Page 163 of Not That Ridiculous

Kevin looked at me expectantly. “Are you coming, or what?”

“Yes, I am.” I pushed up from the storage tub and walked over to him on only slightly wobbly legs.

We went downstairs with a brief diversion to the bedroom for Kevin to grab a hoodie from the drawer that was now filled with his clothes, then collected Phil from the kitchen.

“Wow,” Kevin said as I shoved him out of the front door ahead of me. “You’re really hungry.”

“Low blood sugar,” I said, shutting the door and putting my back to it, panting lightly. “When it drops, it drops. Let’s go!”

Kevin loaded Phil in the back seat of his Land Cruiser and got in the car.

The moment he was in, I slid back out of the passenger seat. “Be with you in a minute,” I said. “I have to make a quick call first.”

“No problem.” Kevin buckled himself in and leaned forwards to play with the radio.

I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and fumbled the passcode before I unlocked it. I pulled up my contacts and stood on my lawn, staring up at the loft with my phone pressed to my ear as it rang and rang.

It went to voicemail.

I re-dialled. Again. The third time, he picked up. “Charlie?—”

“Liam,” I said, “get over here right now.”

“I’m in town working and?—”

“Liam. I need you. To come over. To my house.Right now. Bring forensics.”

I heard the slight intake of breath before he said, “No.”

“Yes.”

“Another body?

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“The loft.”

“Shit.Shit.Where in the loft? Not in the walls. Kevin said the rest of the house was solid. Forensics backed that up.” He was on the move; I heard a car door slamming. His siren gave a short whoop as he muscled into traffic.

“Nope. Not in the walls.” I decided there was no point in telling him that regardless of what Kevin had said about the walls in the rest of the house, he hadn’t actually been in the loft until today. It was moot, anyway, since forensics had. “Not under the floorboards, either. This one was in a plastic tub like Ray’s, and he was sitting right there in plain sight among all the other boxes.”

Liam was silent for a moment. If he was in town, he’d be here any minute. “Plain sight?”

“Yep. Couple of boxes stacked on top, but otherwise, there he was. Crammed in a tub. Cat litter.” Except this one was naked, because he was waiting for his costume to be finished.

Centurion was my guess.

“We were working on the theory that whoever was behind this had either stopped or died. But if that tub got in amongst your boxes, then they must be still active. Shit. They’ve been in your house. I don’t?—”

“Your theory’s fine. Those aren’t my boxes. That’s not my stuff up there. None of it is.”

“What?” The siren blipped on and off again for a short burst and I heard a horn blare. Liam was probably being a dick and forcing his way over the roundabout where the roadworks were.

The theory was better than fine, it was spot on. The perp was definitely dead. “Today is the first time I’ve gone into the loft.”

“What?” he shouted. “You’ve been living in that house for years!”

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