From Chapter 3
The DI wound down his window and nodded to the uniform at the roadside. The PC seemed to do a double take when he caught sight of Valentine, like he was the first to greet Lazarus of Bethany. ‘Sir …’ He gulped the word, then steadied himself. ‘I wasn’t expecting …’
Valentine held up a hand. ‘Just lift the tape, son.’ He had no time for reunions.
As he drove towards the tip entrance he spotted the SOCOs’ white tent, the officers in their spacesuit livery, and the usual hubbub of hangers-on and dicks-in-the-wind.
‘God almighty …’ He tried to locate DS Rossi, but the first to hove into view was the fiscal depute, then as he turned the car towards the crime scene he caught sight of the DS talking to DC McAlister and DS Donnelly.
Valentine stilled the engine and removed his sports coat from the front seat beside him. As he exited the vehicle he was approached by the fiscal.
‘Bob …’ He put a raised inflection on the word that made him sound like an Antipodean schoolgirl.
‘Indeed I am.’ Valentine walked past the fiscal, patting him on the shoulder. He muttered, ‘Later, Col … when I’ve spoken to my lads.’
The first to approach the officer in charge was DS McAlister. He slit his eyes, then took two firm steps in the direction of DI Valentine.
‘I heard you were joining us, but I didn’t want to believe it.’
‘Look, spare me the welcome party … What have we got?’
DS Rossi dismissed the white-suited SOCO and made for the newly formed enclave of officers gathering around Valentine like autograph-hunting boys on the gates of Somerset Park.
McAlister spoke. ‘White male, late fifties and dead as dead gets.’
‘Is that a medical opinion, Ally?’ said Valentine.
‘You could say that …’ He tipped his head in the direction of the village. ‘The doc’s been and gone, by the way.’
‘No surprise there, can’t get a happy hour on the tip.’
Valentine took hold of a small cardboard box being held out by one of the SOCOs that contained clear-plastic gloves. He removed a pair and quickly snapped them, one after the other, onto his hands.
‘I won’t ask you to wear the blue slippers,’ said the SOCO, waving a hand. ‘Seems pointless in this mess.’
Valentine nodded, ‘Right, lead the way.’
Rossi was just arriving as they took off again; he called at Valentine’s back, ‘Hello, sir.’
The DI suppressed a smirk at the thought of Jim’s ice-cream remark. ‘Move your arse, Paulo!’
As the murder squad headed towards the white tent, the refuse crunched and squelched beneath their feet. An omnipresent hiss of flies followed with them. The group, almost in unison, raised their hands towards their mouths and noses as they walked through air gravid with pestilence.
‘This is rank,’ said Valentine. ‘Almost makes you want one of those wee B&Q masks.’ He pointed to the SOCOs up ahead.
‘They’re in short supply, apparently; we asked,’ said McAlister.
‘You are kidding me.’
‘Wish I was.’
Valentine stopped in his tracks and turned to survey the crest of the rubbish mount that they were standing on like the advance party of some perverse colonial incursion. He pointed to the edge of the site, to a concrete wall. ‘Where did our man come in?’
DS Donnelly spoke. ‘Over there, side of the wall, got blood and fibres from the squeeze.’
‘So what’s that … a hundred metres?’
Donnelly flicked the pages of a spiral-bound notepad – the action shooed flies. ‘One-sixty-odd.’
Valentine put himself between DS Donnelly and the view of the concrete wall; he widened his arms. ‘That’s a path – as the crow flies – of about three metres wide, yes?’
The remark was greeted with nods; his use of the Socratic method had triumphed. ‘Right, Paulo, where are you?’
The DS pushed through the bodies, ‘Here, boss.’
‘Aye, I see you …’ Valentine pointed to the wall. ‘From there, in a direct line to the tent, I want everything.’
The team looked at each other, then back to the DI. McAlister spoke first. ‘Are you saying you want it bagged, boss?’
‘Do I have to say it twice?’
‘But it’s rubbish … piles of crap.’
Valentine shook his head, as the team stared at him he pointed to the ground and stamped his foot on the detritus. A cloud of grey dust erupted from beneath his shoe.
‘Ally, this could be a goldmine of clues we’re standing on, so get the lot of it bagged and stored and not another gripe out of you.’ He pointed at Rossi. ‘Paulo. You’re the senior officer on here, why the hell have you not been bagging this?’
‘Boss, the chief super will do her nut if she hears you’ve bagged that lot; do you know how much it’ll cost? I mean in man-hours, never mind the storage.’
Valentine smiled; two neat chevrons appeared either side of his mouth. ‘I couldn’t care less about the cost.’ He edged forward and fronted up to the assembled group. ‘Do you know the only economics I care about?’ He pointed to the tent. ‘I care why a group of paid civil servants are standing in the middle of the local tip with a white tent pitched over a dead man … That is all I care about.’
Valentine stretched out for the tent; as he went, a dirty cloud of tip stour was released by his heavy footfalls. ‘Come on, let’s get a look at our victim.’
Artefacts of the Dead by Tony Black, £7.99 paperback, Black & White Publishing.