He looked like pretty much any other long-term addict who’d somehow managed to make it into old age, and yet, there was something about him. Something that niggled at Hamza as he crashed through the undergrowth and ducked the whipping branches. He knew him. He was sure of it.
He just couldn’t remember from where.
A stitch burned just below his ribcage, and he slowed to a stop, his torch scanning the forest ahead. There was no sound from up ahead now. There hadn’t been for thirty seconds or so. Either the old man was even faster than Hamza had thought, or he had stopped somewhere.
Somewhere nearby.
“Ham?” Tyler’s voice came from a few dozen yards behind and on the left.
“Here!” Hamza called, waving the torch back in Tyler’s direction to guide him.
Hamza waited until he heard Tyler approaching, then turned on the spot, letting the torchlight lick across the woods around him.
“We know you’re here,” he announced, fighting back his breathlessness to put on his best polis voice. “I’m Detective Sergeant Hamza Khaled. My colleague is Detective Constable Tyler Neish. We just want to talk, that’s all. You’re not in any trouble.”
The only response from the forest was the distant hooting of an owl, and the crashing and wheezing of DC Neish arriving on the scene.
Hamza turned with the torch, then drew back in fright as the light picked out the contours of Tyler’s face.
“Bloody hell, mate, what happened to you?” he yelped. “You look like Quasimodo fucked a Muppet.”
Tyler dabbed gingerly at the swollen lump of his top lip, then ran his fingers up over a bloated cheek and painfully misshapen eyebrow. “What one?”
Hamza studied the Detective Constable’s face in horrified wonder. “I don’t know. All of them.”
“I thell in nettleth,” Tyler explained.
“What?”
Tyler tried again. “I thell in nettleth.”
“You fell in nettles? What, when you went flying through the caravan door?”
“Yeth.”
“Did you land face first?”
“Yeth, acthually.”
Hamza winced. “Does it hurt?”
“I’ll give you three guetheth,” Tyler croaked, then his nostrils flared. It was quite a big movement, given the current size of them. “Here. Wait. Do you thmell thomething?”
Hamza sniffed the air, then nodded. “Aye,” he confirmed. “Smells a bit like…”
His face fell. He turned back in the direction they’d come from. Back in the direction of the caravan. Where there had been only darkness, there was now a suggestion of orange light, dancing somewhere beyond the forest’s edge.
“…fire!”
They doubled back, racing together, Tyler just slightly ahead despite his current high levels of physical discomfort. The smoke came to meet them as they drew closer to the caravan, thick, and pungent, and black.
Even before they reached the tree line, they knew. They could see. The flames had already mostly consumed the rickety structure. The Beacon now lived up to its name, burning so brightly in the darkness that even looking at it made the eyes ache.
The detectives both stopped just beyond the trees, when the wall of heat became too much for them to push through.
They stood there together, watching what was left of the structure fall in on itself, as fiery embers danced off into the dark night sky.
“Don’t suppose you took any of those evidence bags out with you, did you?” Hamza asked.
Tyler shook his head.
“No, thought not.”
“You?”
“Nah,” Hamza said.
They watched a while longer, the heat stinging their skin.
“What do you think the botthh ith going to thay?” Tyler lisped.
Hamza blew out his cheeks. “Dunno,” he said. “But I can’t imagine it’s going to be anything nice.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“For fuck’s sake!” Logan spat.
He scowled down into the murky depths of the liquid in the cup he’d been given. It was the shape and size of a disposable paper cup, but made from bamboo, apparently. André had seemed very pleased with himself about that.
“What is this? That’s not tea,” Logan continued.
“It’s nettle tea,” André said. “Homemade. It’s good for urinary tract infections.”
“I haven’t got a urinary tract infection, though,” Logan countered. “Although this tastes like what I’d be pissing if I did.”