The Dead Place

… We turn away and close our eyes as the gatesswing open on a whole new world – the scented, carnalgardens of decomposition. We refuse to admire thoseflowing juices, the flowering bacteria, the dark, bloatedblooms of putrefaction. This is the true nature of death. We should open our eyes and learn.

Fry’s eyes had started to close, but a few minutes later they came wide open again. She looked at the cassette player in bewilderment. She stopped the tape, rewound it and played it again from the section about Freud and the death instinct. There were a few seconds of silence, then the voice started again, filling the car with its metallic echoes.

‘Damn it,’ said Fry. ‘Why did no one tell me there were two calls?’

And you can see the end for yourself. All you have todo is find the dead place. Here I am at its centre, a cemeterysix miles wide. See, there are the black-suitedmourners, swarming like ants around a decaying corpse.

We fill our dead bodies with poison, pump acidthrough their veins. We pollute the atmosphere with thesmoke from their flesh. We let them rot below ground, in coffins bursting with gas or soaked in water like minestronesoup. But true death is clean and perfect. Laythem out in the sun, hang their bones on a gibbet. Letthem decompose where the carrion eaters gather. Theyshould decay in the open air until their flesh is goneand their bones are dry as dust. Or, of course, in asarcophagus. Clean and perfect, and final.

Yes, you can see it for yourself. You can witness thelast moments. Follow the signs at the gibbet and therock, and you can meet my flesh eater.

It’s perfectly simple. All you have to do is find thedead place.

4 (#uce2fb08c-cad3-5e36-9d8f-5a4ca0280486)

There was a motorbike parked outside the Jarvis house, and several lumps of metal rusting in the paddock. The rain that had been falling all morning made sporadic rattling sounds in the long grass, as if hitting something metallic and hollow, like a car roof.

Ben Cooper stopped halfway up the path to take a closer look. Yes, the largest lump had been a car once – maybe an old Datsun Sunny, judging from the chocolate brown paintwork. Nearby were the remains of a chest freezer and a pig trailer with a broken chassis. None of them had served any useful purpose for a long time, except as homes for insects and rodents. Tongues of pale bracken were breaking through the floor of the Datsun, and nettles had folded themselves into its wheel arches, clutching the deflated tyres in tangles of spiky leaves. Now that summer was nearly over, the nettles, like everything else, were starting to die.

Cooper could feel the dampness penetrating the hems of his trousers as he brushed through the grass. Even when it wasn’t raining, it would be permanently wet down here on the low-lying ground at Litton Foot. White bracket fungus flourished wherever it could find an inch of surface soft enough to plant its spores. Layers of it grew from the rubber seal on the lid of the abandoned freezer, and from the crumbling foam insulation behind the dashboard of the car.

He saw that there were other rusted hulks lying in the paddock, and more of them hidden in brambles growing around a gate that led down to the woods. But it was too wet, and Cooper didn’t feel interested enough to explore.

A man in jeans and a thick sweater stood watching him from a wooden porch built on to the back of the house. Cooper hoped he hadn’t looked too interested in the wrecked Datsun. The man had the expression of a used car salesman spotting an approaching customer. Predatory, yet ready to turn on the charm. Cooper could feel himself being assessed.

‘Mr Jarvis?’ he called.

‘Aye. What can I do for you?’

Before he answered, Cooper moved a bit closer. He had to watch where he was putting his feet to avoid stepping on shards of rusted metal lying in the grass.

As he got closer, he saw that the porch itself seemed to have been made out of old timber salvaged from a converted chapel or schoolroom. The boards Mr Jarvis was standing on were massive planks of weathered oak, full of knotholes and the heads of six-inch nails embedded in the wood and painted over. Here and there, patches of black paint still showed through a layer of varnish. The whole structure must weigh a ton – no modern pine decking from Homebase for Tom Jarvis.

‘Detective Constable Cooper, sir. Edendale CID.’

Cooper was used to a variety of reactions when he identified himself. He was rarely a welcome visitor, even to someone who’d been the victim of a recent crime. Then, he was often the target of their frustration. But there was no anxiety or surprise from Tom Jarvis, only a slight disappointment that he hadn’t found a customer for the old Datsun after all.

‘Did you want something?’ he said.

‘Could I ask you a few questions, sir? Nothing to worry about – just routine.’

‘Come up on to the porch, then.’

The deck of the porch was quite a long way off the ground, and Mr Jarvis was looking down on him from a height of about nine feet. Cooper could have scrambled up, but he thought he might lose dignity doing it. Instead, he walked around to the side to reach a set of wide wooden steps that led down to a path into the trees.

Going up the steps, he felt as though he was mounting a stage. That was something he hadn’t done for a long time, not since he went up to collect his certificates at his school prize-giving. For a moment, Cooper felt as vulnerable as he had when he’d been convinced he was going to trip over the top step and fall flat on his face in front of eight hundred pupils and parents.

‘How are you, Mr Jarvis?’ he said.

‘Sound. I’m sound.’

‘This porch is a solid piece of work, sir. Did you build it yourself?’

‘With a bit of help from my sons. Joinery used to be my trade, but this was a challenge. I wanted something that’d last, not some rubbish that would blow down in the first gale.’

‘It won’t do that.’

Jarvis kicked a post reflectively. His boot connected with a dull thud. ‘No, I reckon it won’t.’

Cooper grasped the rail to help himself up the last step. The wood felt smooth and comfortable, and he saw that it was turned in decorative patterns, like the end of a church pew. It was the sort of smoothness that resulted from the touch of many hands over centuries of use, wherever it had originally come from.

‘You’ll be all right,’ said Jarvis from the end of the porch. ‘They won’t bother you. They always sleep at this time of day, and it’d take Armageddon to wake ’em up.’

Puzzled, Cooper looked up. Four huge mongrel dogs lay in a tangled heap on the porch, like a badly made rug. At least, he thought there were four. There could have been another shaggy head or two somewhere in the middle of the heap, without making much difference.

‘What are their names?’ he said, knowing it always went down well with the punters to show an interest in their pets.

Jarvis grimaced at the dogs. ‘Feckless, Pointless, Graceless and Aimless.’

‘Really?’

‘Don’t ask me why. It was her idea.’

‘Whose?’

He jerked his head towards the house. ‘Hers. The wife’s.’

‘Well, I don’t need to ask why. Mrs Jarvis must be a fan of Cold Comfort Farm. The Starkadders and Aunt Ada Doom.’

‘Aunt who?’

‘“Something nasty in the woodshed.”’

Jarvis shrugged, his expression unreadable. ‘If you say so.’

Cooper stepped carefully over the dogs. None of them moved, or even opened an eye to look at him. There seemed to be an awful lot of muddy paws and scruffy tails protruding from the heap and sprawling across the oak boards. But Mr Jarvis said there were only four dogs, and Cooper had to believe him.

‘Just routine,’ said Jarvis. ‘That’s what you all say, isn’t it? Do they teach you that in police school?’

Cooper laughed. ‘Yes. But I do mean it for once.’

Jarvis gave him a brief nod. ‘You’ve time for a brew then, if it’s just routine.’

‘No, sir. Thank you.’

‘Suit yourself.’

‘Actually, it’s about the human remains that were found at the edge of your property,’ said Cooper.