Dead Heat

Начало книги

He had just rolled the body into the shallow grave when the headlights hit him. The main beam sliced through the trees like a strobe, catching him in their glare, then moved on. Initially he froze, spade in hand. Then as the lights passed him he dropped quickly into the grave on top of the body.

He knelt on the dead man’s stomach, keeping low and peering over the edge of the grave. The body hissed, groaned and twisted underneath the weight of his knees and something glugged obscenely out of its mouth. But this did not affect Verner. After all, he had killed the man in the first place and brought him to this deserted spot, where his intention was to quicklime and bury the body.

Yet now it transpired that it was not such a deserted spot after all.

Verner cursed, keeping his head down, annoyed with himself for not having heard the vehicle approach in the first place. But, to be fair, he had been digging hard — concentrating, sweating, his heart and ears pounding with the physical exertion of that — having just dragged the body of a fully grown man twenty metres through the trees before depositing it into the newly prepared resting place. His mind had been fixed on the task in hand, so it was not impossible for a car to sneak up without him knowing until the last moment. It was something he would have to think about for the future. It had never happened before and he was damned if it would ever happen again.

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