Hell Fire

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Women and children sweated in the heat, but the men knew better and stayed in the shade with the peaks of their caps pulled down over their eyes. In a hollow in the fields up by Skarven, an old Fendt trailer stood in a cluster of dark pines. A torn curtain hung in one rusty window — a fine net of nylon threads and white lace where insects had gotten caught and trapped. A child was lying just inside the door, a child of around four or five. And on the narrow sofa under the window, a woman. She had a large gash in the corner of her mouth and the blood had run down her neck. The inspector stood in the doorway, his heart hammering.

The trailer was dilapidated; surely they hadn’t lived here, the mother and child? No, he thought, they couldn’t have. Maybe they were just here for fun. They had gone for a walk over the fields in the lovely weather, perhaps, and had seen the rusty little house standing there. Let’s sleep in the trailer tonight!

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