Free Four Below by Peter Helton Page B

SOCO tried to get fingerprints off the partial hand we found, but changed their minds when they saw it. If he has previous, we’ll ID him from his DNA; if not,
there’s always dental records.’
    ‘Good.’ Denkhaus put the car in gear. ‘Okay, McLusky, it’s all yours. We don’t expect DCI Gaunt back for several weeks, so you’ll report direct to me.’
The window slid up as the large engine surged and sped the car along the track. A few press photographers, corralled beyond the police vehicles, flashed their cameras at it, mostly from
boredom.
    As McLusky ducked back under the scene-of-crime tape, Austin emerged gasping from the tent. He stared hard into McLusky’s eyes for a few moments while he greedily filled his lungs with
pure forest air.
    ‘Well done,’ said McLusky.
    ‘Only because you insisted. I didn’t last long in there. Why did they have to put a tent over it? It just concentrates the smell. Coulthart is still happily poking around among the
maggots. People like that worry me.’
    ‘Now that you’ve seen the body – any immediate thoughts?’
    ‘I definitely want to be cremated.’
    ‘Anything beyond that?’
    ‘His end must have been absolutely terrifying. Presumably they didn’t put the bag over his head after he’d died. They tied his wrists with galvanized wire.’
    ‘Yes. I think if someone ties your hands with fencing wire, you more or less know you’ve had it. Whoever has got you has no intention of letting you go.’
    ‘I suppose not.’
    McLusky heard the pathologist call his name and nodded his head towards the tent. ‘I’ll go back in for a last look. You go on ahead and set up at Albany.’
    Inside, the pathologist was waiting for him beside the corpse. More of it had now been uncovered. ‘Do you see this slant? The way the body seems to rise up?’ He ran the spatula
alongside the body, downwards towards the knees. Here, the leaf litter and earth cover was still undisturbed. He stabbed the spatula into the ground below the knees. ‘I expected the legs to
continue there under the ground, but they don’t. They disappear into the ground at right angles.’
    McLusky signalled to one of the SOCOS. ‘Right, let’s have the chap’s legs out. Can we first dig down alongside them to see what’s going on there, please?’
    The scene-of-crime officer started excavating carefully with a hand trowel, throwing leaves and earth on to a waiting tarpaulin, where it would later be sifted. Nothing would remain unexamined.
It made McLusky think of Laura and her archaeology studies. What they were doing here had much in common with field archaeology, and the disciplines shared many techniques. He wondered if right now
she was also out in the cold somewhere, on a dig perhaps, or sitting in a cosy lecture hall, taking notes in her neat, always legible handwriting.
    ‘It’s very tightly packed around the legs,’ said the SOCO.
    ‘What about around the rest of the body?’ McLusky asked.
    ‘It’s much looser there. As burials go, it wasn’t very deep. Or even well done. Not exactly shallow, but very … lumpy. Uneven. Except here. I’m nearing the bottom
now.’
    The last few scrapes with the trowel revealed stained boots. ‘Timberland,’ McLusky said. ‘Not cheap, those. The jeans didn’t come from a supermarket either. Okay, why are
his shins in a deep hole? Was that just conveniently there?’
    ‘No. It was dug. The soil layers are disturbed and mixed up and there’s a definite cut edge to the hole.’
    ‘It looks to me,’ said Coulthart, ‘as though someone started digging a grave of a decent depth, then couldn’t be arsed to do it for the whole length of the
body.’
    ‘Probably underestimated how long it takes to dig that deep a hole. Okay, I’ll look forward to your reports, gentlemen.’ McLusky had seen and smelled enough. Outside, he shed
his paper suit, overshoes, mask and gloves into a waiting bin liner and walked towards his car. A few flashes went