The Vanishing Game by William Boyd

Author:William Boyd [Boyd, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2014-11-11T23:00:00+00:00

Stella (the barmaid) poured me my second Glen Fleshan, all agog at my news. I had just called the police in Mallaig and reported the discovery of two dead bodies in St. Mungo’s Church, Alcorran. I told them I was at the hotel and would be waiting for them in the bar.

“Were they dead?” she asked, full of appalled curiosity.

“Well, I think so. I don’t know. I didn’t hang around. Deeply comatose, at best. Not moving, not a flicker of life that I could see.”

“It’s a funny wee church that. Maybe two or three services a year. Some priest comes up from Glasgow.” She shivered. “Don’t know why they keep it open.”

“Well, I was just walking past, saw the door slightly open –”

Two uniformed policemen came into the bar. I introduced myself and we sat down at a table. One was a young guy, good looking, I thought, a sergeant. He introduced himself as Sergeant Callum Strang. The other, an older man, had the flushed cheeks and the dead, puffy eyes of a functioning dipsomaniac. He kept glancing at the bar and its ranked bottles, I noticed.

I retold my story to Sergeant Strang. I was on a hiking holiday, I said – walking past church, saw door open, car outside, went in. Two dead bodies.

“You didn’t touch them.”

“No.”

“How did you know they were dead?”

“They looked dead. Extremely.”

“Let’s check it out,” Strang said and stood up.

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