Prologue
“Tell me, Mister Spears, would you kill someone to save a life? Would you kill me just to prove you are right?”
Matt levelled the handgun toward his face, hand trembling, he pulled the trigger.
Chapter One
5 Days Earlier…
David loved Kona, and Kona loved David.
He trailed her by fifty yards as she bounded, sniffing through the damp earth and mist‑beaded long grass. David didn’t watch her too closely as she darted in and out of the rushes at the edge of the large field beside the new church – a shiny new affair of glass and steel. Nor was he listening much to his iPod, his favourite tracks shuffling as they always did during his dawn walks. The day was going to be good again, the weather smiling kindly on this northern city. It had been an amazing Indian summer, bringing heat that the northerners found hard to handle: droughts, hosepipe bans, shops running out of bottled water and bread. Crazy.
Darkness gave way to a dim grey light, the ground giving off an earthy odour of growth as the fresh new day began to break. Summer was dying; its promises still remained. But David’s distraction was not due to any of this – a new project that had come into the office had presented quite a challenge. He had to reach the client’s lofty expectations and come up with a design that was cool but also provided an abundance of added functions. Online design work was becoming hard; technology was perpetually pushing the envelope.
This field he had taken his walks over for all these years was in the process of being developed into a new apartment complex. The civil engineering works had begun with long blue plastic pipes bundled onto pallets beside large yellow pipes. Concrete drainage tunnels had already been fed into the earth and connected to church drains. Things were changing.
David was always early, arriving before most of the construction workers. He knew his time was limited before progress wiped out another one of his daily pleasures. Once the structural work started, the site would be made safe and Kona would have to find alternative bathroom facilities.
Kona lolloped over to the where the drainage tunnel fed into a pit in the middle of the field. David expected that some of the wide grassy expanse would become a car park for the church or the apartments. He didn’t want that. The kids had been playing here for years; a BMX ramp was laid over to the edge with a depression dug and embanked so they could perform their fancy bike tricks.
“Kona…not too far,” David called, hoping she might take some notice, for once.
She had descended into the pit. Probably searching for cat shit or something else horrible but fascinating. David wondered if one the kids had left a bag of chips after they had finished their stunt riding. He pushed through some of the longer grass and, realizing his old Lloyd Cole album was coming to a close, he stopped and pulled his ear-buds before wrapping them and putting them into his sweatshirt pocket.
“Kona, come, girl – we’ve got go. I’m late as it is,” he said; the new design was still no clearer in his head.
Kona popped into view as she scampered over the edge of the pit, panting and excited.
“What you found?”
Kona had a clear pink rubber object in her mouth.
“Come on, give it here.”
She rumbled a growl.
David sharpened his tone. “Drop. Now.”
Kona bowed her head and dropped her prize at his feet. Not a rubber strip, but a fob of some sort. He picked it up and looked at it. It was a small, rubber sandal, much like a flip flop, with a key attached – the kind of novelty one bought while on a summer holiday.
Maybe one of the kids playing in the field had lost it.
Kona’s attention returned to the pit.
“Stay here,” he ordered, but nonetheless she followed him, though with her tail down. Unusual. He could feel something from her, something that made her afraid. Her body lowered into the grass as they moved towards the edge.
The pit was a bowl-shaped hole about twenty feet in diameter. A three foot high drainage pipe jutted into it. Must have been laid in preparation for the connection to the sewers. The light was getting stronger, the sun’s rays peeping over the crest of the surrounding hills. There…he could see it. David narrowed his eyes trying to make sense of the image in front of him. He couldn’t fully see the child, who lay bloody, dirty and lifeless next to the pipe.
His voice echoed tinny in his ears as he asked the futile question: “Hello…are you okay?”
Kona whimpered softly behind him. He knew the answer, really – but hoped his eyes had just played an awful trick on him. No such luck. David Etchell rifled frantically through his track pants until he found his mobile phone. He shrank away from the edge of the pit, fell to his knees and began to dial.
Tears came as his voice croaked the solitary word: “Police.”
