Page 77 of Unalive On Air

“Do you think Davies did it?” Trystan asks me as we watch a couple of people in clinical white coveralls enter the newly erected tent.

“I dunno. At the moment he seems like the most likely suspect, but I still don’t understand what his reasoning could be. If anything, that guy was the most work‑shy son of a badger I’ve ever met. Why would he create more work for himself?”

For a while, it feels as though we’re getting no new information. Inside the tent, an area is sectioned off, and a very slow digging process begins. Outside, officers stand silently watching the horizon, not saying anything of note to each other besides accepting takeaway cups of coffee and relieving each other for bathroom breaks.

“I’m going to go into the hotel and watch the news in the bar,” Jeanie says. A few of the other ghosts follow her, including Pixie, Pete, and thankfully, Stove.

Josh, Camille, and Trystan stay with me as Jeanie’s bones are painstakingly exhumed and laid out on a nearby table.

Long after the sun has set, Josh and Camille get bored, and now it’s just Trystan, me, two forensic officers, and two police in the cordon.

“Something occurred to me earlier, but I didn’t want to mention anything in front of the others,” I say.

Trystan looks up from his cross-legged position on the floor. “Go on.”

“That maybe we were all killed because the murderer knew . . . or thought we had information on a previous murder. Kind of a cover-up spiral into hell.”

“Cover-up Spiral into Hell was actually the name of my high school band,” he says.

No, Gary, you are not allowed to find that adorable. “Do you remember finding out anything before you died? Anything that perhaps felt like a revelation at the time?”

Trystan doesn’t answer my question. Instead, he asks one of his own. “Why don’t you want to say it in front of the others?”

“Huh?”

“Why leave them out . . .” He raises a brow.

It goes against everything I ever talked about on my radio show, but . . . “I . . . feel as though I shouldn’t trust them all.” With heavy emphasis on Jeanie, Peter, and Stove.

He smiles in a cute, but slightly judgemental way. “Wasn’t it you who said feels have no place in a murder investigation?”

I sigh. “No, you’re right. They don’t. It’s just that I’ve never been so . . . involved in one before.”

He’s still smiling, and I’m in danger of losing my train of thought.

“Someone knows something, and by someone, I mean a ghost, and they’re not telling me the full story.”

“Actually . . . I agree,” he says. “Stove is shifty. Pete’s weirdly obsessed with his supposed murderer, and every time I mention Pete to Jeanie, she changes the subject.”

I attempt to sit next to him on the stony dirt patch outside the forensics tent. It takes me a while to arrange my limbs so they’re not sinking into the mud. “That’s exactly what I mean. Can I ask what you were doing the morning you died?”

Trystan’s momentarily startled by the minor change of subject. “I was getting stuff ready for Wipeout. It was a massive event every year. Just before I died, I think I was doing like . . . I don’t really know what you call it, but making sure everything was safe.”

“Risk assessments?” I suggest.

“Yes, yes, risk assessments.”

“How long would there have been until the festival began?”

“Couple of weeks.”

“And what things did you have to safety check?”

“Ooh.” Trystan puffs out an enormous sigh while he thinks. “The beach and the neighbouring beaches. Looking for litter or dangerous objects. Sometimes shit like old cars or sharp bits of metal get buried in the sand and you don’t really know they’re there, but when the tide comes in and out every day it might expose something. I check the water quality of the sea. The car park areas, the hotel grounds themselves—”

I get a bit excited and interrupt. “Did you ever go near Jeanie’s burial site?” The killer may have assumed Trystan stumbled upon their secret.

He hums to himself. “I don’t think so. Only because it wasn’t an area that the public had access to during the festival.”