MABLEDON: ‘Please, ladies and gentlemen, whether we do this or not, we still have four bodies sitting out there.’
TURNER: ‘Arnold, just hold your tongue a moment. Dr Ness isn’t convinced yet and we need a unanimous vote.’
NESS: ‘And I can’t vote on that.’
TURNER: ‘The good doctor here is missing a point. We all know that Sally Jenkins ran away, but nobody else does, do they? The proof is in the fact that a film crew came here, that the police still stick their noses in our business every half year or so, asking the same old questions. To the naïve wider world, Sally was kidnapped and killed, but nobody is a hundred per cent certain. So what do you think will happen to that theory when the world learns of a quadruple murder in our village?’
GINGHAM: ‘He’s right. The world will firmly believe Sally was killed here. The pressure will be intense. The police will come back with a vengeance. We’ll have a hundred film crews here. Everybody important will move away. I don’t want that. Heck, I vote yes. We get rid of the bodies.’
TURNER: ‘Not so fast, Sandra. We need the doctor to vote with logic, not because he’s the odd one out. Jason, think about this. When the police come back and start to open up our lives, some dark secrets might be exposed. They’re hunting the killer of a child, so what do you think they’ll make of a man once rumoured to have–’
NESS: ‘Okay, okay, just stop. If we did this, how would we get rid of the bodies?’
TURNER: ‘We use Mr Crabtree’s tractor to dig a hole. On his land. He’s renovating and there’s turned earth and deep holes and soil mounds everywhere. It’s the perfect place, and a year from now those bodies will be under tons of metal and concrete. Mr Crabtree has already agreed, because he knows this will work. He’ll be sworn to secrecy, as will my son, who will help. I think those two men alone can do the job. Tonight.’
NESS: ‘Already agreed? Did you have this worked out before we even convened this meeting?’
TURNER: ‘Of course. I knew it was the right thing to do the moment I saw those bodies. But you are my friends and I wanted your blessing.’
NESS. ‘Jesus Christ. Look, I want it noted that I objected to this. But I agree, okay? I agree to do it, 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 been in contact with a lot of people, trying to track Bennet down. He wondered if the Derby cops were planning to trace his device. He wondered if anyone suspected he’d returned to Lampton. F
or the final time, he hoped.
He called Patricia. She answered with desperation in her voice: police had been to the house, looking for him. He told her to calm down. ‘I’m fine, don’t worry. I’ll explain everything later. I just want to let you know I’ll be back in about two hours. Is Joe awake?’
‘No. But he’s worried. I can wake him for you.’
Joe was worried. Father of the year. ‘No, I’ll wake him when I get back. If he wakes before, tell him I’m sorry I didn’t leave word. I’ll be back soon. Thank you and I’m sorry.’
After that call, he made one to Sutton. Past midnight, but the superintendent answered immediately. He was worked up and Bennet had to cut him short.
‘I’ll explain everything later. Right now you’ve got something bigger than a rogue detective to deal with. I’m going to send you an audio file. Get your people ready for a bunch of raids.’ Bennet listed the names of the Keys, plus Crabtree and Turner’s son, Lucas. ‘The Keys should be at home. I’ll get Turner. You’ll have to find his son. Crabtree is waiting at his home, dressed and ready to go to the station. He’ll show you where he buried the bodies. There should be some treasure there still.’
‘Bennet, what the hell is going on?’
‘You’ll know after you listen to the audio file. I’ll email it now.’
‘Again, detective, where are you? And I don’t want you going near Richard Turner until I know what’s going on.’
‘I’ll see you at Crabtree’s farm. Here comes the file.’
Bennet hung up, emailed the file, then separated the components of his phone again. He’d broken so many orders and rules recently, and one more wasn’t going to matter.
58
Screen 13: the video feed from the lamp post outside the car park of the Panorama, showing forty metres of the dark main road. Parked directly in the foreground were two cars, nose to nose and connected by jump leads. Four teenagers present, one in each driver’s seat, two watching.
Screen 72: the turning circle of Arton Place. Quiet at this time of night, with a scattering of bedroom lights on and just a single living room illuminated.
Screen 46: the camera in the centre of the Well, showing various establishments, including the Red Lion. The pub was the only place open. People moved past the window periodically and two women were smoking just outside the doorway.
Screen: 1: Turner’s house. The camera was on the far side of the street in order to capture his home, driveway and the road directly outside. This camera was all about security, not snooping. All the lights in the house were off.
Bennet turned his attention to the laptop, which had a portable speaker attached. When he stroked the mousepad, the screen saver vanished and, thankfully, there was no password security. He needed two minutes to work out the system and another to plug in and access a flash drive he’d gotten from Crabtree’s house. File loaded, play button pressed, he leaned back in Councillor Turner’s comfy desk chair to watch his work.
‘Minutes of the Lampton Keys’ additional semi-meeting, held in the chamber on Monday January 20th, at 0245…’
Screen 13: as the audio of the Key Addendum meeting washed across the four teenagers working on their cars, they looked up and round, directly at the camera. On their faces, pure shock. On the road behind them, an approaching car slowed. It stopped dead centre of its lane, and the driver’s door emitted a man in a McDonald’s uniform, probably heading home from a work shift. He stood by his door, staring at the camera.
‘…find the black man. He’s laying across my Elise’s kitchen table. He’s in shorts…’
Screen 72: like a machine starting up, lights appeared in bedroom windows all around the turning circle on Arton Place. Then hallway bulbs illuminated glass in front doors. One opened and a woman in a dressing gown stood on her doorstep. Across the way, a man exited his house, just in pants. Bedroom windows open. Hypnotised faces stared up at the camera and its speakers, as if at a hovering alien craft in the sky.
‘…let the world know what happened here, it kills our village…’
Screen 46: The Lion had emptied as if a fire drill had sounded. Nothing of the sort, of course. Recorded words from trusted village elders, admitting a ghastly crime and, far worse, a secret pact. Perhaps a dozen people milled outside the pub’s front door, in a puddle of light spilling from inside. Publican Jonesy was amongst them. They stared, they listened, and like all others they wore faces of disbelief.
‘…be considering. We have four bodies sitting out there. What about…’
Screen: 1: Turner’s front bedroom light clapped on. Bennet turned his chair from the bank of screens and stood. Beyond the open door of Turner’s stable workspace, across the black field where horses once galloped, the rear of the house remained dark. And then it didn’t. The kitchen light came on. The back door opened. A figure emerged at a run across the grass. Bennet heard Turner yell, ‘Who’s there? How dare you? Get out of my property. You’ll regret this.’
‘…as long as nobody outside this room speaks of it…’
Turner was in tracksuit bottoms and a T-shirt, probably his preferred sleeping outfit, and his face was red from a panicked sprint. He stopped in the stable doorway, panting and angry, and wide-eyed upon recognising the man who’d infiltrated his ultra-sacrosanct realm.
‘You? You bastard. Turn that off, now.’
The councillor stepped forward, swinging an elbow to bash Bennet aside so he could reach his console, but Bennet grabbed the man’s arm, kicked out a leg, and slammed him face down on the carpet. Turner immediately tried to thrash free, but Bennet ground a knee hard into the man’s back. The older man gave it up.
‘You’re under arrest, Turner. That means game over with the monkey business.’
Turner laughed. He actually laughed. ‘You’re an idiot, detective. This won’t change what my people think. They’ll know we were only protecting them. And I’ll be going nowhere. Perverting the course of justice? Preventing the lawful burial of a dead body? And whatever other niche crimes you people come up with as safety nets in case people beat charges? They’re nothing. What, five years suspended for those charges? I won’t go to prison, and you won’t damage my power in this village. So, you fool, what exactly do you think you’ve achieved here?’
‘…our happy, blessed lives ruined in one fell swoop…’
59
Bennet parked by the woods overlooking Crabtree’s farmhouse. Every light in the building was on. Police and private cars clogged the area. Although the house had activity, primary interest was in the barrel-shaped corrugated metal structure a hundred metres beyond the farmhouse. The doors were open and the interior was floodlit. Inside and out was a throng of people, some in police uniform, others casually dressed, yet others in the plastic coveralls of crime-scene technicians. DCS Sutton had moved fast.
Bennet turned his phone on, called him and said, ‘I’m here.’ He flashed his lights.
‘I expected that. Meet me halfway,’ Sutton said, and hung up.
After arresting Richard Turner, Bennet had called Sutton and been sent a patrol car to collect the councillor. The superintendent had ordered Bennet to remain with the prisoner so he could also go to the station and provide a statement. But when officers arrived at the stable, they found Turner alone.
One of the plastic suits started walking towards him. Bennet strode down the incline. They met exactly halfway between the farmhouse and the woods.
‘I apologise for leaving Turner,’ Bennet said. ‘I’ll go to the station after this, if you like. I just wanted to see the scene.’
‘I can’t let you down there,’ Sutton said. Bennet nodded his understanding. ‘Good call about this place. Can’t promise it helps you much. You should have told me what you knew the moment you knew it.’
‘I know. Maybe I was worried you wouldn’t get a confession. Maybe I just wanted to hear it first. Maybe I was planning to hurt one of these people. I just don’t know why I acted this way. And I’ll take what’
s coming because of it. Crabtree helpful?’
‘Oh yes. Eager to talk. We had to rush him to the station, he was that eager to start talking. And he showed us the burial site.’
‘And you’ve arrested the others on the recording?’
‘All but Lucas Turner. He wasn’t at home and we don’t know where he is. The others, the Keys as they call themselves, they were no problem. Awake and dressed and waiting for us. I think they were scared they’d get lynched by their own people. Because of that recording you played. That was quite a bizarre tactic, Mr Bennet. It could have been damaging to the case, except that so far everyone seems willing to accept their guilt. Time will tell. Why did you play it for the whole town?’
‘I tried to think of a good answer for you on the way here. I couldn’t find one. I can only put it down to a few days of having my head mixed up. With maybe a little bit of sticking it to Turner thrown in. You should have heard my original idea, before I knew about the audio recording. I thought about forcing Turner to call a village meeting. I’d get everyone in the town hall and have a sort of kangaroo court. Maybe build a wicker man to put the Keys in.’
Bennet grinned to show he was joking, but Sutton remained serious. ‘This became very personal to you. I’ve never been there, so I can’t judge. Your boss says you’re a very good detective and I believe him. So, like you say, this has been a glitch. Go home. We’ll worry about your statement tomorrow. Go back to your kid. I’ll keep you updated.’
Bennet hadn’t looked at Sutton throughout their conversation: his eyes were locked on the corrugated building. It wasn’t where Lorraine had died, but it might have been her final resting place. Somehow, that made it seem more horrifying than the ranch where she’d been slaughtered. But it was about more than that.
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