Lost Hours by Alex Walters

Author:Alex Walters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2020-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

As Annie turned the final corner on the road leading down to Michelle Wentworth’s house, her headlights swept across the walls and gateway, illuminating the eerie tableau before the gates. There was the usual pulse of blue lights from the patrol car that had been first on the scene, the shapes of the officers caught between her lights and those from the gate, and the dark shadow on the ground before them, all set in front of the tall arch of the gateway as if part of some unearthly tableau.

She pulled up at the side of the road and climbed out into the mild night air. It seemed that, apart from the initial two uniforms, she was the first on the scene. Annie had called to update Zoe on her way over. Zoe had insisted on coming out and would be here in due course, though Annie was unsure what either of them could really do until the CSIs had examined the scene and the body, other than talking to Michelle Wentworth.

The two officers had done a decent job of sealing off the scene, and they’d also placed warning signs further back up the road on the off-chance that some other vehicle might come down here at this time of the night. As far as Annie was aware, the road led nowhere beyond Wentworth’s house except to a stretch of open moorland with parking for walkers, so the likelihood of any accidental visitors at this time of night seemed low.

The two PCs were unknown to her, so she waved her warrant card in their direction. ‘Evening. DI Annie Delamere.’

One of the two stepped forward to greet her. ‘Evening. Glad to have someone else turn up. Jason here’s scared of the dark and he was beginning to freak me out.’

‘Ignore him,’ the other one said. ‘Pleased to meet you. Jason Vance. This is Tom Garstang. He’s the one freaked out by a dead body.’

They were both young, Annie told herself, and she supposed they had to find some way of passing the time between them. ‘How long have you been here?’

‘About three-quarters of an hour,’ Vance said. ‘We were over in Bakewell when the call came in so not far away. Mind you, it took us a few minutes to find this place. Back of beyond, isn’t it?’ He had a fairly strong local accent, which Annie placed as being from somewhere in or around Chesterfield. For all their banter, both seemed enthusiastic enough, not obviously too fazed by forty-five minutes of standing in the dark with a corpse.

‘You wouldn’t stumble on the place by accident,’ Garstang said. ‘Why would anyone dump a body here?’

‘That’s the question,’ Annie said. She assumed that Garstang was either unaware of Justin Wentworth’s murder, or at least hadn’t made the link with the location. ‘One of you checked his ID?’

‘That was me,’ Vance said. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t really thinking. Shouldn’t have disturbed the scene.’

‘Don’t imagine there’s much harm done. Assume you didn’t move the body?’

Vance shook his head perhaps a shade too vigorously.

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