Nowhere to Be Found by Louisa Scarr

Nowhere to Be Found by Louisa Scarr

Author:Louisa Scarr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Canelo
Published: 2020-11-15T00:00:00+00:00


45

The scene of crime officers got to work, donning white suits and masks, covering up every part of their bodies with protective clothing. They started their slow progression down the track, expertly negotiating their equipment over the mud, littering their path with yellow plastic triangles as they started to collect evidence.

Kate stood at the edge of the path watching Max talk to one of them – pointing towards the lake where they’d found the tyre tracks. She was pissed off with him for contacting the Borderland Family without telling her, but it wasn’t only that. She felt like it was a betrayal – something personal. She started to walk away from the crime scene cordon, down a footpath into the woods, trying to get her emotions under control. This is ridiculous, she told herself as she walked, get a grip. Stop being so pathetic.

So he’d gone behind her back. As his supervising officer, that was annoying, sure, but not enough to get upset over. Perhaps she just needed a bit more sleep. Perhaps her worry over things with Sam was drifting into her work.

But she had trusted Max. She’d thought he trusted her. When she’d seen him in the office that afternoon, she’d been pleased, ridiculously so, to be able to spend some time with him. And the fact that Charlie was his brother? She’d felt a weird sense of relief that he was single. In the back of her mind she’d stupidly thought they had a relationship that was closer than just colleagues. It was different with Max to how it was with Briggs. But of course, it wasn’t.

Kate heard footsteps coming up behind her. She cleared her throat before turning around to face him.

‘Are you okay?’ Max stopped a few feet away from her. Away from the sunshine, it was cold in the woods and he’d put a sweatshirt on, wrapping his arms round his body to keep warm. Mud coated his shoes and the bottom of his tracksuit trousers, and she noticed a smudge of it had somehow made its way to his chin.

‘I’m fine, how are they getting on?’ Kate asked, pointing back to the bustle on the track.

‘They’re going to be a while,’ Max replied. ‘Should we head off? I’m not sure there’s much more we can do today.’

Kate nodded. She should go home to Sam. To her husband. She started walking to the car, picking her way carefully over the tree roots littering the path. She looked back to him. He seemed preoccupied, his gaze fixed on something in a clearing a few feet away from them.

‘Are you coming?’ she asked, then followed his line of sight, walking back and standing next to him. ‘What?’

He continued to peer into the woods, then slowly pointed towards a patch of stinging nettles. In the gap in the trees they’d obviously flourished, taking advantage of the extra sunlight.

But it wasn’t just that. The area of bright green weeds seemed isolated; where the rest of the clearing was still relatively bare, these had prospered.



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