In answer, Joey dug into his pocket and brought out an impressive jackknife, waving it above his head. He opened a blade and sawed his way through the heavy tarp, letting it fall away as he opened the cut further. Whatever was inside the canvas was encased in another layer, this time of oilskin. He slit through it effortlessly. Even in the poor light, they could both see the motorbike was in amazing condition. Sealed inside the waterproofed layers, it had been protected for forty years from the bog that contained it. ‘Ya beauty,’ Joey breathed.
‘See the panniers?’ Now there was a note of anxiety in her voice.
‘I see them.’
‘Take a look inside.’
It wasn’t a suggestion. But she was the one paying the piper; she got to call the tune. Joey shrugged, leaned over and struggled with the two straps. Time had hardened the leather to the shape of the buckle and Joey ended up using the spike tool from his knife to force them free. He lifted the lid. ‘Empty,’ he said.
‘Try the other one.’
Joey repeated the process on the other side of the bike. This time, he struck lucky. He reached in and retrieved an oilskin packet about the size of a bag of sugar. ‘Is this what you were hoping for?’ He waved the package over his head.
‘Perfect. Chuck it up here.’
Joey lobbed the packet up in a gentle underarm throw. The light from the other head torch followed its trajectory, which ended in a soft scrunch. ‘Got it.’
‘OK. Now we’ve got to get the bike.’ Joey eyed the trophy carefully. ‘I can lift it over my head. That’ll take it above the edge of the hole,’ he said, as if it were nothing. ‘If you grab it when it comes level and pull it towards you, it’ll fall to the ground. And I can take it from there. Can you manage that?’ Now there was a faint note of anxiety. When it came to civilians, especially women, Joey had little faith in their strength or abilities.
‘I think I can just about cope with letting a bike fall.’ She gave a dark chuckle.
Joey braced himself, planting his feet apart. He’d checked out the bike’s weight; it came in around 550 pounds. He’d never lifted more than 500 pounds, but he knew he was in peak condition after a summer of competition. He inhaled deeply, gripped the frame of the bike, closed his eyes and focused. The world contracted till he knew nothing but the intricate piece of metal in his hands.
He was oblivious to the differently intricate piece of metal that nestled in her hand.
Slowly, inch by inch, he raised the motorbike from the bottom of the crate. The veins of his neck and arms stood out and his muscles bulged with the effort as he strained every sinew to lift the bike high enough to topple it over the lip of the hole.
He’d almost succeeded when the first bullet crashed through his chest, just to the right of his heart. He stumbled momentarily but when the second bullet struck him in the throat, Joey crumpled backwards, the crushing weight of the bike forcing what air remained in his lungs out from his lips in a high-pitched wheeze.
By dawn, the only sign of what had taken place was an uneven patchwork of heather and grasses fifty yards from the road. By the following spring, even Shirley O’Shaughnessy would have struggled to spot where she’d replaced the peat to hide the last resting place of Joey Sutherland.
Acknowledgements
I know a lot less than people give me credit for. But luckily, I know people who can fill the gaps in my knowledge. The backroom team who lent me their expertise this time include:
Miranda Aldhouse-Green, for her encyclopaedic knowledge of what happens to bodies in peat bogs;
Lorna Dawson, the mistress of soil science, who explained the peat bogs of the Western Highlands of Scotland;
Judy Harvey of the Emporium Bookshop, Cromarty, whose anecdote set the wheels turning;
Jennifer Morag Henderson, whose biography of the great Josephine Tey reminded me, in passing, of what happened to the Highlands in WWII;
Jason Young, who generously shared his experiences of life on the Highland Games circuit for heavy athletes;
Sally Mackintosh for inviting me to be the Chieftain of the Invercharron Highland Games in 2016;
Jenny Brown for the earring and the Kolkata fun;
Tara Noonan at the National Library of Scotland for help with newspaper archive queries;
And Nicola Sturgeon for the use of her drawing room.
*
This is my thirty-second novel but still I need help to make it better. Those without whom I would struggle include Lucy Malagoni, David Shelley, Cath Burke and Thalia Proctor at Little, Brown; Jane Gregory and Stephanie Glencross at David Higham Associates; Amy Hundley at Grove Atlantic; my indefatigable copy-editor Anne O’Brien (any mistakes are mine, boss!); and Laura Sherlock who keeps the wheels on.
And last but not least, my brilliant, funny, adorable Professor and my smart, handsome lad, who both put a smile on my face when I feel least capable of good humour.
Val McDermid is a No.1 bestseller whose novels have been translated into more than thirty languages, and have sold over fifteen million copies. She has won many awards internationally, including the CWA Gold Dagger for best crime novel of the year and the LA Times Book of the Year Award. She was inducted into the ITV3 Crime Thriller Awards Hall of Fame in 2009, was the recipient of the CWA Cartier Diamond Dagger in 2010 and received the Lambda Literary Foundation Pioneer Award in 2011. In 2016, Val received the Outstanding Contribution to Crime Fiction Award at the Theakstons Old Peculier Crime Writing Festival and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2017, she received the DIVA Literary Prize for Crime. She writes full time and divides her time between Cheshire and Edinburgh.
Val McDermid, Broken Ground (Karen Pirie Book 5)
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