The Hiding Place by Simon Lelic

Author:Simon Lelic [Lelic, Simon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-03-03T00:00:00+00:00

Friday 25 October, 12.37 p.m.

Fleet left the library no clearer in his thoughts than when he’d walked in. He made his way back to the front of the school, passing through the entrance hall with the huge wooden engraving of Beaconsfield’s coat of arms, and out into the grounds, before taking the long way around the building towards the woods.

As he wove his way through the trees, he passed members of the forensic team carting equipment back towards the vans he’d spotted in the car park. In the clearing on the southern side of the chapel, the tents had already been dismantled. When Fleet made it known he was looking for Randy, one of the SOCOs pointed him towards what now resembled an open grave, and – within – the narrow stone staircase leading down.

He found the pathologist alone in the crypt. All but one of the portable LED units had already been taken away, leaving Randy standing in an eerie half-light, his back to Fleet and his eyes seemingly on the corner in which Ben’s body had been discovered. If Fleet hadn’t known better, he would have said that Randy – brash, egotistical Randy, who liked nothing better than to listen to himself holding forth – was silently and discreetly paying his final respects.

‘Not getting sentimental in your old age, are you, Randy?’

The pathologist turned. He squinted against the single beam of light, then grinned when he realised it was Fleet who’d spoken.

‘I suppose I must be,’ Randy said. ‘But don’t spread it around, for Christ’s sake. I’ve got a reputation to protect.’

Fleet moved next to the pathologist.

‘Hell of a final resting place, don’t you think?’ said Randy.

Fleet glanced around. With everything but the last remaining light already removed, the crypt now looked like nothing more than what it had become: a dank, dark hole in the ground, abandoned and forgotten about for almost a century. Whoever had put Ben here had decided, consciously or otherwise, that he hadn’t even deserved his own burial plot.

‘You know,’ said Randy, ‘people always assume that pathologists are these cold, clinical automatons. Devoid of empathy, impervious to emotion. And maybe sometimes we have to be. It makes being married a hell of a lot easier, I can tell you that.’ He sniffed, then said what Fleet had immediately started thinking. ‘Then again, maybe that’s why I also ended up getting divorced three times.’

Now Randy smiled – rather sadly, Fleet thought.

‘Anyway,’ the pathologist went on, ‘it’s not true. Oh, I know I make jokes, and I know some people think I can be a royal pain in the posterior …’ There was an emphasis in there, a pause at the end of the sentence, that made it clear who Randy was referring to. ‘But when you spend hours alone with someone’s remains laid out in front of you on a metal table, it’s hard not to start thinking about the person they once were. Or, when you’re dealing with a kid, who they might have become.

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