good friends with Barry. They were both angry old bastards, both cut from the same cloth.
The goods Scott had delivered earlier were where he’d left them on the verge, but there was no sign of Potter himself. He’d expected him to come charging out of his house again at the sound of the truck’s engine, ready to berate Barry for employing this useless southerner. In fact, he’d half expected him to be out in the road, clock-watching. Scott parked up then waited as Barry marched up to the front of the house and hammered on the porch door. ‘You in, Ken?’
No response. Barry looked back at Scott, then knocked again. When the door remained unanswered, he took a few steps back then peered in through a downstairs window. Scott got out of the truck and stood beside him. ‘No sign?’
‘Daft sod’s probably asleep.’
Scott felt as if he’d found a hole in time, a wormhole letting him stare back into the seventies. Everything about this house was so… antiquated. Yes, that was definitely the right word. He’d had the same feeling when he’d first walked into his own house – the grey house, as Barry had called it yesterday. Paint was peeling from the metal frames of Potter’s windows, no uPVC or double-glazing here. Was it that this place was struggling to keep up with the modern world or, as Scott was beginning to think, was it just not interested in catching up? No one in Thussock was concerned about keeping up with the Joneses. Christ, from here you couldn’t even see the Joneses.
Barry knocked the door again. Still nothing. ‘This don’t make sense. He was spitting feathers on the phone.’
‘Shall I just start unloading? I’ll shift all his stuff round the back. Get us back in his good books.’
‘Good idea, Scotty. You get to it. I’ll keep trying.’
The driveway continued up the side of the house and, at the far end of the drive, Scott saw that a section of fence was missing. There was a pile of old rotten panels there too, dumped out of view behind Potter’s heap of a car. He went through the gap in the fence, wondering why Potter hadn’t answered. He might have fallen asleep as Barry suggested, all the exertion of his vociferous complaining tiring him out. He might have been out walking his dog (if he had one), or visiting a neighbour (though he didn’t seem to have any of those either). After the noise and bluster of earlier, his non-appearance was irritating more than concerning.
At the back of the house was an ugly concrete patio which hadn’t been touched in years. It was covered with mottled, ground-in dirt, dotted with patches of moss and persistent weeds which had patiently forced their way up through the narrowest of cracks. Potter obviously wasn’t particularly interested in maintaining his property to any great extent. Judging by the state of the rest of the house, he was only fixing the fence because it had collapsed.
Scott looked at every place he saw with builder’s eyes. Maybe if he could get on the right side of Potter he could give him his details and quote for some of the immediate repairs which needed doing? From the outside décor and style, he thought the house was probably built in the twenties or thirties. There was a large patch of rendering missing from around one of the windows, and an equally large damp patch under the eaves of the roof (which sagged in the middle somewhat).
‘Mr Potter?’ he shouted, looking in through a back window. ‘You here, Mr Potter?’
The interior decoration looked as dated as everything else. The sitting room floor was cluttered with piles of newspapers and stacks of books, all centred around a grubby, well-worn armchair which was angled towards a TV so old Scott thought it looked steam-driven. He rapped his knuckles on the glass and shouted again.
When Scott turned around, he noticed something strange in one of the flowerbeds. In contrast to the house itself, the rest of Potter’s garden was reasonably well-tended. The lawn had recently been mowed and the beds were a riot of colour, and that made it harder to understand why he could see what he was seeing. It was a bare foot, toes pointing upwards. He took a step forward then hesitated, uneasy. Had Potter had an accident out here?
‘Scott, I don’t know where the hell he’s—’ Barry started to say, stepping through the hole in the fence. He stopped speaking when he saw it. ‘What the hell’s that?’
The two men walked further down the garden together in silence. The body in the flowerbed was definitely not Kenneth Potter. It was a young girl, and it was clear even from a distance that she was dead. Scott didn’t get too close because he didn’t need to. He could tell from her ice-white skin, her frozen expression and her unblinking eyes that she was gone. For several seconds all he could do was stare deep into those eyes, unable to look away.
From where they were both standing, a large Rhododendron bush obscured much of the girl’s body, covering her chest down to her feet. Barry moved slightly, trying to get a better view, but not sure if he should. He leant down and moved part of the bush away, immediately wishing he hadn’t. ‘Jesus…’ he said. ‘Bloody hell…’ He staggered back, tripping over the straps of a discarded rucksack and ending up on his backside on the grass, scrambling away. Scott helped him up.
‘You know her?’
‘Never seen her before.’
Scott looked back at the house, half expecting Ken Potter to appear, gunning for the two of them. The mad bastard must have done this girl in, then made a run for it.
‘What the hell happened?’ Barry said, still backing-up.
Scott moved around to see what Barry had seen. He kept his eyes on the girl’s face, and it felt for a moment as if he and the corpse were the only two things left in the world. He looked down at her feet – one wedged in the mud, still wearing a thick hiking sock, the naked toes of the other still pointing skywards – then at her legs. And then, much as he didn’t want to, much as he knew he shouldn’t, he lifted his eyes further.
Fuck.
It was hard to make out exactly what he was looking at. He didn’t mean to stare, but it was impossible to look away. Between the girl’s pale white thighs was a mass of blood, torn tissue and pubic hair. Still wet. Glistening. Maybe still warm. It looked like blood had gushed, not trickled, from her horrific eviscerations. There were pools of it in the flower bed, crimson puddles under her buttocks. And yet, despite having crushed the plants where she’d fallen, there were no immediately obvious signs of a struggle. The blood was strangely contained.