31

His dahlias had done well that year, but their colourful display at the back of the garden would soon be over. Lemon yellow, fuchsia and crimson, they flourished in front of the fence. In each of the far corners of the garden he had planted a tree, a fig and a small conifer, between which the dahlias were a riot of colour. They were, as his daughter said, his pride and joy.

‘You can laugh at me all you like,’ he had replied, ‘but you have to admit they make a glorious show in the summer, and that doesn’t happen by chance. It takes a lot of care and attention to produce a display like that.’

‘I’m sure it doesn’t happen by chance, and you’re right, dad, they are lovely.’

More than a hobby to him after his wife died, maintaining his small patch of lawn and surrounding flower beds had become Roger’s passion in life. So when he stepped outside on Monday morning to carry out his daily inspection of the garden and saw someone lying down among the dahlias, he was horrified. Where he would have been cautious as a rule, he now became reckless with fury. Had the intruder been sprawling anywhere other than right on top of the dahlias, Roger might have been more circumspect, but he had been nurturing those flowers for months. And now, after all those months of careful tending, the dahlias had been vandalised. Having called the police to report an intruder on the premises, Roger could control his temper no longer. Seizing his garden fork he waved it at the back of the intruder’s head.

‘Get up!’ he roared. ‘Get up, you filthy swine! Off my flower bed! Get up!’

He wasn’t sure what he was going to do if the other man woke up before the police arrived, but he was momentarily too angry to worry about that. He shouted again, but the man on the ground did not stir.

‘I said, get up!’ Roger yelled.

Feeling a rush of blood to his head, he raised his fork, determined to confront the hooligan who had trampled on his dahlias. Lowering the fork slowly, he tensed to leap backwards if the man sat up suddenly and grabbed the prongs, but the man did not move. Roger poked him, tentatively, on his back, but still the man did not stir. Trembling, Roger raised the fork again, clutching the handle tightly in case the man leapt to his feet and tried to attack him. If necessary, Roger was prepared to bring his weapon down with all the force he could muster, heedless of the consequences. He was not a young man, but he wasn’t old, and all the gardening he did kept him fit. Besides, his antagonist was trespassing. Roger had every right to defend himself from an intruder. He prodded the man’s back again, but still the intruder did not react. Only then did it occur to Roger that something was seriously wrong.

The man was lying face down on the flower bed, and could be suffocating as Roger stood there shouting at him. Concern overcame his curiosity and he crouched down and hesitated, noticing a putrid smell, like a foul drain. Reaching out with one hand, he took hold of the man’s arm. It felt soft and flabby under the sleeve of his jacket. With a grunt, Roger heaved the man on to his side, and drew back as the fetid stench intensified. The man’s face was bloated, the skin greenish and blistered. His swollen tongue stuck out and his eyes stared at Roger, glassy and clouded. Stumbling backwards, Roger nearly tripped over the handle of the fork which had fallen from his grasp.

Afterwards Roger could not have said how long he stood staring down in shock, before he heard a siren. A moment later someone pounded on his front door. As though recalled from a nightmare, he turned and stumbled across the grass, yelling in a panic.

‘I’m here! I’m here! Don’t go away. For God’s sake, don’t leave! I’m coming!’

Two uniformed police officers stood on the doorstep. It crossed Roger’s mind that they looked no older than his teenage grandchildren. He wished the police had sent someone more experienced to deal with the situation.

‘Good morning, sir. We received a report of an intruder on the premises here,’ one of the officers said pleasantly. ‘Is everything all right, sir?’

‘Yes, yes, that is no, no.’ Roger stopped, aware that he was babbling. Taking a deep breath, he tried again. ‘The fact is, there’s a dead body at the bottom of my garden,’ he blurted out.

The two police officers exchanged a rapid glance.

‘Very good, sir,’ one of them said, with exaggerated patience.

‘Oh please, don’t take my word for it,’ Roger replied, miffed at their evident scepticism. ‘Come and see for yourselves.’

As he led the two police officers round the back of the house and across the lawn to the back of the garden, Roger had a wild hope that he had imagined the body with its horribly decomposed face. Perhaps the man’s skin had been discoloured with grass and leaves and mud, and he had recovered consciousness and done a runner, escaping over the fence, while Roger had been at the front door speaking to the police. But as they approached the flower bed he saw the body was still there, lying on its side, just where Roger had left it. He screwed up his eyes to avoid looking directly at the hideous sight of a dead body rotting into his carefully treated soil.

‘Oh, heavens above,’ one of the police officers said, backing away. ‘What a sight!’

The officer who had spoken turned pale, and Roger was afraid he was going to throw up on the carefully manicured lawn. Meanwhile the other police officer was on his phone, talking snappily about what had happened. Roger paid little attention to what he was saying.

Having finished on the phone, the policeman turned to Roger. ‘Now sir,’ he said. ‘Let’s go inside and you can tell us exactly what happened here.’

Roger shook his head helplessly. ‘Nothing happened. That is, what I mean is, I just found him lying here, dead. I don’t know who he is – or was – or what he was doing here. How did the body even get here?’

The police officer looked around, taking in the fig tree and the spindly conifer.

‘He must have climbed over the fence and then…’ He looked back down at the body and frowned. ‘And then… Mr Dexter, when was the last time you were in the garden?’

Roger frowned too. ‘I came out about, I don’t know, about half an hour ago, I guess. Maybe longer. I phoned you as soon as I saw the body, as soon as I realised he was dead. I saw it – him – almost straight away.’

‘And before that? How long is it since you were out here before today?’

‘I’m out here most days.’

‘Were you out here yesterday?’

‘Yes,’ Roger replied. ‘Like I said, I’m out here almost every day. Weather permitting, that is. Although if it’s just drizzling I come out. There’s always something to do,’ he said, almost shamefaced about his dedication to his plants. Catching the drift of the constable’s questioning, he added, ‘The dead body wasn’t here yesterday. It only turned up today.’

‘Are you sure of that?’

‘I’m positive. He – it’s lying on my dahlias. There’s absolutely no way I could have missed it. I’d have spotted it – him – straight away.’

Just then they heard knocking at the door, and the constable’s phone buzzed.

‘A team has arrived here to assess the site,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it from here, sir. If you’d like to step away.’

All at once, Roger began to shiver. Nodding, he followed the constable across the grass to the house.