Chapter Twenty-Eight
Haze
The first time I dumped Danny, it was with a hastily typed text message. This time would be a little more final.
Life was funny like that. One year, you’re spending a lot of time naked with someone.
And another, you’re standing over their dead body, debating the best way to get rid of it.
You never knew how someone was going to come into your life, or how they were going to leave it.
Maybe I should get that on a bumper sticker.
I’d never suffered through an acrimonious breakup, as I’d never been invested enough in a relationship to care.
I’d never had to experience the trauma of having someone who knew every square inch of me, who had once held me at night and heard all my secrets, being downgraded to someone I crossed the street to avoid.
Or worse, had to exchange pleasant annual small-talk messages with.
Danny was just someone I’d had repeated carnal knowledge of without ever noticing he was a drug-dealing criminal.
Maybe this was why people said you should think carefully about who you sleep with.
Or at least get to know them a little first.
Together, we shifted Danny from Fox’s boot to mine. Driving Fox’s car with its dented bonnet was too risky. Having checked it over for any telltale blood splatter, we determined it was safe to leave it there overnight.
Fox had suggested a dump site that might work that was less than eight miles from our current location.
It was not a peaceful drive as we debated how best to proceed.
I parked up opposite the abandoned house that had become a popular place to chuck unwanted rubbish.
It was far enough from any neighboring houses that kids wouldn’t come playing around here.
There had been talk of developing the plot, but due to its proximity to a sewage plant, it seemed unlikely it would ever be touched.
Fox’s plan was that we’d dump Danny here.
Thanks to the emergency items we always had in the car, we could make him indistinguishable enough that it would take a long time for him to be found, and even longer for him to be identified.
We just needed to get him across a country lane and through twenty feet of undergrowth surrounding the house before carrying him another twenty feet to the old septic tank. It was a workout I was not looking forward to.
I opened the boot and took a deep breath. I tightened the tarpaulin that was securely wrapped round him. Fox picked him up by the shoulder, I got the feet, and together we yanked him out of the car.
“God, he’s heavy.” I groaned. “He’s so tall.”
Fox mumbled something.
“What was that?”
“He’s not that tall.”
“Seriously? Will you stop?” The fragile male ego couldn’t even stop feeling competitive with an actual dead man.
Fox grimaced at me. “Let’s get him across this road, and we can take a break once we hit the undergrowth.”
We set off. I was struggling.
“Hurry up!”
“You try doing this in heels!” I hissed back.
We were halfway across the road when we both stopped. We were lit up. I turned my head and squinted straight into the lights of a Tesla.
Fucking electric cars.
They were so quiet. Creeping up on you without any warning.
We both blinked in the beam of the headlights: killers caught in their glare. A spotlight on body disposal.
We were holding separate ends of a long, rolled-up tarpaulin. At 11 p.m. at night. On a deserted country road.
“Fuuuuck,” I let out quietly.
The driver’s car door opened as the lights were dimmed. And out stepped an elderly man. “Now I know what you two are up to!”
I remained silent.
“Good evening, sir,” Fox stammered out.
Yeah, as if manners were going to help us.
“Fly-tippers!” the man exclaimed.
“What?” Fox and I looked at each other.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to dob you in. This is my perfect spot to do it too!” He leaned on the car door as he grinned at us. “What do these councils expect if they make it so bloody difficult to get rid of anything?”
“Yes!” Fox smiled. “Those pencil-pushers are ruining everything.”
“Quite right. Fuckin’ bureaucracy!” I chipped in.
The man chuckled away. Fox and I joined in laughing. My arms were about to go. Danny was bloody heavy.
“Well, we’d better get on.” Fox cleared his throat. “In case someone who isn’t an ally comes across us!”
“Hah! Too bloody right. Keep it up!” Still chuckling, the man got back into his car. We quickly got out of the road and carried on toward the undergrowth. We both dropped Danny as soon as the Tesla drove off.
“Now what?” I stretched out my throbbing arms.
“Well, we can’t dump him here now, can we?”
We took a minute’s rest, then hoisted Danny back up and walked as fast as we could across the road before dropping him back into my boot.
We got into the car. I let out a long breath. “That was too fucking close.”
We sat quietly for a moment.
Fox shook his head. “Of all the things that could’ve ended us, I did not have running over your ex-boyfriend on the shortlist.”
“You sure that old man won’t be a problem?”
“Only if a body is found too near to here. Then he might put two and two together.”
We both took this in. It meant another car journey. We’d need to head further afield and choose somewhere even more discreet.
Fox looked down at his phone. “We’re twenty-two miles from the graveyard, and a funeral is booked in there for tomorrow.
” Jenny had hacked the calendar of a local church’s booking system.
She had discovered that the gravediggers usually prepared the holes the day before a funeral.
The best place to bury a body was underneath one.
No one checked an empty grave before placing a coffin inside it.
“I can’t dig in this!” I motioned at my outfit. “It’s Stella McCartney.”
“We’ve just established we cannot let Danny be found. It’s the safest solution.”
I chewed on my lip. Fine. “There must be something in the car I can change into.”
—
It was nearing 3:30 a.m. when we finally got home, tired, grumpy and covered in dirt. Jenny grimaced at the sight of us. She’d taken over babysitting duty from Frank as soon as she’d finished work.
I was wearing nothing but a large black waterproof poncho I’d kept in my car for emergency downpours.
My legs were streaked with dirt. We’d spent hours in the grave, digging far enough down that Danny’s final resting place wouldn’t be discovered.
Thankfully, no one had discovered us. I doubted anyone would’ve bought our prepared cover story of being a couple who got off on doing it in gravesites.
I turned to Fox as we entered the kitchen. “For fuck’s sake, you didn’t even tidy the house before you left?”
“I got Jenny’s call just as I was about to start!”
I slumped into a chair at the kitchen table. Jenny put down three glasses. She poured whiskey into mine and Fox’s, and into hers, a slosh of Bailey’s.
“Seriously?” I motioned at her glass.
“I don’t want to feel left out of the post-kill alcohol debrief, but I hate whiskey.” Jenny took out a notepad. “Begin.”
Fox downed his drink in one. The new health-conscious, fitness-obsessed Fox had come up with the rule of only ever drinking after a body dump. Considering this rule, I was surprised he wasn’t pushing for more kills.
Fox once again recounted the story of Danny coming at him with a gun, and the way he’d panicked and run him over without ever seeing who he was. He kept pointedly looking at me as he said this.
Jenny stopped him after he got to the part where we’d left the crash site in my car.
“And there was definitely no one at the Airbnb?”
I nodded. “No cars. No lights on. Shutters on windows. Didn’t look like anyone was staying there.”
Jenny tapped her pen against her mouth. “Maybe The Chameleon is one step ahead of us, and knew we’d clock the fake name on that guest list.”
Fox gripped his empty glass. “You think it was a trap? The Chameleon wanted to lure us out there?”
Jenny shrugged. “It’s something to consider. This fake name rents a house in a remote area, at the end of a dead end. And Danny comes at you with a gun.”
Fox poured himself more whiskey as Jenny scrawled in her notepad. “I’ll be doing a deep dive soon as I’m back in the office.” She looked up at Fox. “And give me the exact route you took from here to where you hit him. I’ll do a check for any CCTV that might’ve picked up anything.”
Fox tapped his phone and showed her the highlighted route on Google Maps. “I’ll send it to you.”
“Where is your car now?”
“Halfway down the road from the Airbnb. We’ll go back to it tomorrow and call a garage. We can use the ‘swerved to miss a deer’ line.”
I took a gulp of whiskey. “I’ll say I was driving. Bit of eyelash-fluttering, silly me, shit woman driver. And we won’t get any questions.”
Jenny looked at her notepad. “Okay, and the body is in our favorite graveyard. I’ll check and make sure that funeral tomorrow goes ahead with no hiccups. I’ll also double-check no cameras have been installed since my last sweep.”
I stretched. My forearms were aching from all the Danny-lugging and grave-digging. “Can we go to bed now?”
A loud Reggie cry erupted from the monitor. Jenny and Fox turned to look at me.
I downed my whiskey. “I guess not.”