The question sounds like it is coming from the other side of the lake, and I’m not sure which one of them asked it. Maybe all three of them in unison. I lean over my knees and start coughing.
I feel like I’m choking. I’m shivering, I’m angry, but mostly I feel embarrassed. But none of the men are laughing. They’re all leaning over me, looking concerned. With two floating corpses nearby, it’s easy to understand why nothing here is a joke.
‘There’s something else you need to know,’ the digger operator says. “I was trying to tell you before.’ He slips that last part into the conversation as if each word is its own sentence, and his face screws up slightly. He makes it sound like that whatever he has to say is going to be worse than what just happened, and I can think of only one thing that could possibly be.
‘Yeah?’
‘Marks. On top of the coffin.’
‘How did I know you were going to say that?’
Now it’s his turn to shrug. ‘Thin lines. Like cuts. They look like shovel cuts,’ he says.
‘You think this coffin has been dug up before?’
“I’m not just thinking it, I’m saying it. There are definitely marks on the coffin that nobody here caused. Shit, I wonder if she’s empty.’
She. Like a plane or a boat, because the coffin in a way is a vessel taking you somewhere.
We walk over to it. There’s a large crack running from the
chapter three
There is a natural progression to things. An evolution. First there is a fantasy. The fantasy belongs to some sadistic loser, a guy who eats and breathes and dreams with the sole desire to kill. Then comes the reality. A victim falls into his web, she is used, and the fantasy often doesn’t live up to the reality. So there are more victims. The desire escalates. It starts with one a year, becomes two or three a year, then it’s happening every other month. Or every month. Their bodies show up. The police are involved.
They bring doctors and pathologists and technicians who can analyse fibres and blood samples and fingerprints. They create a profile to help catch the killer. Following them is the media. The media spin the killer’s fantasy into gold. Death is a moneymaking industry. The undertakers, the coffin salesmen, the crystal-ball and palm readers, then eventually the digger operators and the private investigators: we’re the next step in the progression, standing in the rain and watching as one travesty of justice reveals another.
I have shrugged out of my wet jacket and wet shirt, dried off using a towel an ambulance driver gave me and pulled on a fresh windbreaker. My shoes are still missing and my pants and underwear are soaking, but I’m safe from pneumonia. Nobody is paying me any attention as I sit on the floor of the ambulance with my legs hanging out, looking over the scene of, at this stage, an indeterminable crime.
The graveyard has been cordoned off. The two police cars have become twelve. The two station wagons have become six. There are road blocks covering the main entrance, as though they are preparing to fight back an upsurging of angry corpses. There are two tarpaulins lying across the ground; on each one rests a well dressed but decomposing or decomposed body. A canvas tent has been erected over them, protecting them from the elements.
Somebody has strung some yellow ‘do not cross’ tape around the tent. It keeps the corpses from going anywhere. There are men and women wearing nylon suits studying the bodies. Others are standing near the lake. They look like divers preparing for some deep-sea mission, only there are no divers here. Not yet, anyway.
There are open suitcases containing tools and evidence beneath the tent. The rain is still falling and the long grass ripples with the wind. The digger has been taken away, and the coffin has been taken to the morgue.
I tighten my windbreaker, and reach around for a second blanket. The inside of the ambulance is messy, as if it’s sped over dozens of bumps on the way: God knows how the paramedics ever know where anything is. I wrap the blanket over my shoulders and let my teeth chatter as I watch the few detectives who have shown up. More will arrive soon. They always do. So far there hasn’t been much for them to do other than look at two bodies and a lot of gravestones. They can’t go canvassing the area because all the neighbours are dead. They have no one to question other than the caretaker, but the caretaker is off somewhere in a stolen truck.