The Mystery of Floren Woods

The camera flashed. Jade blinked, even though it wasn't pointed at her.

"I asked whether you recognize the victim, Ms. Galloway," the Detective Chief Inspector said impatiently.

"The body?" Amy. "No, no, like I told that policewoman, I don't think I do. . ."

"Don't think you do or don't?" the DCI prompted.

"Well, I haven't' looked closely. . ."

Another camera flash. How many pictures of the corpse did they need?

"Hm," said the DCI, unimpressed. "And why on earth were you all the way out here?"

"I live in the woods--"

"The woods?"

"Yes, I have a small cabin about a mile over there." She waved vaguely in the approximate direction of her home.

"You live alone?"

"Yes," she answered, coldly.

"And how long have you lived alone in an isolated cabin in the middle of the woods?"

Eight months. "About a year, I guess," she lied.

"And you went for an early morning walk. . .?"

Jade sighed, and told her story again.

"Yes," she said, curtly. "I have insomnia. Sometimes I go for a walk to clear my head. I often walk in this direction. I saw the corpse. I called the cops. You took approximately three hundred years to get here. I spoke to your Sergeant and now I'm speaking to you. The end."

Police were coming and going, arriving and leaving in their screechy cars . Jade cringed every time a new set of tires tore at the ground. It was, technically, her land, but there didn't seem to be any point in telling them to leave.

She had summoned them here, after all.

"Mrs. Buchanan!"

The sudden shout caused Jade and the DCI to both turn sharply, just in time to see a policeman throw up all over the dead body.

"For heaven's sake, Davis!" the DCI strode angrily towards the scene. "You are contaminating the crime scene! To put it mildly!"

Jade wasn't invited to follow, but she did anyway.

"Sorry, sir," the man mumbled. "It just that. . .well, I know her, sir. . ."

"And?" the DCI prompted impatiently. "Who is she?"

"Amy Buchanan, sir. Headmistress at the school in Little Floren. She was my headmistress, sir, I just. . .who could have done this?"

"That's what we're here to find out, Davis," said the DCI, their voice softening, but only a little.

"It's not such a big deal, Davis," the coroner said with a wink. "We have what we need. It will be a smelly ride back to the morgue for you, though, I wager."

"Findings?" the DCI snapped.

"She's been dead for about forty-eight hours, give or take," said the coroner. "She's been out here for, oh, maybe the last three or four of them? And she was buried in concrete."

Jade's blood ran cold.

"Concrete?" said the DCI incredulously. "That grey stuff all over her?"

"Yes," said the coroner, rolling her eyes. "The grey stuff. And look at her fingernails! It's like she was trying to claw her way out of hardened concrete, but that's just not possible!"

"Hm. We should--"

"Sir." The Sergeant was back and was nodding towards Jade pointedly, a mousy, irritating woman who was trying far too hard to impress her colleagues.

"Still here, Ms. Galloway?" said the DCI. His voice was short and angry.

"Yes," said Jade. It was the easiest answer in addition to being obviously true.

"Well, I think it's time you showed me this cabin of yours."

The DCI waved his inferiors aside as Jade led him the mile through the woods back to her home. She knew it wouldn't help the man's mood, but she nevertheless took the harder route, the one that required a bit of scrambling and a lot of uphill, noting the pudgy DCI's red face and labored breathing with glee.

"Tea?" she asked as the DCI surveyed her tiny, one room cabin breathlessly before collapsing into her only armchair. The floorboards creaked under his weight, making Jade grimace.

"Yes," said the DCI.

She stoked the fire and checked the water in the kettle.

"No electricity?" he asked.

"No," said Jade, deciding that there was enough for one cup, and hanging the kettle over the fire. "I prefer a simple life DCI--what did you say your name was?"

"I didn't, but it's Rogers."

"DCI Rogers," said Jade. "I have had rather a trying morning, first discovering a body and then being interrogated by you and your people. Will you be much longer?"

"Eager to be rid of us?" Rogers asked dryly.

"Well. Yes?" said Jade. "Do people normally want you hanging around?"

"Ms. Galloway," said Rogers, testily, "there is a dead woman on your property. A dead woman who was buried in concrete. And no other homes in the area apart from yours. Do you not find that. . .interesting?"

Jade shrugged.

"It's only an hour and half's drive to get here from Little Floren. Not much longer from St. Anne's, if I think about it. From here, you can't hear any cars."

Jade paused to let the silence fill the DCI's ears, underlining her point.

"Anyone could have dumped her there."

A long pause as they stared unblinkingly at one another.

DCI Rogers looked away first.

"Forget the tea," he said, pulling himself to his feet and making for the still open door. "I should get back."

He was two steps beyond the threshold before he turned back and said, "Oh, one more thing. Did you really not know the victim?"

"Well. . ." How to answer? "Yes, I know Amy, but I didn't realize the body was hers."

"You didn't recognize her?" he asked with surprise.

"She didn't look much like herself. And, like I already said, I didn't look closely."

"How did you call us?"

Jade blinked.

"What? Oh, on my cell phone--"

"Cell reception, but no electricity?"

"Yes? What has that got to do with anything?"

"We'll be needing the number."

"I gave it to your Sergeant."

"Don't leave town, Ms. Galloway."

Jade considered pointing out that she lived so far from town that she'd basically left it already, but she didn't think the joke would go down particularly well.

"As you wish," she said.

With a grunt the DCI turned and headed back the way they'd come. Almost. Jade smiled again, knowing already that Rogers would get lost.

"I suppose it's too much to hope that he breaks his neck in a fall," she muttered to herself.

Mechanically, she made herself a cup of tea and sat in the only piece of furniture she owned apart from her bed, cup in hands and eyes fixed firmly on the door, unmoving.

Her tea grew cold, but still she sat, barely remembering to blink. The sun crept across the sky, but Jade didn't move.

She was waiting for dark.

In the dark, visitors would need a light, and if they had a light, she would see them coming.

The sun set. But still she waited. The fire sputtered out. The sky, visible through the window in the upper half of the door, went from blue to purple to black.

Finally, she rose, her body creaking painfully from the hours of stillness. She placed the ice cold cup of untouched tea on the mantlepiece. Swiftly, before she could change her mind, she shoved her armchair to one side and rolled up the carpet.

Directly beneath where DCI Rogers had sat that morning was a trapdoor.

She couldn't see it, not now that the sun had set and the fire had died, but she knew it was there. In the dark, she opened the latch with expert fingers. With a deep breath, she lowered herself down the rickety ladder into the cellar.

The cellar was small, barely the same width and breadth as the room above it, but it was enough.

She took her phone from her pocket, staring resolutely at the glowing screen. With a sigh, she turned the flashlight app on.

The cellar was in complete disarray. The new concrete floor had been torn to pieces, fragments of 'grey stuff', mixed with dried blood and torn flesh, scattered across the room.

"It doesn't make any sense!" said Jade, leaning against the wall. "How. . .?"

Amy had visited, and Jade had killed her. She'd pushed the body into her cellar and covered it with the concrete she'd just bought (would the store manager remember?) and she'd let it set, going about her day, she'd even called the cops because she hadn't want to touch the mangled corpse when she'd found it, but. . .

How had the body been moved from the cellar to the woods? Jade certainly hadn't done it.

Her phone vibrated suddenly, and she screamed, dropping it.

"Who the hell. . .," she muttered as she fell to her knees, shaking, to retrieve it.

Unknown number.

Dread filling her heart, Jade answered.

"Hello?"

"Ms. Galloway, it's DCI Rogers--"

"I told you everything already!" She hoped she sounded irritated and not terrified.

"Ms. Galloway, Amy Buchanan's body is missing from the morgue. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

"What? No! What are you talking about?"

"Look, we know you used to work at the school. We know that Ms. Buchanan suspected you of child abuse and fired you over it. We know that that is what caused you to run away to the woods. And, most importantly Ms. Galloway, we know that the victim intended to visit you a few days ago to try, one last time, to make you confess. Look, I don't know why you took the body or what you thought it would achieve, but my officers are on their way to you now. They're almost there, so there's no point running."

"Sure," said Jade. She hung up.

The flat-footed idiots didn't know the woods. If she left now--

In the room above, the unlocked front door creaked open.

Too late!

Jade looked around frantically, even though she knew better than anyone that there was no way to escape.

"Jade. . ."

Jade froze.

That voice. . .

"Jade!"

Jade shone her phone's flashlight up toward the cellar door.

A face looked in, a greying, rotting face, a cheek half missing from where it had been ripped free of the concrete that had covered it.

Jade screamed.

"Jade," said Amy, her mutilated mouth widening in a huge, bloody grin. "Are you ready to confess yet?"