He and Gary had been strolling around the woods for twenty minutes when Carlos realised Lady hadn’t checked in on them for a while. They stopped walking and he listened to a tawny owl’s familiar hunting call: a sound that could be frightening on a dark night. He sensed Gary’s unease at the spooky sound as the owl obviously dived towards its prey, then he heard barking in the distance.
‘That’s Lady. I bet she’s found a foxes’ den. LADY!’ he called, but she didn’t appear. The barking continued.
‘Good job we put boots on; it’s coming from the woods through there,’ moaned Gary. ‘Perhaps we should get her and go home; the rain’s getting heavier.’
Carlos puffed out his cheeks in despair, but led the way, shining his torch to light the route ahead of him, calling his dog as he went.
‘Sorry about this, she doesn’t normally run off, but it’s a new place and I guess she’s found something interesting.’
Finally, Lady appeared from nowhere, paws covered in wet mud.
‘Am I glad to see you, you filthy mutt. Come on, Lady, it’s wet. Let’s go home, girl.’ Carlos turned to go back in the direction they’d come from, but Lady barked and dashed back into the dense part of the woods again.
‘I think she wants us to follow her,’ he said and walked faster, taking the direction his dog had gone. Carlos felt the damp seeping through his trousers and muttered, ‘If this is a fox den, she’s getting no supper.’
Gary slowed down; Carlos could hear his footsteps cautiously following. He turned and checked on his brother-in-law who was now using a mobile phone as a torch. Lady’s barking drew Carlos off to the right. As he turned, he tripped over a raised tree root and stumbled headlong into a holly bush. He cursed. The torch hit a large stone and stopped working. He felt the pain in his palms as holly leaves pierced his skin.
‘Are you all right?’ Gary arrived and shone his mobile on Carlos’s face.
‘Fine, just a few prickles, and feeling like a bit of an idiot. Torch’s stopped working now; I’m afraid my girl is being a nuisance tonight.’
‘If I were a dog in these woods, I’d be running around like a headless ape, too! You might want to take a shower or a bath when we get back, though. How do we clean her up?’
Gary was clearly concerned about the hall carpet. Carlos ignored the question for now, looking down at his hands under the illumination of the torch from Gary’s phone. They were grazed and prickled. Spots of blood mixed with dirt trickled down his palms, his clothes were covered in mud, but getting Lady back was his main priority.
‘I just hope it’s only mud I’ve fallen in.’ He grimaced as he picked up his torch, shaking it a few times. The light came back on and they walked another hundred yards towards Lady’s barking. Carlos saw his dog, who stopped barking when they arrived at a small clearing.
Lady sat still, head in the air, exactly how his friend had taught her to, and Carlos’s heart sank. This was not a good sign. He looked at the ground in front of her where she had carefully dug down through the soft earth.
Gary gasped as Carlos shone his torch on where she sat. Carlos immediately recognised the remains of a human hand, exposed by her digging. As Gary turned and walked quickly away to the edge of the clearing, Carlos empathised slightly before rolling his eyes as he heard his brother-in-law heaving up the dinner he’d eaten earlier. Meanwhile, Lady continued to sit stock-still and barked, waiting for a meaty treat. Lady had initially trained as a cadaver dog.
4
Carlos shone his torch, trying to analyse the scene while waiting for Gary to return with the police. There was no phone signal in this part of the woods, but Gary had been pleased to get away to make the call; his brother-in-law had never seen a dead body. Carlos suggested Lady accompany him as she would be able to retrace her steps and lead the police back to the exact spot; he didn’t trust Gary in his state to remember where the body was and didn’t want to spend a wet night in the woods.
Lady had been meticulous in her digging, revealing just enough to show the bloated hand. A man’s wristwatch was buried deep within the flesh that bacteria and gases had caused to swell. There wasn’t much else for his torch to reveal.
The hand protruding from the mound of wet earth where Lady had dug a small hole was that of a male Caucasian. It was a left hand, no wedding ring. Older men didn’t always wear them, Carlos mused. Maggots had already begun their work of moving through flesh and the stench of the bacteria, which had been released along with the hand, now assaulted Carlos’s nostrils. He had come across this smell before in Afghanistan and more recently as a PI, but he took a deep breath, nonetheless.
‘Anaerobes,’ he muttered. This, and the state of decay, pointed to the body being buried in recent days or weeks. Forensics would be able to provide a more accurate estimate.
The body appeared to have been carefully buried and well-hidden. Carlos sorely wanted to move more earth and investigate, but knew he shouldn’t disturb the scene. He realised it was a lucky find: only a canny fox or a dog such as Lady, trained in searching for cadavers, would have been able to dig this one up. The earth was soft, but well-camouflaged with rocks, twigs and leaves. Anyone crazy enough to be walking this deep inside the woods would have walked right over the burial site without noticing anything was amiss.
It wasn’t easy searching around with a torch in the drizzly black night, but he picked up a piece of cloth from the hole Lady had dug and pocketed it. He argued with himself about doing this, but shook his head, on instinct refusing to listen to his conscience.
Carlos was relieved to hear Lady’s barking, shortly followed by torchlight and the sound of a man’s voice as the police finally arrived. He was cold, wet and tired. Lady came bounding into the clearing and brought herself to a halt, sitting stock-still in front of the exposed hand just as she had done after she revealed the body.
‘Good girl.’ Carlos gave her another meat treat from his pocket. The dog wagged her tail vigorously in response.
A burly uniformed officer arrived, brusquely insisting Carlos move away before taping off the scene around the body.
‘I hope you haven’t touched anything,’ he growled.
‘Not a thing. My dog exposed the hand you can see over there, that’s all. She was a trained cadaver dog before I had her.’
‘Yeah, right,’ the officer grumbled, ignoring Carlos and Lady, continuing to set up the required cordon with striped tape.
‘Totally unnecessary,’ Carlos muttered to himself, particularly annoyed as it had taken all his willpower to resist unearthing the body and looking for more clues.
‘You can go now. CID is on the way.’
‘Don’t you want to take a statement, Officer?’ Sarcasm flowed through Carlos’s voice.
‘We have your details from the man who called us. Someone will be in touch.’ His tone remained gruff, but Carlos saw no need to argue so shrugged his shoulders.
‘What have you done with my brother-in-law?’
‘He’s waiting on the path at the edge of the woods, didn’t want to come in, said the dog would lead the way, and he did.’
‘She.’
‘What?’