Cold Blood by Jane Heafield (great books to read txt) 📕

under duress. And I don’t like that we’ve recorded this meeting. This of all meetings.’

GINGHAM: ‘No one is forcing you, Jason. Yes or no, of your own free will. Yes, and we do this, and we save our village. We tell our people the crew upped and offed, and that will be the truth, no matter who or whatever evidence tries to say otherwise. No, and announce the presence of four dead people out in a field, and we deal with what comes.’

NESS: ‘Whatever. Okay. Yes.’

GINGHAM: ‘Good. And we record everything, always, Jason. You know that. I’m on tape admitting that thing up in Scotland.’

MABLEDON: ‘And it’s on record that I–’

NESS: ‘I said yes, didn’t I? Can we just get this over with?’

TURNER: ‘Of course. So we’ll vote. But let’s reverse it. All in favour of honesty and having our happy, blessed lives ruined in one fell swoop, keep your hands down.’

56

If Crabtree’s story was true, Lorraine’s colleagues had probably been dispatched in their sleep, or so fresh out of it they’d offered minimal resistance. But Lorraine had fought her attacker. There was little comfort in knowing she’d made it hard for the killer though. How must she have suffered in those final moments?

It was best not to dwell. She was suffering no pain or terror now. He slapped the laptop closed and got up. He started to pace in Crabtree’s living room. It was better to burn energy this way than… by a more terrible method. ‘What did you do with the bodies?’

Crabtree gave him a look like he was stupid. ‘You know what? We put them in Lake Stanton.’

Bennet clenched his fists, and Crabtree didn’t miss it. ‘Don’t piss me off. I want to know what you did.’

‘We put them in their motorhome. Drove that here. Then we cleaned the ranch and burned all the stuff they’d left inside. We hid the motorhome in one of my buildings. I was going to dismantle it over the coming weeks. But we buried the bodies and the gear that was in the motorhome.’

Crabtree said his last sentence with caution, as if knowing the images it would throw up. Bennet tried not to think about this man, or Turner’s son, or even Turner himself, kicking Lorraine’s bloody corpse into a dark hole, and throwing soil across it. But he saw her face, half-submerged in the dirt, one open eye the last piece of her to vanish. He sat down. It felt like putting an extra obstacle between his hands and the old bastard’s neck.

‘The graffiti? The burned items? All part of the plan?’

Crabtree nodded. ‘Turner told me to. He said there was a chance the police might eventually come and they’d look inside the ranch. We couldn’t just clean up. It would look like we’d cleaned a crime scene. He said if the police see evidence of a clean-up at the last known place of missing people, they get suspicious. He said we should actually trash the place and cover it in graffiti, spray it where there were bloodstains. And then only half-clean it up, so the police could see the damage, and then they’d believe our story. So we left the ranch half-cleaned so you could see it.’

‘Overeem didn’t give you that business card at all, did he? That was part of the plan too?’

‘We found that when we found their bodies. Turner told me to act as if I had been about to call the police about the vandalism. I should insist on showing you the ranch and hide nothing. I should insist on wanting the film crew arrested. The card was so you’d know who I suspected, yes.’

The trick had fooled the seasoned detective in Bennet, but Crabtree’s smart and scary competence wasn’t his biggest concern. ‘You retrieved those bodies when I arrived in the village. Tell me.’

‘I hadn’t started on the motorhome yet. We thought we’d have longer, since the crew had only been dead two days and probably not even reported missing yet. Turner wanted the bodies moved. We thought Lake Stanton would be a good idea because we knew it was deep and had a ledge. The motorhome still drove, but we would have to take the loader to push it down the slipway. So we dug the bodies up and put them in the motorhome–’

‘No,’ Bennet snapped. ‘You don’t just get to say you dug them up. This is a story, isn’t it? Show, don’t tell, and use some elegance. Say that you used the loader, and rammed that heavy metal bucket into the soil.’

Crabtree looked frozen.

‘All that power and weight,’ Bennet continued. ‘You stabbed that loader bucket deep into the ground, smashing bones, gouging flesh, and hauled those destroyed bodies from the land. You dragged those ruined, dirty corpses into the motorhome. Was my Lorraine’s mouth full of dirt? Were her eyes still open?’

‘What are you going to do to me?’

Bennet was surprised by the question, until he caught sight of his face in a wall mirror. He looked ravaged, like a zombie, or a lunatic, and a far cry from a father and police officer. He hung his head. He had broken into this home, with a weapon. What had he become?

Bennet dropped onto the sofa, suddenly drained of energy. ‘I told her to stay away. I warned her. Stay away from me and my son.’

Crabtree was staring, unsure how to react. But Bennet wasn’t speaking to him: these words were for himself.

‘I sent her that horrible message. I hated her at that moment. But she would have come to see Joe, if she could. I know it. But she couldn’t. She was already dead.’

57

Bennet leaned on his car outside Crabtree’s farmhouse and turned his phone on. While it loaded, he turned his eyes to the dark sky. It felt weird knowing this was his last night as a police officer.

Missed calls, a lot of them. Patricia, Joe, Sutton, Hunter, other colleagues and even some of his friends. Sutton had