Chapter 54
LIV
The rattle-clank-roar of the JCB’s backhoe stuttered to an end, and silence settled over the crappy collection of outbuildings.
But it wasn’t really silent, was it: the digger’s noise had drowned them out, but now the bluebottles’ buzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz filled the hot sticky air again.
Natasha stood beside her mobile anchor – rolled as close to the window hole as she could get it – for a slightly better view of the field.
DS Davis climbed down from the JCB’s cab, and brushed the dust off his jeans with his work gloves. Sweat darkening the fabric of his faded ‘BLODH?ST D?DSULV’ T-shirt.
She flattened herself against the wall, peering around the edge of the hole – keeping as low a profile as possible.
Don’t come back here.
Don’t come back here . . .
Shit.
That’s exactly what the bastard was doing.
He was going to squeal open that door and stab her, or shoot her, or bash her brains out with a fucking axe or something, then stick her in that bloody hole he’d been digging for hours.
Thing must be halfway to Sydney by now . . .
Most people: they buried a body, maybe only two or three feet down. There were tell-tale signs, like the ground sagging as the body decomposed, and weird patterns of extra growth where the plants feasted on human compost.
But a hole that deep?
Davis was making sure nothing would ever be found.
. . .
But maybe he wouldn’t kill her?
Maybe it wasn’t a grave?
That was possible, right?
Maybe he was just doing some . . . fucking farmwork, or something? Sorting out the drainage in the lower field – that kind of shit.
Oh Christ . . .
She hopped on one foot, using the other to shove at the anchor, rolling the bucket back towards where it was supposed to be all this time.
Fuck.
DS Davis was in the courtyard already, and she was nowhere near getting everything back the way it should be.
There was a clunk, then a rattling squeal of ancient metal rollers on steel brackets.
But her prison door remained firmly closed.
Natasha closed her eyes and sagged, knees curling, threatening to dump her on the hard-baked dirt.
It wasn’t her door.
She took a deep breath, then coaxed the galvanised bin towards the window again as quietly as possible.
The door to the other outbuilding was wide open; no Davis.
He reappeared a lifetime later, dragging something.
A man’s body – stripped down to the underwear. Skin thick with bruises and scrapes. Head covered by a heavy leather gimp mask that laced up the back; eyes and mouth, zipped shut. His wrists weren’t fixed to a metal collar, though, they were handcuffed behind his back.
Davis had his gloved hands hooked in under the body’s arms. Can’t have been all that heavy, though – you could see every one of the poor bastard’s ribs, and his arms and legs were nothing but battered bones. Like he’d been chained-up in there for a long, long time.
His corpse got dumped on a pile of pallets, then Davis unlaced the mask and pulled it off the guy’s pummelled head. The face underneath was distorted and swollen, discoloured with purples and yellows and greens. Doubt even his mum would recognise him now.
Davis placed the mask to one side.
Well, these things were probably expensive – wouldn’t want it going to waste.
Which kinda made you wonder how many other people had died in the one Natasha now wore . . .
Davis rolled the dead man off the pallets, and when that tortured body hit the ground it groaned, one skeletal leg twitching as Davis hauled the poor bastard across the makeshift courtyard and out towards the field.
‘Fuck me . . .’ Natasha covered her mouth with both hands, staring.
He was still alive.
Davis dragged him away, then they disappeared out of sight – hidden by the barn.
Not long after that, Detective Sergeant Davis marched across the gap and clambered up into the JCB’s cab again.
The engine sputtered and roared.
The backhoe jerked and swung.
And DS Davis buried the poor bastard alive.