Warraner looked shocked. Even Morland was surprised. He hadn’t heard Hayley Conyer swear in a coon’s age.

‘I want the girl’s remains taken beyond the town limits,’ she continued. ‘Far beyond. How you dispose of her is your own concern, but get her gone, do you understand?’

In that moment, Morland hated Hayley Conyer more than he had ever hated anyone before. He hated her and he hated Prosperous.

‘I understand,’ he said.

This time, he didn’t call her a bitch. He had a stronger word for her instead, and he used it all the way home. He’d dig up the body the next day, just as he had been told, but he wouldn’t do it alone, because fucking Harry Dixon would be right there alongside him.

‘Fuck!’ shouted Morland, as he drove. ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

He slammed the steering wheel hard in time with each use of the word, and the wind tugged at the branches of the trees as around him the woods laughed.

27

There were three towns within a two-mile radius of Prosperous’s limits. Only one, Dearden, was of any significant size; the other two were towns in the same way that Pluto used to be a planet, or a handful of guys standing at a crossroads counted as a crowd.

Every town has someone who is a royal pain in the ass. This role divides pretty evenly between the sexes, but the age profile is usually consistent: over forty at least, and preferably older still; usually single, or with the kind of spouse or partner who is either lost in hero-worship or one step away from murder. If a meeting is held, they’re at it. If change is in the air, they’re against it. If you say it’s black, they’ll say it’s white. If you agree that it’s white, they’ll reconsider their position. They’ve rarely held an elected position, or if they once did, then no one was crazy enough to reelect them. Their self-appointed role in life is to ensure that they’re nobody’s fool, and they want as many people as possible to know it. Because of them, things get done more slowly. Sometimes, things don’t get done at all. Very occasionally, they inadvertently do some good by preventing from happening that which might ultimately have proved to be unbenefcial or actively destructive to their community, but they manage to do so only on the basis that even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

If a town is sufficiently large, there may be many such persons, but Dearden was only big enough to contain a single entity. His name was Euclid Danes, and even a cursory Internet search in connection with Dearden threw up Euclid’s name with a frequency that might lead one to suspect that he was the only living soul in town. In fact, so omnipresent was Euclid Danes that even Dearden was not big enough to contain him, and his sphere of influence had extended to encompass parts of Prosperous too. Euclid Danes owned a couple of acres between Prosperous and Dearden, and it appeared that he had made it his lifelong business to singlehandedly resist the expansion of Prosperous to the south. His land acted as a buffer between the towns, and he had steadfastly and successfully fought every attempt by the citizens of Prosperous to buy him, or force him, out. He didn’t seem interested in money or reason. He wanted to keep his land, and if by doing so he irritated the hell out of the wealthy folk up the road, then so much the better.

Euclid Danes’s house was the original bad neighbor nightmare: poorly kept, with a yard that was a kissing cousin to wilderness and littered with pieces of unidentifable machinery which, with a little work and a lot of chutzpah, might even have qualified as some form of modern sculpture. An original Volkswagen Beetle stood in the drive. In an open garage beyond stood the skeleton of a second Beetle, scavenged for parts.

I parked and rang the doorbell. From somewhere at the back of the house came the sound of excited barking.

The door was opened by a stick-thin woman in a blue housecoat. A cigarette smoldered in her right hand. In her left she held a small mongrel puppy by the scruff of the neck.

‘Yes?’ she said.

‘I was looking for Euclid Danes.’

She took a drag on the cigarette. The puppy yawned.

‘Jesus, what’s he done now?’ she said.

‘Nothing. I just wanted to ask him a few questions.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m a private investigator.’

I showed her my identifcation. Even the puppy looked more impressed by it than she did.

‘You sure he’s not in trouble?’

‘Not with me. Are you Mrs Danes?’

This provoked a burst of laughter that deteriorated into a ft of coughing.

‘Jesus Christ, no!’ she said, once she’d recovered. ‘I’m his sister. There’s nobody desperate enough to marry that poor sonofabitch, or if there is then I don’t want to meet her.’

I couldn’t see a wedding ring on her finger either. Then again, she was so thin that it would have been hard to make one ft, or if it did the weight would have unbalanced her. She was so skinny as to be almost sexless, and her hair was cut shorter than mine. If it hadn’t been for the housecoat and the pale twig legs that poked out from under her skirt, she could have passed for an elderly man.

‘So, is Mr Danes around?’

‘Oh, he’s around somewhere, just not here. He’s on his throne, holding court. You know where Benny’s is?’

‘No.’

‘Head into town and take the first left after the intersection. Follow the smell of stale beer. When you find him, tell him to get his ass home. I’m cooking meatloaf. If he’s not sitting at the table when it comes out of the oven, I’ll feed it to the dogs.’

‘I’ll be sure to let him know.’

‘Much appreciated.’ She held the puppy up at eye level. ‘You want to buy a puppy?’

‘No, thank you.’

‘You want one for free?’

The puppy, seeming to understand that it was the object of discussion, wagged its tail hopefully. It was brown, with sleepy eyes.

‘Not really.’

‘Damn.’

‘What’ll you do with it?’

She looked the puppy in the eyes.

‘Feed it meatloaf, I guess.’

‘Right.’

She closed the door without saying another word. I remained where I was for a few moments, the way you do when you’ve just had something that might have passed for a conversation if you weren’t paying attention, then got back in my car and went to look for Benny’s.

Benny’s wasn’t hard to find. Dearden was no metropolis, and there was only one intersection of any size at the heart of town. It didn’t even have a signal, just a quartet of stop signs, and Benny’s was the sole business on its street. Actually, Benny’s was the sole anything on its street. Beyond it lay only woods. Benny’s was a squat redbrick building whose sign had been provided by the Coca-Cola Company at least thirty years earlier, and was now faded and yellowed. It also lacked a possessive apostrophe. Maybe Benny didn’t like to boast. If so, it was a wise move.

A certain odor comes with a bar that isn’t cleaned regularly. All bars smell of it a little – it’s a product of spilt beer that has ingrained itself into the floors and storage spaces, along with whatever chooses to propagate in old yeast – but Benny’s smelled so strongly of it, even from outside, that birds flying through the air above were at risk of alcohol-induced disorientation. Benny’s had added an extra component to the stink by combining it with old grease: the extractors at the back of the building were caked with it. By the time I got to the door Benny’s had put its mark on me, and I knew that I’d end up stinking of the place all the way home, assuming my arteries didn’t harden and kill me first.

Curiously, it didn’t smell as bad inside, although that would have been difficult under the circumstances. Benny’s was more of a restaurant than a bar, assuming you were prepared to be generous with your definition of a restaurant. An open kitchen lay behind the counter to the left, alongside a couple of beer taps that suggested microbrews were regarded as a passing fad. A menu board on the wall above had adjustable plastic letters and numbers arranged into the kind of prices that hadn’t changed since Elvis died, and the kind of food choices that had helped to kill him. The tables were Formica, and the chairs wood and vinyl. Christmas tree lights hung on all four walls just below the ceiling, providing most of the illumination, and the décor was old beer signs and mirrors.