Road of the Dead by Kevin Brooks Page A

this—nothing ever happens…everyone knows each other. News soon gets around.”
    Cole’s eyes darkened. “I wouldn’t say that nothing ever happens.”
    “Sorry,” Vince stuttered, suddenly realizing what he’d just said. “I didn’t mean…I just meant—”
    “I know what you meant.” Cole turned away from himas if he didn’t exist and started talking to Abbie. “You said that Rachel left some stuff behind—T-shirts or something?”
    She nodded. “The police took it all away when they searched her room.”
    “Local police?”
    “We don’t have any local police.”
    “What about the one in the Bridge?”
    “Sorry?”
    “There was a policeman in the bar at the Bridge—fat, bald, drunk.”
    “Sounds like Ron Bowerman,” Abbie said cautiously. She glanced at Vince. “Ron drinks in the Bridge sometimes, doesn’t he?”
    “You could say that,” muttered Vince.
    Abbie turned back to Cole. “Ron’s the Rural Community Officer for this area. He’s based in Yelverton but he covers all the local villages.”
    “Is he involved with Rachel’s case?”
    “Well, not exactly…”
    “What does that mean?”
    She hesitated, looking over at Vince again, but his face was empty of help. She swallowed quietly and turned back to Cole. “Ron was the first one to arrive at the scene.”
    “He found her?”
    Abbie shook her head. “No, a forestry worker was the first one to find her. He called it in on his radio, and theforestry people called Ron. Ron went out there and sealed off the area until the detectives arrived from Plymouth. They took over after that. I don’t think Ron had anything else to do with it.”
    As she was telling us this, I was thinking of what Bowerman must have seen. He must have seen Rachel’s body, all naked and battered and ruined. He must have seen her. He was there. He was with her. And now, less than a week later, he was humiliating her brother and hounding him out of a bar…
    I looked at Cole. The hate in his heart was killing him. He was keeping it under control for now, but I knew it couldn’t stay that way for long. When the time came—and I didn’t doubt that it would—Ron Bowerman was going to wish he’d never been born.
    “Where was her body found?” Cole asked Abbie.
    “About a mile from here,” she told him, turning to point through the window. “Up that way. There’s a wide track of moorland that runs through the forest up toward Lakern Tor—”
    “Can we go there?” Cole asked her.
    “When?”
    “Now.”
    Abbie quickly shook her head. “No…not now. You can’t see anything out there this time of night. We’d never find it.”
    “Never find our way back, either,” Vince added.
    “Maybe tomorrow,” Abbie said.
    Cole nodded quietly and gazed out the window. The darkness was impenetrable. There was nothing to see—no lights, no movement, no life—but Cole kept on looking anyway.
    Abbie muttered something to Vince, then she started clearing away the plates and things. Vince went over to the fridge and got himself another beer. He was beginning to look quite drunk now. His face was more flushed than usual, his eyes were loose, and when he sat back down at the table he had to put out a hand to steady himself.
    “All right?” he said to me, popping open the beer.
    I nodded and turned to Cole. He was still looking out the window, still staring into the darkness.
    “Cole?” I said.
    He blinked and looked at me.
    “Are you OK?” I asked quietly.
    He didn’t reply, he just blinked again and looked over at the sink where Abbie was drying her hands on a dish towel. “What time did you get back that night?” he asked her.
    “Excuse me?”
    “The night Rachel died…you said you were at your mother-in-law’s.”
    “We’ve already been through all this—”
    “I know. I’m sorry. I just want to get things straight.”
    “All right.” She sighed. “Yes, I was at my mother-in-law’s.”
    “What time did you get back here?”
    Abbie glanced