Dave felt that this was a generous description of how the others appeared to feel about their lunch. If any of them were genuinely enjoying the food (another generous description, he thought), then they hadn’t bothered to let their faces know.
It had been quite a day so far, and it wasn’t even half done. Between the sunburn and the nettle cream, his arse was red raw and felt like it was hanging in tatters. That was the main issue he had with the day so far, although the food was rapidly gaining ground.
He was just going to suggest he drive to the shop to pick up some frozen pizzas, when the flap of the dining tent flew open, and a wheezing, red-faced DCI Logan stumbled in.
“Oh, thank fuck for that!” both men ejected at precisely the same moment, but before either of them could say any more, André Douville rose from where he’d been sitting cross-legged on the floor, and held up a spoon like it was some magical trinket.
“Halt! You have entered a sacred eating space,” he proclaimed, and half a dozen of his weirdo punters all raised their own cutlery in what was presumably a show of support. “This is a protected area, and I will not—”
“I suggest you shut your mouth, Mr Dorlin,” Logan told him, and the mention of his real name made the charlatan physically flinch. “Unless you want me to let slip about your convictions for fraud, and all those sexual harassment complaints you’ve got on your record.”
The man masquerading as André Douville lowered his spoon. His gaze flitted around the tent to where his acolytes all sat on rugs, half-heartedly munching through their own stick piles.
“I… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, although the shake of his voice told Logan otherwise. It told a few of his more switched-on acolytes the same, as they turned, frowning, to face their leader.
“Aye, you do, Andrew,” Logan said. “You spoken to Bernie yet, by the way? He contacted you from beyond the grave, has he?”
André saw his opportunity to impress the shower of gullible bastards gathered around him. “He has, actually. Yes. He told me that—”
“I’m going to stop you there. He’s no’ deid,” Logan said.
The man in the Jesus robes blinked. “What?”
“Bernie the Beacon. He isn’t dead, Andrew. So fuck knows who you’ve been chatting to, but it’s no’ him.” Logan clicked his fingers at Dave to draw his attention, then pointed to André’s head. “Wig,” he announced, and Dave immediately grasped his meaning.
He also grasped the hair of the man beside him, and pulled it off with shrrrik of Velcro that left André’s bald head exposed for all the world to see.
Gasps went around the tent. Cutlery clanked into bowls of inedible not-quite-food.
“You’re a liar and a conman, Mr Dorlin,” Logan said. “I suggest you give these good people their money back.” He beckoned to Dave. “You, with me.”
Dave twirled the wig around on his fingertip, then launched it across the room. It landed in the lap of a female acolyte, who leapt to her feet, screaming, like she’d just been attacked by a rabid rat.
“Thought you’d never ask!” Dave laughed, wheeling himself across the uneven tent floor.
He stopped just before following Logan out through the flap, and looked back over his shoulder at what was now quite a disgruntled looking group of individuals.
“Oh, and by the way, sunning your arsehole?” he announced. “That’s not normal!”
He followed Logan out through the flap, and was met by a confused look from the DCI.
“Don’t ask,” he said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. He nodded when he saw DC Neish bent over outside, desperately trying to catch his breath. “Alright, Tyler?”
“Grand, aye. I’m... He’s just… Jesus. He’s just got longer legs.”
“Your car, Constable,” Logan said.
“What about it?”
Logan held out a hand for the keys. “We’re going to need to borrow it.”
Dave considered the outstretched hand as he reached into his pocket.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he said. He produced the keys and twirled them around his finger. “You point the way, and leave the driving to me.”
They had just skidded left out of the field when Dave slammed on the anchors and they stopped just short of running over an elderly woman standing in the middle of the road. Kathryn Chegwin squinted in through the front windscreen, eyeing the men suspiciously, with her shotgun draped across her forearm.
“Christ, what does she want?” Logan muttered. He wound down the window—a manual process that he found quite awkward, given his size in comparison to the interior of Dave’s Peugeot 208—and leaned his head out. “Out of the bloody road you!”
“Oh, it’s you,” Kathryn said. “I thought I heard some commotion, right enough. Thought, ‘Oh ho, what’s this now?’ I thought. ‘Who’s this lot, playing silly buggers?’ I should’ve known you’d be behind it.”
“Just move!” Logan barked. “Get out of the way, we’re in a hurry here!”
“Alright, alright, keep your fucking hair on,” Kathryn grumbled, shuffling out of the car’s path.
Dave started to power the Peugeot forward, but a shout from Logan made him brake hard again. The DCI’s window was level with the woman now standing on the embankment. He pointed to the shotgun, then made a beckoning motion with a finger. “Give me that.”
“I beg your bloody pardon!” Kathryn said with a gasp. “I ain’t handing Barbara here over to no one. No way, no how. Not on your fucking Nelly!”
“Barbara?” Tyler mumbled from the back seat. “Who calls a gun Barbara?”
Logan wasn’t taking no for an answer. He wound down his window the rest of the way, and fixed the old woman with his most polis-like glare. “I’m confiscating that firearm. Hand it over, or I’ll place you under arrest.”
Kathryn wrestled with her options for a moment, then thrust the shotgun through the open window, barrels first.
“Jesus! Point it the other way!” Logan snapped.
“Then it’ll be pointing at me, won’t it? And you can get that idea right out of your fucking head, right now. You want it, take it. Go on.”
Logan grabbed the shotgun by the barrels, yanked it from the old woman’s grip, then passed it back to a jittery Tyler.
“Thanks. You can have it back later,” Logan said. He reached forward to tap the dashboard to indicate that Dave should drive on, but the constable was one step ahead, and both detectives were thrown back into their seats as he accelerated them up the incline and past Kathryn Chegwin’s cottage.
“How quickly can you get us to the lighthouse?” Logan asked, clutching the handle above the door so tightly the plastic groaned in complaint.
“Dunno,” Dave admitted. He grinned, and dropped down a gear. “But let’s find out.”
The answer to Logan’s question, it turned out, was somewhere between ‘very fast’ and ‘too fast,’ and both detectives arrived at the lighthouse as changed men. And, in Tyler’s case, with some light Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.