“We, ah… There is no leader at Westerly Wellness. I am, how you might say, a guide. I am the chaperone. It is my role to lead others by the hand, each on their own journeys.”
“Lead them by the hand? So, literally a leader, then.”
André smirked, showing his polished pearly whites. “As you wish, Monsieur Logan.”
“Oh now, please. There’s no need for ‘Monsieur Logan.’ Let’s not stand on formality here,” Logan urged. “Call me ‘Detective Chief Inspector.’”
The smirk raised higher. André bowed his head in a nod of respect. “As you wish, Detective Chief Inspector. Now, whatever this is, perhaps we can retire to our vehicle, and discuss it over some tea? The acolytes may still be able to channel some solar energy from the last of the sun’s rays.”
Logan made no attempt to hide his contempt for that sentence. He looked past André to the now mostly scattered line of ‘acolytes.’ They were a range of ages, from twenties to fifties, he guessed. A pretty even mix of men and women, although the lineup was notably lacking any of the ‘strapping big boys’ Kathryn Chegwin had been so keen on.
There was nothing strapping about any of this lot. They looked like frightened mice who might throw themselves headfirst off the rocks and into the sea at any moment, rather than get involved in any sort of confrontation with the detectives.
He looked past them, too, to where Sinead stood by the lighthouse itself, watching expectantly to see what Logan was going to do next.
It was at this point that something occurred to the DCI.
He had absolutely no idea why they were there. Not really.
Sure, he’d seen all the ‘Westerly Wellness Centre’ adverts and the like on the wall in Bernie’s caravan, but so what? That wasn’t reason enough to deviate from the plan to go pay the local MSP a visit. Not when it meant driving all this way along that road at this time of night.
“Detective Chief Inspector?” André pressed, his inscrutable smile still fixed in place. “May I tempt you with that tea?”
“Eh, aye,” Logan said. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“There’s a lot of weird shit in here, eh?” asked Tyler, his voice muffled by his jacket sleeves. He had tied them across his face so they covered his mouth and nose, and the body of the jacket itself flapped down his back like Superman’s cape, only with greater water-repelling qualities.
Chucking out the dead pheasant may have removed the source of the smell, but the place still stunk to high heaven, and most likely would for the rest of its existence.
The detectives had no idea how many previous owners the caravan had, but it was a safe bet that they’d all been heavy smokers. The inside of the place was painted in a nicotine wash that coloured it in shades of yellow and brown.
“It’s like being inside one of them lungs you see in the photos on cigarette packets,” Hamza remarked. “Like, stop showing the rotten teeth and show a few pictures of this place. That’d put people off for life.”
Someone—presumably Bernie the Beacon—had been fighting a war against mildew and mould on several different fronts, and was getting roundly humped in every battle. It crept from the corners where the walls met the ceiling, blooming in all directions like a visual representation of the spread of the Black Death.
There were cleaner spots where he’d tried scrubbing it away, mostly around the areas where he’d pinned up his notes and photographs. It hadn’t been very effective, though, and several of his handwritten diatribes had been all but consumed by the oozing damp.
“We should have protective gear on for this,” Tyler said, unpinning another Polaroid from the wall.
He’d studied them closely to begin with, but was now gathering them up as quickly as possible so they could get the hell out of there and back into the fresh air. They’d taken enough photographs to be able to recreate the scene, if it came to it, and Palmer’s team had already swung by earlier to do the same.
“We do have protective gear,” Hamza said, waggling his gloved fingers.
“I meant proper protective gear. Like, I don’t know, oxygen tanks, say.”
“It’s no’ underwater.”
Tyler tutted. “You know what I’m saying. I mean, look at that.” He pointed to something that sat on a folding Formica table. It could have been anything—a piece of fruit or a dead rodent, perhaps—but mould had cocooned it, so now it was merely a shapeless furry lump of unknown origin. “I don’t want to breathe that in.”