Page 15 of Better the Devil

‘So, you were on your patrol…?’

‘Yes. I’d already done a pass. I go down the track from here, along the A95 a few hundred yards, then up the track to Sally’s.’

‘Sally?’

‘Sally Robinson. Lovely woman. Grows her own carrots. She had a chicken. Wendy. I don’t know if she still does. I’ve not seen it, and I don’t like to ask.’

‘She’s a neighbour?’

‘Aye, Sally, then there’s Michael and Lesley on the other side, they’re lovely. Bit up their own arse, but lovely. Very into recycling. They text if we’ve left an upstairs light on.’

His lips puckered, like he didn’t really approve of that sort of behaviour.

‘And then, we don’t really know the other ones further along.’ He lowered his voice to a whisper, like he was sharing some terrible secret. ‘They’re Indian. Nice enough, I think, but we don’t really cross paths all that much.’

An idea hit him so hard that he almost toppled backwards off the bench.

‘Here, you don’t think it was them, do you?’

‘I doubt it,’ Dave told him. ‘But we’ll talk to everyone.’

Joe pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Christ. Maureen gave them her big plate.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Maureen. When they moved in. Before she knew they were… She made them one of her apple pies. Does it in a big plate. We assumed they would bring it back, but, well…’ He sighed heavily. ‘Well, that’s that gone, then.’

‘You walked to Sally Robinson’s,’ Dave urged, trying to get things back on track. ‘Did that take you past the lay-by where you found the car?’

‘Yes. But that’s the thing, it wasn’t there then,’ Joe said. ‘This was around… Four o’clock? Thereabouts.A Place in the Sunhad just finished on Channel 4. Whatever time that is. They were in Tenerife. Eighty grand was all they had. It was nothing but shoeboxes. I mean, one had a roof terrace, but you’d barely get a deckchair on it.’

Dave, once again, fought to keep things headed in the right direction.

‘So, when did you see the car?’

‘That was around quarter to six,’ Joe said.

‘That must be a long patrol for you.’

‘Aye, well, better to be thorough,’ the old man reasoned. ‘I do two or three miles up north on foot, then all the way to the Aviemore boundary. If it’s raining heavy, I’ll drive it, but I think it’s important to be seen. Let ne’er-do-wells know that the area’s under protection. Reassure the general public, sort of thing.’

‘So, the car must’ve arrived between four and quarter to six, you reckon?’

‘Absolutely. I assumed the worst as soon as I saw it.’ Joe’s lips thinned as he sucked in his cheeks. ‘Sexual congress. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve come across it, you know? Not by a long shot. People doing it. Out there. Not a thought for who might see them.’

‘You thought people were having sex in the car?’ Dave asked, finally jotting down a note. ‘That’s why you approached?’

Joe’s head was turned to the window. He gazed out through it, like he was looking back through time.

‘They wouldn’t have cared who’d seen them. Not one bit,’ he muttered. ‘You could’ve stood there for ages watching it, andthey wouldn’t have bloody blushed. Sometimes they encourage that sort of thing, would you believe? It’s indecent, is what it is.’

He chewed at a bit of loose skin on his bottom lip.

‘Absolutely indecent.’

‘But, eh, nobody was actually shagging in the car, though?’ Dave asked.

The question jolted Joe back to the here and now. ‘Hm? Oh, no. No, he was dead.’