Dead And Buried

Seventy-one

‘There’s a rule, isn’t there?’ ACC Max Allan muttered. ‘Every time there’s a job to be done it has to be bloody freezing.’

Sir James Proud glanced up into the blue morning sky. ‘Thank your lucky stars that we’re not doing the digging.’

Screens had been set up around the Solomons’ shed, dividing off a section of the garden. The Glasgow media grapevine being as effective as any in the world, a statement had been issued announcing that the police were carrying out excavations at 14 Dundyvan Drive, Broomhill, in the light of new information relating to the disappearance of a woman almost fifty years ago. It stressed that the investigation had nothing to do with the present occupants of the house. The old couple themselves seemed a little bemused by the proceedings, and by the small knot of journalists and cameramen who were gathered in the street outside.

The two senior officers braved the cold and watched as the shed was emptied, then dismantled by a team of joiners, carefully, so that it could be rebuilt later. When they were finished four burly police officers moved in, wearing steel-capped boots, Day-glo jackets and hard hats, and began to attack the base on which it had stood. They worked carefully, each sledgehammer blow carefully placed, trying to crack rather than shatter the concrete. It took the best part of an hour before scene-of-crime officers were ready to begin to remove the pieces to see what they had uncovered.

‘Is it buried treasure?’

Proud turned and saw Arnold Solomons, standing beside him inside the enclosure, his back bent and his nose bright with the cold, even though he was wrapped in a heavy Crombie overcoat, with a scarf and thick leather gloves. ‘I wish it was, for your sake,’ he replied. ‘Now please, go back inside.’

‘Will I hell: this is my garden and I want to see what’s going on.’

‘Sir!’ The call was to Allan, from one of the SOCOs. He and Proud moved closer, with the old man shuffling behind them. ‘There’s a base of boulders here, but in among them. . They’re wrapped in brown paper, maybe so that anyone watching would think they were rocks too, only they’re not.’

The officers stood aside, allowing the two chiefs to look into the excavation. The brown paper had been torn open in places and inside they could see white bones, some large, some finger-sized, and in the centre, a skull.

‘My, oh my, oh my,’ Solomons murmured. ‘For all these years, I’ve been storing my lawnmower on top of someone’s grave.’