10

      The JCB towered over the opened grave, glistening in the drizzle. Its claw thick with dark-brown earth.

      Logan inched closer.

      One of their three-person Scene Examination team peered down into the pit, hands on her knees. ‘You ready?’

      Her two colleagues hunched at the bottom of the hole, fiddling with thick tie-down straps. Then the bigger of the two stood and gave her the thumbs up, his white oversuit clarty with dirt.

      She passed the signal on to the digger driver and the JCB’s engine growled again – the arm lifting over the hole. A chain with a hook on the end of it dangled from the claw.

      Clarty the Examiner reached up and fastened the straps onto the hook, before he and his filthy friend scrambled out of the grave.

      ‘OK.’ The scene examiner in the clean suit pointed a few graves down. ‘If we can all retreat to a safe distance, please.’ She ushered Logan and Rennie to step away from the hole, and all five of them gathered around a shiny black headstone – like a chunk of kitchen worktop with gold lettering on it: ‘NOW ANNOYING THE ANGELS’.

      She took off her facemask and raised her eyebrows at Logan. Shirley, from Chalmers’ garage that morning. ‘This your first exhumation?’

      ‘Third.’

      Rennie leaned against the headstone. ‘I’ve never done one before. It’s kinda like Burke and Hare, only with a JCB. And in daylight. And not Edinburgh. Or 1828.’

      Everyone stared at him.

      The tips of his ears went a darker shade of pink. ‘Sorry.’

      Shirley raised a hand to shoulder height and pointed at the sky. Then made small circles with her finger, the other hand held flat just beside it.

      A deeper growl and the digger’s arm went up, slow and steady.

      She smiled at Logan. ‘And, as if by magic…’

      A mud-covered shape rose from the grave. It wasn’t a standard wooden coffin – a chunk of dirt fell off exposing what looked like wickerwork. One of those trendy woven-from-sustainable-materials biodegradable jobs.

      It cleared the lip of the grave and kept going … five, maybe six foot into the air … and that was when the bottom gave way. The remains cascaded down into the pit. Bones and chunks of stuff and plastic bags swollen with internal organs. Everything slithery and glistening and dark. As they spattered back into the earth, the stomach-clenching stench of rotten meat exploded out from the pit and everyone recoiled, coughing and gagging.

      Rennie slapped both hands over his nose and mouth. ‘Aw… God!’

      Shirley hurled her facemask to the ground. ‘Low-carbon-footprint, saving-the-planet, eco-friendly, recycling bollocks!’

      A purple nitrile glove appeared over the lip of the grave, its fingers dark and slimy with mud. It dumped a chunk of … was that a pelvis? It was. It was a pelvis, still partially encased in stinking…

      Nope.

      Logan backed away even further from the grave as a handful of finger bones joined the pile of yuck on the filthy tarpaulin they’d spread out beside the hole.

      A muffled voice rose from the grave. ‘Oh for… Urgh, I’ve stood in it!’

      ‘Yeah…’ Shirley grimaced at Logan. ‘This is going to take us a while.’

      Logan patted her on the shoulder. ‘It’s all yours. Give us a shout when you’ve got everything back at the mortuary.’

      ‘Will do.’

      As he walked away, down the hearse road, Shirley’s voice took on that irritating over-the-top enthusiastic tone kids’-TV-show presenters always used. ‘Come on, guys, I know it’s horrible, but we can do this!’

      The reply from the grave was a bit more to the point: ‘Sod off.’

      Rennie started the pool car’s engine. ‘Let’s never do that again. Exhumations are horrible.’

      Logan fastened his seatbelt and waved at Mr Scrotumface from the Council. ‘Look at him: standing there in his high-viz jacket and woolly hat, presiding over his empty car park like an impotent gnome.’

      The man glowered back at them.

      ‘Told you, he needs his bonking chits filled out in triplicate.’ Rennie pulled out of the space. ‘Back to the ranch?’

      ‘No. We’re off to see Bell’s widow.’

      He launched into song. ‘The wonderful widow of Bell.’

      ‘And if we’re lucky, she’ll be able to give you a brain.’

      Aberdeen faded in the rear-view mirror as Rennie took the second exit and accelerated up the dual carriageway. Fields. Fields. And more fields. All of them a drab sodden green.

      Logan’s phone dinged in his hand.

      TS TARA:

      Yuck! Cthulhu caught a mouse in the kitchen! It’s still alive! She’s torturing it!

      Rennie overtook a mud-encrusted flatbed truck. ‘You ever met Bell’s wife before?’

      ‘Barbara?’ Back to thumbing out a reply on his phone. ‘Only at the funeral.’

      Good. Serves the insulation & wire eating monsters right. Make sure you tell her she’s a good girl!

      SEND.

      ‘Babs was in the am-dram group DI Insch used to run. I saw her in that musical version of Shaun of the Dead they put on. She was the mother. Very convincing.’

      ‘Hmm.’

       Ding.

      Oh God she’s eating it now!!!!

      Rennie let out a long sigh. ‘It’s got to be hella weird, doesn’t it? Your husband kills himself, only he doesn’t really, and two years later someone else kills him again, but for the first time.’

       Ding.

      It’s like something off a horror movie!!! She’s eating the brains! THE BRAINS!!!!

      ‘I mean, put yourself in her shoes: he’s been hiding away somewhere sunny all that time and she’s been stuck here in Aberdeen with the drizzle and the cold, thinking he’s dead.’

       Ding.

      The only bits left are the tail, some revolting looking green kidney bean thing, & the bits of head she didn’t eat! I’m going to barf!

      Another sigh from the bleached-blond philosopher behind the wheel. ‘That’s the kind of thing that’ll really screw you up.’

      The housing estate could have been any new-build one in Aberdeenshire. Identical houses on an identical road with identical