A quick glance in the rear-view mirror, a hand pushed up through her tousled, short-cut hair; by rights her lipstick could do with replenishing, but for now it would have to do. She was wearing a dark brown trouser suit and boots with a solid heel that brought her as close as damn it to six foot. Well, five ten. Her don't-mess-with-me look, as she liked to think.
Removing his hands from his pockets, Ramsden walked towards her. Down below, she could see Forensics already at work, shielding the body from sight.
'What have we got?' Karen said.
Ramsden coughed into the back of his hand. 'White female, thirty-five to forty-five, multiple stab wounds; dead some little time. Last night at a guess.'
'ME not here yet?'
'Stuck in traffic'
'Tell me about it.' Karen moved closer to the edge and looked down. 'That where it happened?'
'My guess, she was attacked somewhere up here and then pushed.'
Karen looked along the area to their left that had now been cordoned off, the muddied slope leading steeply down.
'Marks you can see,' Ramsden said. 'That and the angle of the body.' He shrugged. 'Maybe he finished her off down there, who knows?'
'Any ID yet?'
'Not so far.'
'No one similar reported missing?'
'Early days.'
Karen sighed and patted her coat pocket, hoping for a mint; since she'd stopped smoking on New Year's Day, she'd been committing dental suicide.
'Any idea yet what she was doing here?'
Ramsden told her so far they'd found a grey sports bra and matching vest, the vest dark with mud and what was almost certainly blood. A pair of grey jogging pants had lain nearby. One blue-and-white Puma running shoe had been discovered close to the body, the other amongst the trees at the far side of the old railway track, where presumably it had been hurled.
'Out running,' Karen said. 'Chances are she'll live close.'
Earlier in the year a woman had been attacked and killed while jogging in east London, Hackney. Stabbed. The investigation was still ongoing.
Karen glanced round at the flats that ranged below. At the end of the lane, she knew, a path led down to a crescent of Victorian houses and the sprawl of another low-rise council estate at the far side of Hornsey Road. Before being assigned to SCDl, she'd run a missing-person investigation here, a three-year-old boy who'd gone missing from the nursery and been found forty-eight hours later, safe but cold, asleep in someone's garden shed.
'Who found the body?'
Ramsden pointed towards a thirtyish woman in a yellow Puffa jacket, standing with two others of similar age. All with cigarettes on the go.
'Who talked to her?'
'Furness and Denison.'
'Talk to her again.'
'But…'
'Again, Mike. Do it yourself. I'm going down to take a look.'
Her protective clothing was in the boot of the car. Changed, she made her way carefully down, not wanting to make a fool of herself by slipping. The DI in charge of the Forensic team was someone she'd worked with before.
Inside the canopy, Karen bent towards the body. Some of the cuts looked superficial, others, she guessed, ran deep. There was bruising to the neck and face, another bruise – the result of a kick? – above the pelvis on the left-hand side. A fine spray of dried blood speckled the inner thigh, and something silver and crystalline trailed, snail-like, across the curve of her stomach.
Sexual assault?
Until the post-mortem there was no way to know for sure.
She stepped back outside and turned in a slow circle, trying to get a sense of what had happened, taking her time.
Ramsden was on his way towards her, having taken the long way round.
'The woman,' Ramsden said. 'Nothing she didn't say first time round.' He took a stick of chewing gum from his top pocket, removed the wrapping and put it in his mouth.
Karen held out her hand.
'Sorry,' Ramsden said. 'Last one.'
She didn't know whether to believe him or not.
'She recognise the victim?' Karen asked.
'Not from what she saw.'
'Get her to look at one of the Polaroids. Good chance, if they both use this place a lot, she'll have seen her before.'
But now Denison was shouting something from above, altar-boy face shining and a canvas sports bag held high in one gloved hand.
'Lucky bollocks,' Ramsden said, half beneath his breath. 'Fall in shit and he'd come up with a five-pound note.'
They climbed back up.
'It was there,' Denison said, pointing. 'Community centre. Pushed down below the steps by the door.'
'You've checked inside?' Karen asked.
Denison shook his head. 'Just a quick look. Sweatshirt. Towel. Socks.'
'Then we don't know it's hers,' Ramsden said.
'Let's see,' Karen said, reaching into the bag with gloved hands.
The wallet was safe in an inner pocket, square and dark, the leather soft with use. She lifted it out and let it fall open in her hand.
'Oh, shit,' she said softly. 'Shit, shit, shit.'
'What?' Ramsden said.
Karen held out towards him the warrant card with its small square photograph: Maddy Birch, Detective Sergeant, CID.
'She's one of ours.'
10
The press conference was packed to the gills. Television cameras, tape recorders, a smattering of old-fashioned spiral-bound notebooks, ballpoints at the ready. On the raised platform, a technician made a last-minute check of the microphones. The noise in the hall ebbed, and flowed. Out front, a Press and Public Relations officer had a quick word with the reporter from Sky News. Bar a terrorist attack or a celebrity scandal, the timing should guarantee blanket coverage on all the terrestrial channels, plus satellite and cable. BBC Radio was taking a live feed into its five o'clock news. A curtain twitched to one side, a door opened and, stern-faced, they shuffled in.
The platform was rich in seniority and rank. Assistant Commissioner Harkin took centre stage, to his right the Detective Chief Superintendent in command of Homicide West. Seated at the far left, Karen Shields was the only woman, the only black face amongst all those sober-faced and sombre-suited white men.
Arguments that she'd be better occupied elsewhere had been brushed aside: Public Relations liked to get her on camera as often as they could.
In her absence, Lee Furness was busy liaising with Forensics and overseeing the local area inquiries, while Mike Ramsden had travelled north to interview Maddy Birch's mother. Alan Sheridan, her office manager, was accessing the Sex Offenders Register, searching through computerised records of similar crimes. Only Paul Denison was temporarily idle, twiddling his thumbs in the car park waiting for Karen while she was stuck, unhappily, behind a microphone.
Bald head shining a little in the lights, the Assistant Commissioner began his statement: 'We are, all of us, shocked and saddened by the death of a colleague in this tragic and senseless way.' Using his notes sparingly, he spoke of Maddy Birch as a resourceful and dedicated officer who had shown extreme bravery only recently in going up against an armed and dangerous criminal when she herself was unarmed. 'All of us within the Metropolitan Police Service,' he concluded, 'have a grim determination to bring Maddy's killer or killers to justice as soon as possible.'
Flash bulbs popped.
Harkin gave brief details of the circumstances of Maddy's death and went on to give assurances that the Homicide officers leading the investigation would be able to call on the support, as necessary, of other Operational Crime Units, as well as the facilities of the National Crime Intelligence Service. Karen, finally, was introduced as one of the officers who were, as he put it, dealing with the minute-by-minute, the day-to-day, the real nitty-gritty. No one, least of all Karen, had warned him that, because of its possible links to slavery, it might no longer be politically correct to say nitty-gritty.