19. Who Let the Cadaver Dogs Out #2
Long after the sun has set, Josh and Camille get bored, and now it’s just Trystan, me, two forensic officers, and two police in the cordon.
“Something occurred to me earlier, but I didn’t want to mention anything in front of the others,” I say.
Trystan looks up from his cross-legged position on the floor. “Go on.”
“That maybe we were all killed because the murderer knew . . . or thought we had information on a previous murder. Kind of a cover-up spiral into hell.”
“Cover-up Spiral into Hell was actually the name of my high school band,” he says.
No, Gary, you are not allowed to find that adorable. “Do you remember finding out anything before you died? Anything that perhaps felt like a revelation at the time?”
Trystan doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he asks one of his own. “Why don’t you want to say it in front of the others?”
“Huh?”
“Why leave them out . . .” He raises a brow.
It goes against everything I ever talked about on my radio show, but . . . “I . . . feel as though I shouldn’t trust them all.” With heavy emphasis on Jeanie, Peter, and Stove.
He smiles in a cute, but slightly judgemental way. “Wasn’t it you who said feels have no place in a murder investigation?”
I sigh. “No, you’re right. They don’t. It’s just that I’ve never been so . . . involved in one before.”
He’s still smiling, and I’m in danger of losing my train of thought.
“Someone knows something, and by someone, I mean a ghost, and they’re not telling me the full story.”
“Actually . . . I agree,” he says. “Stove is shifty. Pete’s weirdly obsessed with his supposed murderer, and every time I mention Pete to Jeanie, she changes the subject.”
I attempt to sit next to him on the stony dirt patch outside the forensics tent. It takes me a while to arrange my limbs so they’re not sinking into the mud. “That’s exactly what I mean. Can I ask what you were doing the morning you died?”
Trystan’s momentarily startled by the minor change of subject. “I was getting stuff ready for Wipeout. It was a massive event every year. Just before I died, I think I was doing like . . . I don’t really know what you call it, but making sure everything was safe.”
“Risk assessments?” I suggest.
“Yes, yes, risk assessments.”
“How long would there have been until the festival began?”
“Couple of weeks.”
“And what things did you have to safety check?”
“Ooh.” Trystan puffs out an enormous sigh while he thinks.
“The beach and the neighbouring beaches. Looking for litter or dangerous objects. Sometimes shit like old cars or sharp bits of metal get buried in the sand and you don’t really know they’re there, but when the tide comes in and out every day it might expose something.
I check the water quality of the sea. The car park areas, the hotel grounds themselves—”
I get a bit excited and interrupt. “Did you ever go near Jeanie’s burial site?” The killer may have assumed Trystan stumbled upon their secret.
He hums to himself. “I don’t think so. Only because it wasn’t an area that the public had access to during the festival.”
Damn.
“But I did risk assess the caves to check that the surfaces weren’t too slippery. The year before, some people had used them as a changing room. Someone had slipped and hurt their back, so we had to make sure no one would get injured again.”
“The caves Stove died in?” I ask, my heartbeat kicking up a notch.
“Yup.”
“So, you looked at the caves. How deep inside them did you go?”
“Oh, all the way. Had to be sure that any area a kid could climb into was sectioned off, because it gets really narrow in some places, and it’d be so easy for one to get stuck there.”
I can’t hide my smile. “This is all great, by the way.” I get to my feet, and to my chagrin, I say, “I need to speak to Stove.”
All the ghosts except Pete have long since left the bar area. He’s staring at a tiny TV suspended on the wall. It plays a twenty-four-hour news station. The volume’s off, and the subtitles appear a few seconds out of sync with the newsreader’s lips.
“They play the local headlines once an hour, but nothing’s been mentioned so far,” he says.
“Is Helga working tonight?” I ask.
Peter’s eyes flick to mine, then out of the window towards a cluster of distant lights in the town. I imagine one or more of those twinkles come from Helga’s little blue house.
“Where are the others?” I say.
“In their rooms.” Peter shrugs. He lifts a pretend glass, “swishes” it around, and knocks it back, smacking his mouth. “Ahhh.”
I side-eye Trystan, who mouths, “Don’t ask.”
Silently, I think not asking Pete anything is a splendid plan, so I grab Trystan’s forearm and march him out of the bar.
“Where are the caves?” I say, when we’re on the other side of Pete’s misery cloud.
“They’re this way.”
The paths around the hotel are all lit with pretty fairy lights and multicoloured tree uplighters, but when we get down to the beach, I realise this plan would’ve been better to attempt in the daytime.
It’s so dark near the caves that it’s oppressive.
A blanket of midnight. Almost like being suffocated.
The moonlight glinting on the damp rock is the only indication I have of the entrance to Stove’s cave.
I’m dead and there’s nothing to be afraid of. I can’t die again. Right?
“Stove?” I yell, from just outside the mouth. “Knock knock. Are you awake?”
No response, for what seems like forever, but I can hear a sort of animalistic noise. Like a pig snuffling for truffles. I lower my gaze and peer into the void.
“Stove?!”
“Fucking hell!” Stove’s gruff voice carries from somewhere in the midst of the blackness. “What are you doing here? Trying to steal all my treasures?”
“What? No, I ju—”
Suddenly, the darkness parts for him, and he’s there, and . . .
He’s naked.
Well, almost naked. Stove tugs on his jhorts, stumbling forward as he does so.
“What do you want? Stop looking for my sword. Can’t even have a decent tug in peace these days!” he says.
“I . . . I . . .” But what I wanted to ask him has evaporated from my brain. “I didn’t know we could take our clothes off.”
Stove glances at Trystan, then looks at me. “You’re a peculiar little man, aren’t you?”
I’m not even offended by his statement. Every single word of it was accurate.
“Have you told him about ghost wanking yet?” Stove asks Trystan.
Trystan startles. “Oh, um . . .”
“My god!” Stove has just about got the button on his shorts done up. He drapes his arm over my shoulder, and I lean my head as far away from his fist as my neck will allow. “Mate. Oh, mate. Ghost wanking is the best thing about being a ghost.”
I open my mouth to tell him to shut his, but . . . curiosity gets the better of me. “Why?”
Both Stove and Trystan laugh, and both my heartbeat and thoughts shoot into overdrive.
“Don’t say anything,” Stove implores Trystan. “Let him find out on his own. Gary, d’you wanna use my cave? It’s great. No electrical devices around. You can go nuts. Literally.” He raises an expectant brow.
“Yeah, no thank you.” I look at Trystan, who’s doing his absolute best to keep his face neutral. “I actually came to ask you a few questions about the night of your death.”