A Dark Place to Die by Ed Chatterton Read Free Book Online Page B

at least to the investigation team. But here it looks like they've been used for exactly what they were designed for: cross-country motorbiking.
    The smell at the lock-up too is a bust. Rotten fish, stolen smoked salmon to be precise, part of a month-old robbery of a refrigerated Sainsbury's truck.
    Which leaves the Freeport call.
    They arrive there just after four and speak to the security guard who calls a second guard to take over at the gate while he directs Keane and Harris to their destination. It takes ten minutes to wind their way through the sprawling complex. Keane pulls the VW behind the security car and they step out.
    It's cold now, properly cold, and Harris is glad she's worn her Berghaus.
    'That must be the one,' says the security guard. 'If your information's right. Probably just some little fucker making trouble.'
    'Most likely,' says Keane. 'Stay here.' Silencing the man's meek territorial protests with a glance, he and Harris begin walking towards a relatively new-looking red container standing on its own about twenty metres from the Freeport boundary fence. Behind the mesh, the river runs west toeast with Crosby Beach to the north. The container squats almost directly beneath a wind turbine, silent and still. The word 'STENZER', the logo of a shipping firm, is painted onto the side of the container in a deeper red colour.
    Even before they go in, Keane knows this is the place.
    He can taste it. Something bad has happened here. Keane has sensed it at other crime sites before. Not always, but often enough to recognise the sensation when it arrives.
    The traffic noise diminishes as they approach; two banks of containers at right angles form a wind and noise shield. In the lee of these protective boxes there is dead air in the space occupied by the red container. Above them, off to one side, the turbine blades rotate.
    Keane notes that the red container can't be seen from the city side of the Freeport and is only partially visible to anyone on the wasteland bordering the site.
    The killers didn't have far to travel to place the victim amongst the iron men. Through the metal slatted fence, beyond an expanse of wasteland and beyond that the rock wall, Keane can see some of Gormley's figures.
    It's high tide and several of the sculptures nearest to the docks are already almost fully covered. In the cold grey light, they contain a powerful energy that Keane isn't altogether surprised by. He doesn't think of himself as an art lover. Like most locals, he was instinctively dismissive of the Gormley installation. Modern rubbish. Cost as much as a hospital wing. He remembers going out there with Julie one sunny Sunday. They parked behind the dunes next to the lake and asked for directions from a shaven-headed man with a dog and wearing the obligatory shiny nylon football shirt – this one the royal blue of Everton – which bulged over his substantial belly.
    'Don't waste yer fuckin' time, mate,' he snarled in an accent so pronounced as to render it a foreign language if he'd been speaking to anyone not born in the city. 'They're absolute fuckin' shite.' And then, to make sure they fully understood the absolute fucking shiteness of the sculptures, he jabbed a finger back towards the beach and spat out the words again. 'Ab-so-lute. Fuck-ing. Shite.'
    He and Julie giggled about the art critique all the way to the beach, imagining it being used word for word in
The Observer
'Sunday Review' section.
    Gormley Piece 'Absolute Fucking Shite'
.
    And, in all honesty, at first Keane didn't see exactly what all the fuss was about. It was an unusual sight, that had to be admitted; the figures staring blindly out across the water. Keane kept noticing details that got in between him and the art. Bits of litter. Dog shit. A group of youths milling around a couple of younger boys on the promenade. And Keane's policeman core had been moderately outraged by the local additions to the figures.
    He'd seen another Gormley piece over at