Cemetery lake
by
PAUL CLEAVE
What began as a routine exhumation of a suspected murder victim quickly turns complicated for private investigator Theodore Tate…Theo Tate is barely coping with life since his world was turned upside down two years ago. As he stands in the cold and rainy cemetery, overseeing the exhumation, the lake opposite the graveyard begins to release its grip on the murky past. When doubts are raised about the true identity of the body found in the coffin, the case takes an even more sinister turn. Tate knows he should walk away and let his former colleagues in the police deal with it, but against his better judgement he takes matters into his own hands. With time running out and a violent killer on the loose, will Tate manage to stay one step ahead of the police? Or will the secrets he has buried so deeply be unearthed?
Also by Paul Cleave
The Cleaner
The Killing Hour
S
Published by Arrow Books 2009
13579 10 8642
Copyright S Paul Cleave, 2008
Paul Cleave has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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First published in New Zealand in 2008 by Black Swan, an imprint of Random House New Zealand
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Arrow Books
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To Joe — who got the ball rolling
chapter one
Blue fingernails.
They’re what have me out here, standing in the cold wind,
shivering. The blue fingernails aren’t mine but attached to
somebody else — some dead guy I’ve never met before. The
Christchurch sun that was burning my skin earlier this afternoon has gone. It’s the sort of inconsistent weather I’m used to. An hour ago I was sweating. An hour ago I wanted to take the day off and head down to the beach. Now I’m glad I didn’t. My own
fingernails are probably turning blue, but I don’t dare look.
I’m here because of a dead guy. Not the one in the ground
in front of me, but one still down at the morgue. He’s acting
as casual as a guy can whose body has been snipped open and
stitched back together like a rag doll. Casual for a guy who died from arsenic poisoning.
I tighten my coat but it doesn’t help against the cold wind.
I should have worn more clothes. Should have looked at the
bright sun an hour ago and figured where the day was heading.
The cemetery lawn is long in some places, especially around
the trees where the lawnmower doesn’t hit, and it ripples out
from me in all directions as though I’m the epicentre of a storm.
In other places where foot traffic is heavy it’s short and brown where the sun has burned all the moisture away. The nearby trees are thick oaks that creak loudly and drop acorns around the gravestones. They hit the cement markers, sounding like bones of the dead tapping out an SOS. The air is cold and clammy like a morgue.
I see the first drops of rain on the windscreen of the digger
before I feel them on my face. I turn my eyes to the horizon where gravestones covered in mould roll into the distance towards the city, death tallying up and heading into town. The wind picks up, the leaves of the oaks rustle as the branches let go of more acorns, and I flinch as one hits me in the neck. I reach up and grab it from my collar.