A Detective Wheatley mystery…

The woman was undoubtedly dead, the stench of decay alone should have told him that. But still Wheatley cleared his mind of the hubbub of the gathering crowd, the sobs of the young ladies, the hum of Pettit’s cultured baritone comforting them and stretched his hand through the open mouth of the barrel towards the body crammed within, feeling for a pulse from the carotid artery beneath the woman’s jawbone. Of course, there was none.

The next Wheatley novel…

Finally finished the final draft; sending out now…

At first he could make no sense of what he was witnessing. No beer was seeping from the damaged barrel, instead it seemed to be plugged by a mass of what looked like hair. As he got closer he realised it was indeed hair. Greying hair attached to a head. And as he knelt by the barrel to peer into it, not just a head but a body. The body of a naked woman. Somehow the body of a human being had been crammed into the beer barrel.

(c) Barry Silsby 2022