Already Dead(42)

Where the small stream ran down the hillside, a culvert had been built to take it under the roadway. Since the stream had been dammed above the crime scene, the culvert was dry. An officer in wellington boots and long rubber gloves was patiently sifting through the accumulated silt in the channel.

Judging by the smell, the culvert hadn’t been cleaned out for decades. Fry couldn’t bear to look inside. She imagined a sewer pipe sludged up with stinking litter, the bodies of dead rats, decomposing leaf mould – all the crap that built up over the countryside like a second, rotting skin.

She paused for a moment despite the smell. Though the flow into the culvert had been stopped, the weed-filled ditches on either side of it were filled to the brim with surplus water, which the concrete channel hadn’t been able to cope with. The water was brown and filthy, swirling with torn foliage, broken branches and clods of earth, like an evil soup. There was no drainage capacity now to deal with more rainfall. Soon, these ditches would overflow on to the roadway.

Fry looked again at the officer in rubber gloves, now on his knees in the opening to the culvert. There might be a decision to make at some point in the search operation. If no useful evidence was found near the site of the body when the water level was lowered, and nothing turned up that might have been dragged a few yards downstream, then these ditches and the culvert would become the focus of examination. In the end, the road might have to be dug out to open up the culvert. She was glad she wouldn’t be the one to make that call.

Wayne Abbott greeted her at the inner cordon. He’d just changed into a new scene suit, and his hood was pulled up over his head, though his mask was left dangling. He was disposing of the old suit in a plastic bag as Fry arrived, and she could see that it was heavily caked in mud. She wondered if she’d missed him slithering down the slope and falling on his arse in the stream bed. If so, she was sorry not to have been here at the right time. She’d have to ask one of the SOCOs later for details.

‘How do you like this weather, then?’ said Abbott when he saw her.

‘It’s lovely. It means I can see less of the scenery.’

He laughed, and gave her a twinkly sideways look from under his hood as if he was appreciating her joke.

‘I’m not joking,’ she said. ‘I just thought I’d make that clear. The fewer times I have to set eyes on this place the better.’

‘You mean this wood,’ he said.

‘No, I mean the whole damn Peak District.’

‘You know people travel from all over the world—’

‘More fool them. It’s always been a wasteland. And now it’s a wet wasteland. It’s like being in the middle of the North Sea. We’ve got about the same chance of drowning.’

Abbott held up a hand. ‘All right, all right. It takes all kinds.’

As the water level fell, a scattering of mud-covered detritus was being revealed around the body. Some of it was incongruous – a plastic two-litre Coke bottle, long strands of bright blue baling twine, the torn pages of a free local newspaper. No doubt most of these items were just rubbish, washed downhill by the water. But it would all have to be examined by someone. Fry felt glad that someone wasn’t her.

Further down, there was more stuff – indistinguishable lumps and enigmatic shapes, all covered in a layer of mud.

‘So what have you found?’ asked Fry.

‘Quite a selection. Take a look for yourself.’

There were evidence bags full of the stuff. Bags and bags of it. Most of it was just the general rubbish thrown out of cars or dropped by careless hikers. Crumpled cans, a Snickers wrapper, a supersize McDonald’s carton.

Fry picked up the last bag. Who would come all the way out here to eat a portion of McDonald’s fries? There were no golden arches in Wirksworth, and certainly none anywhere in the national park. The nearest place to get a Big Mac must be Belper or Ripley. But then, maybe someone had just brought an empty carton with them and thought these woods looked like a convenient place to dispose of it.

‘We also found two towels,’ said Abbott. ‘They’re just small hand towels, a fairly cheap make. They probably came from a pound shop. One of them was caught in the roots of a tree further down, the other was in the ditch at the side of the road.’

‘Any manufacturer’s name on them?’

‘Someone called Made in China.’

‘Great.’

‘If you’re expecting to get any quick results out of this lot … I mean, what sort of connection are we going to make between a Coke bottle and a cheap towel?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘”Probably none” is the correct answer.’