Sergeant Moore rubbed his hands. ‘This’ll be one in the eye for Inverness. Our solving the case before they even hear about it? Serve the credit-stealing bunch of bastards right.’
‘We’ve no’ solved anything yet.’ Roberta gave McKinnon a poke. ‘Hold the ladder for us, there’s a good lad.’
He ducked in under the A-frame and took a good firm grip of the legs, watching as she clang-clanged her way to the top.
Up close, Sir Reginald Bradbury-Scott wasnothaving a good day.
Six inches of metal antlers poked through his chest, just below nipple height, one on either side. Little more than a crusting of dried red around the puncture wounds, so he wasdefinitelyalready dead by the time they’d skewered him up here. One horn through the palm of his left hand, one horn through the wrist of his right. His eyes were open, mouth too, head tilted back to stare at the ceiling. Wearing an expression of slightly startled melancholy – like the stuffed stags’ heads on the wall.
Only, unlike the taxidermied animals, he didn’t have a hard plastic tongue.
He hadsomething,though.
Was that...?
She leaned in closer, peering into his gob.
Therewassomething in there. Something made of fabric. Too dark to see properly.
She took out her phone and turned on the torch app, but it didn’t make any difference. Whatever it was, it was black and a little bit shiny. No idea what, though.
Hmm...
While she had her phone out, she set it to record, filming all the bits the pathologist would complain about most when they finally got here. Puncture wounds, points of contact, face, hands, little shrivelled willy. They’d still whinge about lack of proper procedure, but what choice did she have? It was either this or let the maggots have him.
Roberta put her phone away and clanged down the ladder again. ‘Right, up you go the pair of you: let’s get him down.’
PC McKinnon’s face soured as he looked up at the remains. ‘Could you not have pulled his pyjama bottoms back up?’
‘Don’t be so homophobic, you’re not going to catch anything off a dead man’s willy. Now: gloves on and up!’
A slump, a groan, then McKinnon snapped on a pair of blue nitriles and climbed.
Sergeant Moore pulled on a set of gloves too. Nodded at the other A-frame. ‘Going to hold the ladder?’
‘Supervising, aren’t I? Sotryto no’ fall off, eh? One dead body’s enough of a pain without you joining in.’
While the pair of them scaled their respective rungs, she grabbed the folded sheets and unfurled them on the tartan carpet beneath the ladders. That should do it.
The first thing PC McKinnon did when he got level with the body, was pull its PJ bottoms up, keeping his head as far away from Sir Reginald’s cold dead naked crotch as possible.
Child.
Sergeant Moore made it to the top of his ladder, and the two of them set about pulling Sir Reginald off the antlers. The left hand and right wrist came away fairly easily, but the torso needed a lot more grunting and swearing. Then a sort of Velcro scratchyscreltchingnoise as they wrestled him up and off the metal spikes that stuck through his chest.
It set both sets of ladders wobbling so hard she had to stop supervising and run forward to stabilise the damn things. ‘Don’t drop him!’
God, the pathologist wouldlovethat.
More grunting and swearing as they manhandled him over Sergeant Moore’s shoulder, after which it was a pretty straightforward fireman’s carry down to the ground.
Roberta slapped McKinnon on the back, hard enough to set him staggering. ‘See? What were you moaning about: piece of cake.’
Sergeant Moore lowered the body onto the sheets and stood back, rubbing at the small of his back. ‘Should we say something?’
‘Aye: wrap him up.’
The two of them did, folding the sheets around Sir Reginald and tucking in the ends – until he looked like a very large chrysalis. Or a really badly rolled joint.
