Bumping Uglies

Chapter Fourteen

The interior had been made dark by the hanging of large dustsheets across two high windows on either side of what appeared to be a now-abandoned workshop or foundry. The job had been performed imperfectly and electric shafts of sunlight pierced the gloom, myriad motes of dust dancing through them with gay abandon.

The floor area was a little over ten metres wide and perhaps fifteen long, with a high-pitched roof ceiling with exposed iron beam rafters and a floor comprised of brick laid in a herringbone pattern that was for the most part covered in a thick layer of dust.

The room was empty save for one very obvious feature that stood out like Boy George at an accountancy conference. There was a large king-size bed standing the middle of the space. The bed frame was ornate wrought ironwork that twisted and wound to form an intricate pattern and I wondered briefly whether that was ironic, given the original purpose of the buildings in the yard was probably to produce worked goods in the same material.

Unlike the bed I had seen on the barge, this one was not made up with anything other than a covering of thick plastic sheeting and a single white bed sheet that hung limply over the edge.

Something jolted loose in my brain, and the subsequent rattling of my thoughts forced me to pause for a moment. I had seen this scene before, though it was not what I had been focussing on in those instances.

This was the bed that featured in the photos that I had found in Richard's flat. He had been here before.

I crossed the room to take a closer look at the bed and instantly wished that I had not.

Each of the four corner posts of the bedframe had an open iron manacle attached to it by a short length of thick chain; clearly intended to restrain an occupant in a vulnerable cruciform position.

Across the top half of the bed, the plastic sheeting was sprayed with thick russet blood, wet and glistening, which had run into pools and was now congealing in the afternoon warmth. The bottom half of the sheeting was puddled with pale amber liquid which looked and smelled very much like piss. In places, both fluids had run off the edge of the sheeting and onto the floor, which for a wide circle around the bed was free of dust, as if it had been scrubbed clean.

A squadron of fat flies buzzed around the bed like bi-planed aristocracy in a WWI dogfight, attracted by the tang of blood in the air.

I felt the bile rising in my throat.

Someone had died here, recently, but who, and why?

The bile rose a little further and I stepped back from the bed, leaving fresh footprints in the dust, and I had to look away.

I knew it was a gunshot that I had heard, and here was ample proof.

I looked around and noted the pattern of marks in the dust, including those just made by me. Paths had been trodden across the grey blanket here and there. Close to where I now stood there was an odd pattern of three circles, each perhaps the size of a fifty pence coin, that were distributed in an equidistant triangular pattern.

I stared at the pattern for some little while before it finally occurred to me what had made it; a tripod for a camera.

Richard had been carrying a rucksack and a long carry case. The carry case held an extendable tripod. He had been here to photograph or film what had taken place.

My head spun, my vision blurred slightly and I barrelled out of the door, gulping fresh air once outside. I had to lean heavily against the battered brickwork to stop from collapsing.

It was about thirty seconds before my disordered thoughts began to take some sort of shape. I pushed many of them back to the depths of my mind from which they had risen because one in particular seemed urgent.