She grinned but her face slowly fell as she saw the seriousness of her father’s face.
‘There’s little proof but I’ve seen all sorts of things found inside the dead in this room, Kelly.’
‘You can see it?’
Kelly imagined her father pulling a remote control out of someone’s artery.
‘No, not like that, just clots that shouldn’t be there. Long strings of plastic that don’t belong in bodies. The embalmers see it all the time now.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked.
‘I didn’t think you’d believe me,’ he said simply.
Then he got to work.
Chapter 21
The sight of Jamie naked and exposed was a sobering reality check. It reminded her that we’re all the same when we die.
Kelly perched on the same steel stool as yesterday and watched Ted switch on his mic. Their conversation sat between them.
‘Ready for this again?’ Ted asked.
She nodded. ‘I’m good.’
‘You don’t look well; are you feeling a bit peaky?’ he asked as he looked inside the horrific wounds to Jamie’s upper torso.
It was her father’s way of telling her she looked like shit.
‘I’m not sleeping,’ she told him.
‘Par for the course in an investigation like this,’ he said.
She nodded.
She’d seen mangled bodies plenty of times before but having just listened to Jamie being discussed so vividly on a podcast made her tremendously uncomfortable. She felt as though when alive, he had been a player on a stage, like somebody’s puppet, and he’d walked blindly into danger. Or perhaps it wasn’t blind. Why else hide his sister with a huge suitcase full of documents?
Kelly was a realist. Some might say a cynic. Her mind was analytical and logical. She must be convinced of something before believing in it. She was a fan of conspiracy theories because most of them were entertaining and scandalous to contemplate, but that didn’t mean she believed them, not because they didn’t make sense but because they were often debunked by experts. Conspiracy theorists were treated as nutcases, outsiders, charlatans and weirdos.
But the DiggerMan didn’t come across that way and neither did the people discussing Hampton-Dent.
They were convincing.
So was her father.
She acknowledged that the Twin Towers turning to dust when they were made of solid steel was weird, and JFK being assassinated by his own government was shocking, and chemtrails were real, but the moon landings being faked and flat earth theories discredited themselves before they had a chance with a mainstream audience. But she’d always had affection for loners. Those with enough courage to stand up to the crowd. That was what DiggerMan did. He used his voice for the people who couldn’t. That was what was so special about the internet. Social media allowed ordinary people to be part of the conversation without the establishment interfering, and that was what appealed to most people with a rebel inside them, like Kelly.
But was there more to it other than clickbait and sensationalism?
‘Are you all right?’ Ted asked her, jolting her.
She realised she was staring at the body.
‘It’s such a waste, isn’t it? He was so successful and clever.’
Ted stared at her. ‘You know a fair bit about him already then?’
‘Somewhat. It’s a reminder that life can be snuffed out any minute.’
