– DEAD GIRL, THEN?
Watts !icked his eyes over the wasteland. It’s always wasteland, he thought. As if the dead don’t deserve any better. The scientists already there, activity in a huddle, white paper suits drifting like newspapers in the wind, back and forth. They love a dead body.

– Where’ve you been? Bibby said, lips dry, cheeks red in the cold. I’ve been waiting.

– Frog on your back yet?
– Give him time.
– He can take as long as he likes, Watts said. How do we get in?
He took a white suit and overshoes from Bibby, put them on, then followed him along the fence to where a post lay askew as if drunk, dragging sharp-starred fence wire with it. They stepped over, into the field.

– Don’t tell me—man walking his dog?

– Seven o’clock this morning. Says everyone uses it so they don’t have to pick up their dogshit.

– I noticed.

CSI stepping plates led across the field towards the scene to protect the area from contamination. Instead of following them, he took a circuitous route around the edge of the field, eyes absorbing the surroundings, shoes sinking into the earth. He turned and took Bibby’s arm, the plasticky smoothness of Bibby’s jacket beneath the white suit sliding against his fingers, the arm surprisingly muscular underneath. Smell of the sea in the air, two hundred yards behind him, other side of the coast road. You could feel the pull of the tide in your bones, wanting you to drown.

– Hear that?
– Too early for games, boss.
Watts shook his head and walked on, feeling Bibby’s eyes on the back of his neck. Fuck him. Another learning opportunity missed. Am I the only one with a full set of working senses here? Point was, there was nothing to be heard. Death creates its own space. No traffic. No seagulls screeching. No dogs barking.

Now just the sound of his Hush Puppies sloughing through the dandelions and crabgrass and mulch, one step after the other, sinking into the ground softened by nearly two weeks of rain. He paused again, Bibby walking past him, impatient. A remembrance of rugby pitches past arose in him, the sodden grass, him a twelve-year-old out on the wing, waiting for the ball to arrive. As soon as it did he was smothered, smashed to the ground, that sticky smell of wet grass and damp earth and young boy juices forced up his nostrils to stay there for the next thirty years. Too slow to run, always too slow.