‘The dog won’t like it,’ said the dog’s owner. ‘He’s been trying to get into that hole himself. If he sees you doing it, he’ll go mad.’
‘I can’t help that,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to keep him under control. Isn’t that what dog owners do?’
The man made a huffy noise and withdrew into the comparative shelter of the hut overhang, dragging the dog with him.
Amaryllis tried to work out the best way of getting down to the victim – if it was indeed a victim and not some sort of a dummy – and back up again. Ideally she would have a rope or, failing that, a couple of willing helpers strong enough to lift her up and then heave themselves up.
‘There isn’t any rope lying about in those huts, is there?’ she said.
‘I’ll have a look,’ announced one of the FOOP hangers-on, as she thought of them. It was a middle-aged woman with a permanently sweet expression. They were the worst, in Amaryllis’s opinion. It took ages to work out when they were insulting you because of the disconnect between words and appearances. However, the woman deserved the benefit of the doubt. At least she was willing to do something and not just stand there, staring blankly. Were the rest of them brainwashed or something? She noticed Bruce and Tamara in a huddle, whispering. The last of the four was a youngish man who was shuffling his feet awkwardly.
‘I can’t go into that hole,’ he whimpered. ‘I get terrible claustrophobia. Somebody would have to rescue me.’
The FOOP woman came back in triumph with a frayed remnant of rope. This hardly deserved a ‘Well done, Karen!’ from Jason Penrose, but it made her glow with evident pride.
Amaryllis knew the bit of rope would be about as much use as a liquorice shoelace, but she also knew she wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t at least establish that the person in the hole was definitely dead. She sighed, and said to Karen wearily, ‘I’ll put it round my waist. When I’m ready to come up, I’ll throw it up to you, and Jason can help you pull me out.’
It sounded like a plan, but Amaryllis fully expected to end up stuck in the hole for hours with only a dead body for company. She must surely have been in worse situations in her professional career, she told herself as she started the descent, grabbing at the only visible tree root to make things just fractionally easier.
Ignoring the shouts of ‘What do you think you’re doing?’, ‘Stop that!’, ‘The police are on their way!’ and ‘Be careful!’ from various people above her, she jumped the last few feet and slithered to a halt. The person in the hole was definitely not breathing. She didn’t need a mirror or any medical equipment to tell her that. The head was face down in mud. She took a quick picture and then, on the off-chance that breathing had stopped not very long ago and could be restarted, she turned it gently to one side so that the body lay in an approximation of the recovery position. The mouth and nose were blocked up with mud and there was no sign of life whatsoever. In spite of all that, she felt for a pulse. Of course there was none. The skin was cold and greyish. Although it went against the grain to do it, she took another couple of pictures.
It was not unknown for Amaryllis to be first on the scene at a death, but she hadn’t entirely become hardened to it. Knowing the victim always made it worse. As she stared at the mud-splattered face she was angry that Jackie Whitmore had ended up here. It wasn’t that she had liked the girl, but after all Jackie had been young. There was still some faint hope that she might have improved with age. Now there was no hope.
She slumped against the side of the hole, defeated. A small river of sandy earth ran down next to her. She stared at it without really seeing it.
Jason’s head appeared at the top. ‘Any sign of life?’
‘No. Can you help me back up? I think the sides might be going to cave in.’
She said it almost mechanically, having spotted another trickle of sandy soil coming down a little further away. Her eyes and sub-conscious seemed to be working together on auto-pilot.
‘Throw me that rope,’ he snapped.
It was so much like an order that she found she had tossed the rope up towards him without a quibble.
He just missed catching it.
‘It’s all right,’ she said as it fell back into the hole. ‘I can grab on to this root at the side here. Then maybe you can reach down and...’
As she spoke, she was assessing the distance between her and the tree root. If she stretched her arm up and caught it, she could use it to pull herself halfway, and then perhaps Jason’s arms were long enough to reach her.
Amaryllis began to stretch up. The trickle of sand and earth had become a small landslide. Jackie Whitmore could be dug out afterwards if the whole thing caved in. It would be more work for the police but it wouldn’t harm her. Trying not to picture the scene, she made a grab for the tree root – and it was only when it came right away from the earth that she began to panic. It wasn’t a root at all. As she fell over backwards, still clutching at it, she knew it was a bone.
She was swept off her feet and landed on her back on top of Jackie Whitmore, with earth cascading down round them.
Somewhere above, a small dog began to bark again.
Chapter 7 Elf and Safety
Jock McLean was walking down towards the Cultural Centre at a leisurely pace when he heard sirens in the middle distance.
Of course there could have been any number of reasons for the sound, but his mind flew to Amaryllis. What had she been up to this time? Why hadn’t she just gone home after he had last seen her, sat down with friends, eaten pink wafer biscuits and had a cup of tea just as he had? That was the sensible thing to do. Unfortunately Amaryllis wasn’t usually all that sensible, especially if something interesting was happening. Jock wasn’t a betting man, but he’d have been willing to bet she had gone after the FOOP people and caused something terrible to happen.
As he reached the middle of the car park between the supermarket and the Cultural Centre, he saw Christopher burst out through the front door and start running towards the far side, where a lane led in the direction of the river front.
‘Hey!’ shouted Jock. ‘Wait for me... What’s going on?’ he said as he caught up, panting, with Christopher.
‘Amaryllis,’ said Christopher, confirming Jock’s worst fears. He paused for breath. ‘Got to get there before it’s too late.’
‘Where?’ called Jock as Christopher set off at a run again. Jock couldn’t remember ever seeing Christopher running before. It could have been an amusing sight under other circumstances.
‘Pitkirtly Island,’ called Christopher over his shoulder. ‘... jumped into a hole...’
‘Wait a minute! Did you say she’d jumped in a hole?’
But Christopher was already out of earshot, showing an impressive turn of speed for somebody who spent most of his life behind a desk. Jock hoped he wouldn’t have a heart attack. That could happen to people who suddenly put themselves under unaccustomed physical strain, particularly at Christopher’s age.
Oh, well, the ambulance was probably there already, he told himself, walking briskly after Christopher. He knew his own limitations.
He caught up with Christopher again just before he crossed the railway line at the little gate beside the old station. Pitkirtly Island was at the other side of the tracks. Some activity was visible around the old corrugated iron huts that everybody thought were air raid shelters left over from the war, but which Jock had always suspected of being secret nuclear bunkers for West Fife Council officials. A police car had managed to drive down the track leading along one side of the so-called island, and as he watched, he saw two uniformed officers jump out and run towards the huts.
Christopher was bent double, breathing hard. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Had to rest.’
Jock wasn’t sure who he was apologising to. ‘That’s all right,’ he said, in the nearest approximation to a soothing tone he could dredge up. ‘Take your time. It won’t do any good for you to have a heart attack.’
Oddly enough,
the words didn’t seem to comfort Christopher. He breathed harder for a while, then his phone rang and he slowly straightened up as he answered it. ‘Yes, we’re on our way... Oh, no! Just do what you can.’
‘So what’s happening?’ said Jock.
‘No time – we’ve got to get over there.’
Jock put a restraining hand on his arm. ‘No need to get in a state. The police are there now.’
‘Zak phoned me again. I couldn’t make him out very well. The line went all crackly. She got stuck in the hole. It caved in round her.’
Jock extracted the really unbelievable piece of information from the disjointed sentences that were so uncharacteristic of Christopher. ‘He phoned you on your mobile? Again? And you answered it? Twice in one day?’
Christopher’s face, already red, got even redder. ‘I meant to set it to silent when I got into work but I forgot how to do that... Come on, let’s go.’
They opened the gate and hurried across to the place where Pitkirtly Island began to jut out into the river. A dog was yapping somewhere ahead of them. Suddenly they heard an answering bark from behind them.
‘Wait for me!’ called Charlie Smith. His dog, on the lead beside him, seemed almost embarrassed to have been heard barking, but Jock thought it was a good sign. It meant the dog was getting over its fear of taking up too much space in the world, and might even aspire one day to doing even more doggy things, such as running to the door when people came in, or taking up a whole settee while all the people in the room were standing, or being sick on the carpet.
‘He doesn’t bark very often,’ said Charlie. ‘It was just because he thought the other dog was barking at him.’
For heaven’s sake, Jock thought, now Charlie’s at this self-deprecation lark. He must have caught it from the dog.
‘What’s going on?’ said Charlie.
‘Amaryllis has fallen in a hole,’ said Jock.
Christopher speeded up a bit again and went ahead.
‘How did he know?’ said Charlie.
‘Zak called him on his mobile,’ said Jock. ‘Twice.’
‘You mean he had it charged up and switched on?’ Charlie shook his head. ‘They were lucky to get hold of him at all.’
‘He’s only going to get in the way,’ Jock predicted.
Christopher vanished round one of the huts. They followed. There was quite a crowd. Jock recognised the boy Zak, and he thought one of the men, dressed in a trendy leather coat, looked vaguely familiar. One of the policemen was Constable Burnet. He nodded to Charlie as they came into view, and then returned to his task of trying to move people back.
‘We’ll need to see what we’re doing here,’ he told them.
There was a lot more yapping from a small white dog that was huddled in the entrance to a hut with an old man, presumably its owner, and one loud bark from Charlie’s dog.
‘You take him a minute,’ said Charlie. He thrust the lead into Jock’s hand. Jock concentrated for a moment on dragging Charlie’s dog out of reach of the little white dog, which was bounding forward as far as its lead would reach, yapping and snapping. In the end he dragged the dog into one of the other huts and stood peering out at the scene.
By that time Charlie had gone over to join the two policemen and was ordering people back in a much more authoritative voice than Keith Burnet’s, while Keith and the other one crouched down and peered into the top of the hole, a dark hollow in the ground.
Once the group was safely corralled between two huts, Charlie evidently threatened them with dire consequences if they didn’t stay put.
It was only then that Jock saw that Christopher had managed to separate himself from the others, and had gone round to the far side of the hole.
‘Keep back, Mr Wilson, you could cause another landslide!’ shouted Keith Burnet.
‘There’s something sticking up at this side,’ said Christopher, his voice carrying in the quiet air. ‘It looks like a bone.’
‘Don’t tell the dogs,’ said Charlie Smith. He had turned now to face the hole and was staring down at it with a frown.
Then something moved, and both Christopher and Charlie both edged round a bit so that they were closer together, and they were on their knees reaching down, and pulling, and with a huge heave they pulled a very bedraggled Amaryllis up and out of the hole.
Jock saw the three of them collapse in a heap on the ground, hugging each other, but he saw it through a haze as if his eyes were blurring. First sign of cataracts, he said to himself, wiping his eyes with his hand. That’s what it is. No wonder, at my age.
The other idiots surged forward, putting everybody’s safety at risk again. Mob mentality.
Jock suddenly realised Charlie’s dog had also surged forward, pulling him along behind, until they both reached the group on the ground and the dog licked them all indiscriminately. Any sentimentality attached to the rescue of Amaryllis disappeared in a chorus of ‘Get off’ and ‘Euw!’ and ‘Stop that!’ They staggered to their feet.
‘We’ve called an ambulance for you,’ said Keith Burnet disapprovingly to Amaryllis.
‘There was no need for that,’ said Amaryllis. ‘But I suppose you’ll need one to take Jackie Whitmore away.’
‘Jackie Whitmore?’ said Christopher. ‘Is she down there?’ He peered over the edge uncertainly. ‘There’s no sign of anybody else. Are you sure?’
‘She’s under all that lot,’ said Amaryllis. ‘But it’s too late to help her. She’s probably been there at least twelve hours.’
‘Who found her?’ said Charlie. Jock handed him the dog’s lead as a silent reminder that he wasn’t a policeman any longer.
‘We don’t know yet,’ said Keith Burnet. ‘I’d better call it into the station. They’ll need to send backup. We’ll have to get her out.’
‘I suppose I was the one who found her first,’ said the old man with the white dog, stepping forward slightly. ‘The dog was making an awful fuss and I came round from the other side of the huts to see what the problem was. It was as well he didn’t go into the hole. I’d never have got him out again.’
‘I wouldn’t say anything just now until we take a proper statement, sir,’ said Keith. ‘The Inspector likes things to be done by the book.’ He turned towards Amaryllis. ‘You should never have been in there in the first place. It’s a serious offence, disturbing a crime scene.’
‘I wanted to make sure she was dead,’ said Amaryllis. ‘No-one else would do it... I’ve got a couple of pictures.’ She held out a slightly battered camera to Keith.
‘Hmph!’ said the man in the long leather coat. ‘I could see she was dead from up here.’
‘OK,’ said Keith Burnet, shaking his head. ‘Let’s all go inside one of the huts and I’ll take names and addresses before people start getting agitated and saying things they don’t mean.’
‘What’s this?’ said Charlie, picking up the thing Amaryllis had been holding when they dragged her out of the hole. It was long and white, almost like a small birch tree branch, and yet...
‘Oh, it’s a bone,’ said Amaryllis.
‘I’m not an expert,’ said Charlie modestly, ‘but it looks as if it could be a human femur.’
‘I knew it!’ said the man in the leather coat, surging forward until stopped in his tracks by Keith Burnet, who blocked his way. ‘It’s a prehistoric graveyard. I knew we were on the track of something like this.’
The woman in the long droopy dress stepped forward. ‘Let me see. Are there any Celtic symbols around the site?’
‘Get back, both of you,’ said Keith. ‘I want everybody in the hut over there, now. We’re all contaminating a possible crime scene just by being here. I don’t know what we’re going to do about that,’ he added, indicating the long white thing Charlie was still holding. ‘We might need archaeologists, by the look of it.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Amaryllis. ‘I don’t think this goes back to prehistory.’
‘Let the experts decide,’ said the man in the
leather coat.
Jock had taken a bit of a dislike to him. He seemed to think he knew everything.
‘Who’s that idiot?’ he asked Charlie as they all pushed through the doorway of the hut.
‘Mind the dog!’ called Charlie, whisking his dog out from under somebody’s feet just in time. ‘It’s Jason Penrose,’ he said to Jock. ‘Big shot in history or something. He’s been on tv apparently. All the women fancy him.’
‘Hmm,’ said Jock, unimpressed. He glanced round at the others. Christopher and Amaryllis were still outside. Christopher seemed to be remonstrating with her about something, but whatever it was, she showed no sign of remorse. He was probably telling her off for jumping into the hole. It had been a silly thing to do, but they all knew Amaryllis had more lives than a cat. ‘Why didn’t she suffocate?’ he said. It wasn’t until Charlie answered that he realised he had spoken aloud.
‘Covered her nose and mouth with her woolly hat, and stuck the bone up above her head to mark the spot,’ said Charlie. ‘Amaryllis knows all about survival.’
‘I did avalanche training in the Pyrenees once,’ said the woman herself, arriving in the hut.
Christopher trailed along behind her, no longer furious but wearing his usual sheepish expression. It was very similar to the look Charlie’s dog had when he wasn’t being assertive, which was almost all the time.
‘It wouldn’t have worked if there hadn’t been people on hand,’ he muttered.
‘I knew you would rescue me,’ said Amaryllis.
‘I don’t know how you knew that,’ said Christopher, reverting to anger. ‘I was a mile away when I heard.’
‘Here,’ said Jock. ‘You’re not going to believe this, but he had his phone switched on.’
‘And charged up?’ said Amaryllis.
‘And it wasn’t on silent,’ said Jock.
They all paused to contemplate the miracle of Christopher’s use of modern technology.
The Christmas Puzzle (Pitkirtly Mysteries Book 8) Page 5
