Page 16 of The Man Made of Smoke

He looks down into the grass at the side of the trail.

He spotted the remains from a distance, although at that point they were partially concealed in the undergrowth, the dirty black and brown of them barely visible in the bright green between the trees. As he drew closer, he mistook them for a pile of charred wood. But then he realized what was lying here: a body, burned beyond recognition. None of the facial features remain. Any clothing has melded with the blackened skin. One arm pokes up in the air a little, and the exposed bone has the cracked, mottled texture of a stick in the ashes of a cold bonfire.

There is something small and pitiful about the remains. Fire diminishes a body, like a hand clenching slowly into a fist. But these remains seem tinier than most. Once upon a time, this was a living, breathing human being: someone full of motion and movement, love and laughter. But the remains in the undergrowth are so empty and still that it’s hard to square them with that idea, and the sight of them stirs familiar emotions inside him. The sadness at this loss of life. The frustration of wanting to protect someone, and it being far too late. The anger.

I will find who did this to you, he thinks.

It’s no longer his job, but it’s there anyway: the need for justice. The feeling that the scales have to be tilted back to right, or else his own world will always be askew.

Keeping a careful distance from the remains, he examines them asbest he can from the path. There is no damage to the surrounding undergrowth, and so it’s obvious that the woman—and he’s sure the remains are female—did not die here. Her body must have been burned elsewhere before being brought out into the woods.

John looks around again. He knows these trails well, and works through a mental map of them now, trying to work out how she might have been delivered here. There are only a handful of possible routes, and even the most remote of them would take daring. The most likely scenario is that she was brought here under cover of darkness. And it would have to have been during the night just gone. If she had been here longer than that, someone would have found her already.

Or something would, he thinks.

He looks up.

The crow is perched in the branches above, its head tilted to the side.

“Why bring her out here?” he asks it.

The crow just watches him.

It’s a good question though. And having gone to all that effort, why leave her so poorly concealed? The island offers a thousand isolated spots in which a body could be more effectively disposed of than this. Even here, if the remains had been carried just a few meters farther into the undergrowth, they might have remained undiscovered a while longer.

Assuming it happened under cover of darkness, he supposes it’s possible that whoever did it imagined they’d done a better job than they had. Or perhaps they’d got spooked and just wanted to get the whole thing over with as quickly as possible. Except the kind of man who would burn a woman’s body and carry it into the woods in the middle of the night doesn’t strike him as the type to get spooked easily.

He checks up and down the trail again.

A part of him wishes the culpritwaswalking toward him right now. That way he might have a chance to let out some of the anger he’s feeling. But there is nobody is in sight. The woods are empty and silent. And another part of him is glad about that.

He looks back down at the remains.

I will find who did this to you, he thinks again.

And then he takes out his bottle of water and waits.

It is close to forty minutes before the police arrive.

He’s beginning to worry that another walker will chance upon the scene first, but then he spots them in the distance. The two officers are ambling along casually. Not a care in the word.

Liam Fleming and David Watson.

Watson raises a tentative hand as they approach, and John nods in return. Fleming doesn’t acknowledge him, of course. He has his hands in his pockets and is studying the trail, little tufts of dust at his feet like he’s looking for a rock to kick into the undergrowth. Fleming never took John seriously as an officer, he knows. Now he no longer even has to pretend to.

“David.” John nods again as the officers reach him. “Liam.”

Fleming still doesn’t look at him. Instead, he walks past—a little too close, as always—and then, his hands still in his pockets, he rocks up on his tiptoes and peers down into the undergrowth. His expression is blank; he might be looking at fly-tipped rubbish.

“I walked north from Garrett Rocks,” John tells them. “Didn’t see a soul along the way. It was seven twenty-three when I found her and called it in. My guess is that she was left here sometime last night.”

“Her?” Fleming is still looking down at the remains. “She?”

“Just a hunch.”

Fleming nods, as though he hadn’t been expecting anything stronger.

“She wasn’t killed here,” John says.

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