...
But maybe he wouldn’t kill her?
Maybe it wasn’t a grave?
That was possible, right?
Maybe he was just doing some...fucking farmwork, or something? Sorting out the drainage in the lower field – that kind of shit.
Oh Christ...
She hopped on one foot, using the other to shove at the anchor, rolling the bucket back towards where it was supposed to be all this time.
Fuck.
DS Davis was in the courtyard already, and she was nowhere near getting everything back the way it should be.
There was a clunk, then a rattling squeal of ancient metal rollers on steel brackets.
But her prison door remained firmly closed.
Natasha closed her eyes and sagged, knees curling, threatening to dump her on the hard-baked dirt.
It wasn’t her door.
She took a deep breath, then coaxed the galvanised bin towards the window again as quietly as possible.
The door to the other outbuilding was wide open; no Davis.
He reappeared a lifetime later, dragging something.
A man’s body – stripped down to the underwear. Skin thick with bruises and scrapes. Head covered by a heavy leather gimp mask that laced up the back; eyes and mouth, zipped shut. His wrists weren’t fixed to a metal collar, though, they were handcuffed behind his back.
Davis had his gloved hands hooked in under the body’s arms. Can’t have been all that heavy, though – you could see every one of the poor bastard’s ribs, and his arms and legs were nothing but battered bones. Like he’d been chained-up in there for along, long time.
His corpse got dumped on a pile of pallets, then Davis unlaced the mask and pulled it off the guy’s pummelled head. The face underneath was distorted and swollen, discoloured with purples and yellows and greens. Doubt even his mum would recognise him now.
Davis placed the mask to one side.
Well, these things were probably expensive – wouldn’t want it going to waste.
Which kinda made you wonder how many other people had died in the one Natasha now wore...
Davis rolled the dead man off the pallets, and when that tortured body hit the ground it groaned, one skeletal leg twitching as Davis hauled the poor bastard across the makeshift courtyard and out towards the field.
‘Fuck me...’ Natasha covered her mouth with both hands,staring.
He was still alive.
Davis dragged him away, then they disappeared out of sight – hidden by the barn.
Not long after that, Detective Sergeant Davis marched across the gap and clambered up into the JCB’s cab again.
The engine sputtered and roared.
The backhoe jerked and swung.
And DS Davis buried the poor bastard alive.
