Knife After Death: A chilling crime thriller

by Irvine, Ian C. P.

  He looked at the depressed area in the ground again and this time knew immediately what he was looking at.

  A grave.

  A metre and a half long, three-quarters of a metre wide.

  There were two large boulders placed in the middle of it, probably marking its centre, making it easy to find again if someone ever needed to.

  Over time the soil above the body had compacted and sunk slightly lower than the surrounding ground, maybe as a result of water action, or perhaps due to the body decaying and displacing less earth.

  Peter didn't care why. All he knew was that this was the place.

  He hurried back to his rucksack, took off his jacket and jumper, grabbed the bottle of water and the spade and went to work.

  Looking at the shape of the depression he started digging towards the middle of where he estimated the body to be, about a third of metre 'south' of the two large boulders.

  He dug. And dug. And dug.

  After an hour of digging he moved the boulders half a metre towards the cliff-face, making a mental note of where they had been before relative to the river and some adjacent trees. Primitive triangulation at its worst. He then started extending his trench towards the rock face, making the bottom of the trench flatter, going downwards at a steady pace.

  Feeling quite tired, he took a break for some food...a couple of sandwiches he had grabbed from the pub...finished his bottle of water, and filled it twice again from the waterfall.

  Then he sat down to peruse his handiwork so far.

  As he sat down, looking at the hole in the ground, he shivered.

  Peter smiled. He knew he had to be 'hot'.

  .

  --------------------

  .

  Upon reflection, putting a body here made so much more sense than at the Grey Mare's Tail. For a number of reasons, which Peter considered to himself as he dug deeper, made the hole wider, and then dug deeper again.

  Firstly, and probably most importantly, it seemed that no one ever came here. "Well, apart from Carolina," he thought to himself. He would have to ask her later, how she discovered the place!

  If anyone came to Knuttsford and wanted to see a waterfall, they would definitely all go to the larger, more impressive Grey Mare. This smaller waterfall wasn't even on the bloody map!

  Secondly, it was a long, long walk from the car to the Grey Mare's Tail, and carrying a body on your shoulders would have made it nigh on impossible.

  The Grey Mare's Small Tail, was on the other hand, only about ten-fifteen minutes walk from the car. The route was all level going, simpler and easier to navigate.

  Thirdly, having killed the woman in the field...he was still sure that he'd got that bit right...KK could have loaded her body into the car, and driven to the end of the road, waited till nightfall, and then carried her into the forest with almost no chance of being seen.

  Peter looked at his watch.

  It was 3.10 p.m.

  .

  --------------------

  .

  An hour later, and Peter was standing almost chest deep in the trench he had dug. He was now stripped down to his waist, his shirt long since abandoned on the ground above.

  As he had dug deeper, he had brought a few large boulders in with him, which made it easier for him to step onto and climb out of the ever deepening hole: it had only been a random passing thought as he was digging, but as he was busy throwing soil above his head onto the ground above, he realised how deep he was getting and he worried for a second that he had better ensure he could get out of the hole, otherwise he could, quite literally, be digging his own grave!

  The doubts were beginning to creep in now.

  Perhaps he had got it wrong again.

  Perhaps, instead of being 'Master Detective of the Month', he had simply gone insane. Was he just digging a random hole in a random forest, or was there really some sort of paranormal science to his behaviour?

  He took another dig at the ground.

  Shit!

  One of the blisters on his hand burst.

  Peter dropped the spade and looked at his fingers. He poured some water over them, cursed again, and got back to work.

  He lifted the spade up, swinging it down hard back into the soil.

  Dong!

  The spade hit something hard. A stone?

  He dug again.

  Dong!

  Kneeling down he started wiping the soil away from the surface, trying to expose whatever it was he had just hit.

  Wiping away the dirt, he realised it was quite large and flat. A bit like a paving stone...

  Yes!

  He grabbed at the stone, trying to wrench it up.

  It wouldn't budge.

  He stood up, quickly using the spade to clear away the soil from around the ends of the slab. Then putting the spade underneath one of the edges, he tried to lever it up.

  For a seconds it resisted, Peter put all his weight on the handle of the spade, and then suddenly it moved. Peter fell forwards onto the ground, laughing.

  Still on his knees, he turned round, found the edge of the slab and lifted it up, putting it to the side with the other boulders he was using to help him climb out.

  He put his hand into the space underneath the slab, and found that there was more earth, which he started scooping away with his hands.

  A few centimetres down he came across something cold, clammy and obviously man-made.

  Rubber matting.

  Peter's heart was beating so fast by now, and he was breathing so deeply that for a second he thought he might faint.

  He sat back on the ground behind him, staring at the dirt and rubber matting in front of him, composing himself.

  Climbing back out of the hole, he walked across to his rucksack, zipped open the front of the small pocket at the front, and took out his Swiss penknife. He opened the blade up and almost without thinking, ran his finger along the edge of the blade, testing its sharpness.

  "Shit!...that was stupid!" he swore to himself as he immediately cut himself. "What an idiot!"

  He looked at the blade more closely, holding it up and letting it glint in the sunlight. He'd bought the knife in Zermatt, but never really looked at it properly. It was a good knife. A beautiful piece of engineering. Slick. Almost elegant. For a second, it reminded him of the knife that the Gladiator had stuck deep into the throat of the Emperor in the film. In the same instant he wondered what it would be like to stick the knife into the throat of Big Wee Rab.

  The thought threw him.

  "What on Earth..."

  He shook his head, turned back to the hole in the ground and jumped in.

  Kneeling over the rubber matting at the bottom of the hole, he stuck the knife into the rubber, and started to cut out a large square. After pulling the rubber away, he was just about to put his hand gingerly into the earth beyond, when a horrible, smell repelled him from where he had been kneeling. He immediately rocked backwards onto his heels and stood up, moving backwards towards the walls of the deep grave.

  "Shit!!!" he shouted, forcibly breathing out and expelling the air from his lungs.

  After taking a few deep breaths of fresh air, he moved gingerly back towards the hole he had cut in the rubber matting, bent forward and looked closely inside the section he had cut out. Contorting his face up, he stuck his hand into the hole, and pulled out several handfuls of earth.

  As he dug into the earth for the fourth time his fingers touched something solid, spindly, thin and long. He pulled back, dropping the dirt onto the ground.

  He jumped up, gasping for breath, and hurried to the back of the grave.

  A wave of nausea swept over him, and he vomited twice onto the ground.

  The smell was almost overpowering now, rotten, primordial and repugnant, like nothing he had ever smelt before. Cupping his hands over his mouth, and fighting with the urge to gag, he took a step forward and stared at the object on the ground that he had just uncovered, now poking up at him from within a
few clumps of dirt.

  .

  It was a skeletal hand, the long, slender white finger bones, reaching up from amidst the dirt and pointing accusingly at Peter

  He had found his second body.

  Chapter Seventy Five

  .

  .

  Knuttsford

  Forest View

  May 5th

  4.30 p.m.

  .

  .

  Ollie Swanson stepped down from his digger and walked across to the portable canteen, taking his safety hat off and scratching the top of his bald head.

  His digger was the last one to be assembled at the top of the hill. He walked over to the others drivers, all huddled around drinking coffees and teas, nodding at some of his mates, and laughing at their childish jests:"Ollie was the last one to the top of the hill!"

  Fair enough. But that was only because the other diggers had been so incredibly slow. Still, he would make up for it tomorrow when he moved twice as much dirt as each of the others did. Admittedly his digger was slightly smaller than some of the others, but like the old adage went, it wasn't size that counted, it was what you did with it that mattered!

  Ollie had been working on hydraulic diggers for almost all his life. He been working in diggers whilst some of the others were still in nappies!

  "Coffee, please." he said, as the woman inside the cabin leaned out of the serving hatch and asked him what he wanted.

  He took the coffee, poured in a small mountain of sugar, and started stirring it, his safety hat tucked securely under his arm.

  Turning back to look at the edge of the forest, Ollie was impressed by the line-up that the construction company had managed to pull together for this job. Sandford & Sons was a Birmingham based contractor that often got the dirty jobs, where protestors fought for their rights and the countryside, and the construction company fought harder for their profits.

  They had done a good job so far. The protestors had been cleared off the site after only three days. The men had got straight to work, taking only two days to demolish the derelict houses on Forest Rise, and building a temporary access road to the edge of the forest.

  Looking at the machines lined up on the edge of the forest, and then beyond at the beautiful trees behind them, Ollie felt a pang of guilt. It was a lovely forest. While they were waiting for the last of the protestors to be cleared out, he'd even had a chance to walk through it himself. It was so peaceful.

  Over the past couple of years he'd been involved in quite a few projects like these. Nowadays, this is where the money was. No one was building houses any more, and with the housing crash still going on all around them, there wasn't much money in it for anyone. Hah...but wind farms...that was a completely different story! The European Government was throwing so much money at them, that anyone with a slice of land and a puff of wind could apply to the Government, get some cash, and try to generate some electricity.

  The reality was however that wind-power probably wouldn’t generate any profits for the landowners. The people who would make money from wind-power were the construction companies, with a government backed mandate to destroy anything that stood in its way. No one cared, so long as the council hit their wind energy targets. That's all that counted.

  Ollie sipped his coffee.

  Damn...the older he got, the bigger a politician he became. He kept telling himself to avoid forming any opinions on anything. It just got you into trouble.

  But this job just didn't feel right. Already he didn't like it and he hadn't even started it yet.

  It was going to be a terrible shame. Today, as far as the eye could see, were trees that had taken tens to hundreds of years to grow.

  By this time next week, half of them would be gone. In a month, there would be a marsh here, with a row of ugly, tall, eyesores spinning in the wind instead.

  Ollie was just following orders though. None of this was his decision. He was an innocent. Another cog in the capitalist world which fed him and his four kids.

  Over the next few days Ollie would help build the road into the centre of the woods and then start preparing the area where the first wind-turbines would go, while another team would work from the outside in, cutting down the trees, and working slowly but inexorably towards the centre.

  He looked at this watch.

  Any moment now, the Mayor of Knuttsford would arrive, give a speech, and then ceremoniously climb into Ollie's cab. It was Ollie's job to show the Mayor how to dig the first load of dirt, lift it up and put it in the skip.

  Then the serious work would begin. Day and night.

  Ollie hated the night shift, but there was a recession on.

  You couldn't complain. He had a job and thousands didn't.

  He should be grateful.

  .

  --------------------

  The Craigmillar Estate

  May 7th

  5 p.m.

  .

  Tam had been hiding in his dad's shed for two days now. He was convinced that "naebody kennt" that he was there, and no one would think to look for him on the allotment: everybody else on his Crew was so fucking stupid, none of them had probably ever heard of an allotment before. They probably thought vegetables only grew in Tescos.

  So why was he still so worried?

  His mum had brought some food to the allotment last night and this morning, but he hadn't see her all day since. He was starving.

  Tam was 'shit scared'. His hands were shaking continuously, and his left eye wouldn't stop twitching, probably because he hadn't got much sleep.

  Nobody knew who was 'dain the murders', but Tam was pretty sure it was the 'Boys frae Porty.' They were getting their own back and setting an example: "Nobody screws with the Porty Crew."

  The reason why Tam was 'brickin it', was because he knew that he'd tried to be too clever, and he had not got away with it. The Porty Crew must have found out what he and the others from Rab's old gang were up to, and they were obviously really pissed off about it. When Rab had left Craigmillar, disappearing off the face of the planet, Tam had thought about trying to take over the gang, but the others had wanted to join up with the Porty Crew so that they could earn more money.

  So they did. Soon they were selling drugs, being introduced to promoting prostitution-which Tam quite liked, because he was getting to try out the 'goods' for free. But Tam was still thinking big. Still thinking about setting up on his own. So every now and again, he kept a little extra of the money they made for themselves, instead of giving everything they should back to the Porty Crew.

  They must have found out.

  And now they were going to kill him.

  Fuck...fuck...fuck!

  Suddenly the door to the shed opened, and old Mr Wallace stepped in through the doorway, his walking stick pushing the door open in front of him.

  Tam was cowering in the corner under an old duvet cover that his mum had brought by yesterday. He looked up at the old man with a mixture of surprise and relief.

  "What the fuck are you dain here, ye old git? Fuck off! This here is private property, ye ken?"

  Mr Wallace looked down at the pathetic young specimen of a man sitting on the floor, covered in something with children's 'Mr Men' pictures printed all over it. He closed the door slowly behind him and swapped the walking stick over into his other hand. He then reached inside his jacket and pulled out a piece of paper which he threw onto the floor near the boy. Lastly, Mr Wallace pulled out a gun, a revolver which he had taken off the Chinese soldier that he had killed in hand-to-hand combat in Korea. He pointed the gun at Tam.

  Tam had been watching the old man with a degree of curiosity and anger. He wasn't sure what the old man was doing here, but his senses were dulled from the hunger and solitude.

  "Tam? It's good to see you. It took me a while to find you, son. But I needed the exercise, so it disnie really matter." The old man started coughing, and then carried on. "Do me a favour and stick that wee note on the front of your jacket. I've a
lready put a safety pin on there fir ye. Quickly like. I havenie got all day, like."

  Tam was speechless. Stunned from fear and confusion into silence. It hadn't yet dawned on him what was going on.

  Tam reached forward, picking up the note, turning it around so that he could see it properly.

  It was a photocopy of the note that had been found on Wee Eck and Jamsie.

  That's when he realised what was happening. He began to cry...

  "Please, no, Mr Wallace. Please, it wissnie me...dinnae kill me. Please..."

  "Like I said, pin the note on your jacket. Now...!"

  Tam looked up at Mr Wallace, then back at the note, then slowly, his hands shaking so badly that he couldn't navigate the safety pin properly, he tried to attach it to his jumper. It fell on the floor again. Tam scrambled forward trying to pick it up.

  At the same time he urinated in his trousers and a puddle started to form on the floor beneath him.

  "Never mind Tam, I'll do it myself later," and with those last words, Mr Wallace stepped forward, put the gun against the top of Tam's skull and blew his head off.

  Chapter Seventy Six

  .

  .

  Knuttsford

  May 5th

  The Grey Mare's Graveyard

  5.10 p.m.

  .

  .

  Peter was sitting down beside the waterfall, gazing at the water as it cascaded down onto the rocks in the little pool in front of him.

  His mind was empty, hypnotised into a pseudo-state of relaxation by the pulsing white noise of the falling water.

  He was waiting for the phone to ring: as soon as he had calmed down he had tried to call Alex in Ironbridge, but he had just gone straight through to voicemail.

  "It's Peter. Call me. Urgently," was all that he had said.

  Peter was in a state of shock. He had been looking for a body. True. And he had found one. Excellent.

  But this wasn't exactly the sort of he thing he was used to doing. How could anyone be a coroner or work in a mortuary?

  His mind started to drift back to the vision he had of when KK had killed the woman that now lay in the grave behind him. How could another human being actually kill someone else? Take their life?