‘What do we do now?’ Kelly asked her father.
Ted gazed across the valley and then down to his feet.
The anthropologist emerged from the tent shaking her head. ‘The grave of Philippa Biden is empty too.’
The arrival of a man in a high visibility vest was unexpected, especially because he was sweating and could hardly catch his breath. He pointed towards the forest and bent over, holding onto his knees.
Kate helped him to a bench overlooking the valley and he recovered somewhat.
‘There are bodies down there by the beck. We found them.’
He was speaking in hyperventilated staccato bursts and Kelly could feel his panic.
She looked at her father, and they locked eyes for a few seconds. She saw that they realised the same thing in the second it took to absorb what the environmental health worker was telling them.
‘Bodies or remains?’ Ted asked scientifically, keeping calm.
‘Both.’
‘Human?’
The man nodded. His skin was grey.
‘There’s an unconscious man in the barn too.’ He breathed deeply with his eyes closed and Kate stroked his back.
Kelly strode off, followed by her father, and they headed to the treeline. It was a decent walk away and she waited for her father to catch up.
‘Go ahead without me,’ he said.
‘No, I’ll wait.’
It was as if she wanted to delay the inevitable.
He gathered his breath and caught up with her, and they made their way to the woods, where they soon heard crying.
Inside the canopy of the trees, they found several workmen stood around looking shocked and bewildered. They looked over the lip of the hole they’d dug and saw for themselves. But Kelly’s immediate attention was drawn to the wailing from inside the open stone building. It was the same one she’d asked Arthur to find the key for. She went to the door and saw Arthur with his head in his hands, next to Samuel, who cradled his unconscious son, Dorian.
‘Ted!’ she shouted. He joined her and knelt down over the unconscious man.
‘We called an ambulance,’ a man said from the door. ‘He’s got a faint pulse,’ he added. ‘I’m still on the line.’
Ted rolled up his sleeves and knelt down, checking Dorian for vital signs.
‘Look,’ Kelly said.
Next to the scene, where Samuel cradled his son, rocking back and forth, was a hole, and next to that a discarded tool. She peered inside it and saw that the groundwater was accessible from it. A vision in her head formed of Dorian inside the shed, perhaps locked inside it, desperate for water – God only knew how long he’d been in here – digging for liquid and finding it. Whatever was down here contaminating the water was still here and Dorian had drunk it.
As their eyes accustomed, they spotted several pools of vomit scattered about the floor.
Kelly left the shed and took the phone from the man who’d called emergency services, she barked instructions.
‘We need a stretcher party, or a helicopter, for a suspected poisoning, and the forest is inaccessible from the road. I’ll meet you out of the woods, on the road,’ she said. She ran with the phone out of the trees, to the small track which went as far as the gate at the edge of the woods. She calculated the amount of time it might take for an ambulance to negotiate the gravel and potholes. It didn’t look good. She had no idea how long Dorian had been in the shed, or how much of the groundwater he’d ingested.
She heard no sirens.
‘Has it been dispatched?’ she panted into the phone.
‘Yes, madam, is the patient breathing?’
‘I’m not with him, I’m at the road now,’ she gasped for breath. She’d sprinted all the way.
‘Can you stay with the patient madam,’ the woman droned on.
‘Tell the crew he’s ingested sodium pentobarbital from groundwater, we have no idea at what level.’
Kelly looked up towards the nursing home and a raincloud hovered over to the east. She’d thought they caught a criminal in the act of fraud, skimming off wealthy individuals and even faking funerals to save even more cash. Now, it dawned on her that Beryl and Victor had planned something so sinister even she couldn’t quite grasp the magnitude of it.
She understood now.
The bodies must have been buried in the forest for one reason only, to save money. The horror of it overwhelmed her and she sat down on the soft grass. She peered over to the nursing home and saw it in the distance. It appeared grey through the darkening weather, and sinister, like some factory used to process old people to exhort their money.
Then it hit her.
The dark web. The sodium pentobarbital.
The drugs used for assisted suicide. How else would Beryl have been able to get the victims to sign over their entire estates?
She found her personal phone, hooking the other one under her chin, keeping the emergency services on the line.
‘Is he breathing, ma’am?’
‘Yes!’ she screeched.
She pressed the number for Kate, who’d stayed with the anthropologist up at the chapel. She answered.
‘The bodies are in the forest.’ She spoke in bursts of fire, like a machine gun.
‘Ma’am?’ The 999 operator asked.
‘Kate, it could explain the contamination.’
‘What could?’ Kate asked her.
‘Ma’am?’ the 999 operator asked again.
‘They got it from the dark web, the sodium pentobarbital, and they killed them and dumped their bodies to cover up what they did, but also to save fucking money on funerals. Dumping them like trash in the forest was cheaper than digging real graves. Kate, I feel sick.’
‘Ma’am?’ the 999 operator insisted.
‘Where is it!’ she demanded down the other phone.
‘They should be with you now,’ the woman said calmly. Kelly knew enough about the emergency services to know that’s what they said to everyone, and there had been more strikes this week.
But in the distance, she heard sirens, and she ended the call to Kate. She sprinted to the top of the track, a phone in each hand, and saw an ambulance turning off the main road onto Morningside land. She waved her arms and jumped up and down like a madwoman and they spotted her. They negotiated the bumpy road and slowed to where she was.
‘Stretcher, you need a stretcher, come on I’ll show you.’
Two paramedics got their packs out of the van, and they took off behind Kelly at pace. They arrived on scene and took over from Ted who communicated vitals to them.
Dorian was hastily loaded onto the stretcher and the workmen helped ferry it to the waiting ambulance. Samuel was allowed to accompany him, then the door was slammed, and they took off leaving Kelly, Ted and Arthur behind. The three looked at one another.
Kelly stared at Arthur, as if his face would inform her whether he’d known all along, or not. She had no idea though. His eyes were red and watery from witnessing the state of his nephew.
‘Dad, we need to talk,’ she said.
‘I must stay at the scene. If those bodies are who we think they are, I’m going to be here all day and night.’
‘Here,’ she handed him her phone. ‘Call the last number and give your instructions for the anthropologist to Kate.’
He did as she said, handing the phone back when he finished.
‘I need to go and see Mary.’
She turned away, making her way back across the field towards the nursing home.