Because kids were weird.
But yeah: enough was—
Logan’s phoneding-buzzed. Probably Tara.
He pulled it out and sagged. Not Tara.
DCI RUTHERFORD:
Can you check on the search teams?
DCI Hardie’s come down with the plague so now I’m stuck in his stupid protest march oversight meeting.
Wonderful.
So much for getting home anytime soon.
A fat yellow sun skimmed the horizon, casting long blue shadows and a warm golden light that sparkled across the swollen river. Making the fog-banks of midgesglow.
DS Doreen Taylor had thrown caution to the wind and stripped her SOC suit to the waist, showing off a damp ‘KERMITFORPRESIDENT’ T-shirt that clung to her rounded tummy and industrial bra. Wilting perm held back in a sweat-stringed ponytail. Perspirationactually drippingoff her as she chugged a bottle of water. Standing hip-deep in a forest of nettles at the side of the River Don.
The rest of her four-person team waded their way along the riverbank behind her, wearing thick red rubber gauntlets as they poked and shoved at the stinging undergrowth.
Out in the middle of the river, DS Marshall’s team picked their way through an archipelago of reeds. Bracing themselves against the current with big search poles.
Someone had clearly taken a Health-and-Safety course, because all four of them were roped together and wearing bright-orange life jackets. Because it was better to look like a right numpty than get washed out to sea.
Doreen drained the last dregs from her bottle and surfaced with a gasp. ‘Jings...’ Wiping a damp hand across her shiny face. Then wafting the hem of her soggy T-shirt. ‘Like asaunain here.’
Hard not to smile at that. ‘Did you actually say “Jings”?’
‘And themidges! Don’t believe them when they say these bloody suits are bug-proof. Little sods are eating me alive!’ Scratching, scratching, scratching.
‘I’m guessing you haven’t found anything?’
‘If we had, we wouldn’t keep it to ourselves, trust me! Sooner I’m out of this one-woman, bug-infested sweat-lodge the better.’ She kicked at the nettles with a black welly boot. ‘This is amassivejamboree of jobbies. A carnival of crap. A...’ She frowned, then sagged. ‘Nope: that’s all I’ve got the energy for.’
‘Parade of poop?’
Doreen grimaced out at the shining clouds of vampiric bugs. ‘By my reckoning we’ve got...maybe forty minutes? before it’s black as a politician’s heart out here. Don’t fancy searching this stuff by torchlight. Not with the river at full whoosh.’
‘Just do what you can, OK?’ Hand up. ‘I know, I know: it’s horrible, but if some dog-walker finds Charles MacGarioch’s mouldering corpse tomorrow morning, washed up on the riverbank, we’ll never hear the end of it.’
‘Not going to happen: your boy’s long gone. Body wouldn’t even have made it past the weir.’ Doreen tossed the empty bottle to Logan. ‘He’s made us look like a right...tombola of turds.’ Then she wrestled her wet arms back into her squelchy sleeves, pulled her zip up, did the same with her hood, and waded out into the ocean of nettles again. Leaving Logan alone on the bank.
She was right – there was no point risking officers’ lives searching the river in the dark. But the media were still going to crucify them for it.
He turned around, elbows and hands raised to shoulder height as he shuffled his way back to the path, doing his best to avoid brushing any of the vicious plants. Because an SOC suitmight be nettle-resistant, but his fighting one most certainly wasn’t.
Soon as he was back on sting-free tarmac, Logan pulled out his phone and called Rutherford.
It rang and rang and rang and rang as he marched back towards the car, butfinallythe DCI’s voice slumped out of the speaker. Sounding about as full of life as a baked jobbie.‘Logan?’
‘Still no sign of MacGarioch?’
A cough.‘He’s not washed up, yet?’
‘Going to be dark soon. And the river’s swollen. And I’d rather not fill in six tonnes of paperwork because we got one of the search team drowned.’