‘Oh, fuck!’ he bellowed on impact, kicking the tube as he lay, still spread-eagled on the ground like an overturned turtle. His thumb had a huge gash on it, running from the pulp down the front of the joint to the knuckle, and blood jetted from it, reddening his cuff as he held his bloody hand upwards, attempting to stem the flow. Taking Alice’s outstretched arm, he pulled himself up and examined his wound for a few seconds, then, grasping his injured hand in the other one, he smiled widely as if to signal that he was now all right. The two sergeants trailed behind their guide towards an untidy mound of skeletal, scrapped cars, smithereens of shattered windscreen glass crunching beneath their feet.
‘It’s in there,’ the foreman said, waving vaguely in the direction of a doorless Renault Clio which rested precariously on the burnt chassis of another vehicle.
‘I seen it when I wis liftin’ the car up wi’ the crane… so I jist dumped it oan the other wan, and called yous.’
‘You’re sure it’s a b… b… body?’ Simon Oakley asked, his thumb pressed hard against his mouth. Thin strands of his fair hair were being blown by the wind into his eyes, making them water.
‘No. But it looked like wan… less Andy’s up tae his games again.’
‘What do you mean?’ Alice asked.
‘A couple o’ months ago he got wan o’ they naked dummies, ken, and put it in a Jag. I nearly wet masel wi’ fright.’
From their viewpoint on the ground, nothing could be seen inside the Renault, so, exchanging nervous glances, they simultaneously began to climb up to it, Alice clambering onto the bonnet of the burnt hulk and Oakley stepping up onto its boot. He got up there first, bent his weighty torso through the gap on the driver’s side, and craned in.
‘It’s a body alr… r… right, Alice,’ he shouted, wobbling slightly on his makeshift platform, snowflakes starting to lie on his broad back as he continued looking inside. Half a minute later, as he remained motionless, gazing into the space, Alice said, ‘Come on, Simon! We’d better get going, eh? Start taping off the area. I’ll get the stuff from the car. The boss may be here any minute, and she’ll expect us at least to have made a start by the time she arrives.’
Immediately Oakley’s head re-emerged from the interior, and like a great lumbering bear he began slowly and carefully to descend, stepping warily along the curved surfaces until, in an undignified rush, he slid to the ground, bumping his buttocks and landing feet first, his balance saved only by Alice grabbing his arms.
‘Thanks, pal,’ he said, looking anxiously into her eyes.
‘Well?’ she asked, still holding onto him as if they were engaged in some kind of strange dance.
‘Well, what?’ he replied, bemused, blood from his injured thumb dripping on to the ground.
‘A man? A woman? The body. What was it?’
‘Female,’ he said wearily, ‘maybe thirty-five or forty. Arms across her chest like the other one. She had a gold chain around her neck and it looks as if she’s been s… s… stabbed, too.’
Sets of stepladders were produced for the Scenes of Crime officers and the photographers, together with halogen lamps from the garage. Throughout all their measured, meticulous activity, the snow continued to fall, thick and fast, coating everyone and everything. It laid a spurious mantle of innocence over the scene, disguising its real character beneath a spotless veneer.
Recognising one of the cameramen as he shook his head free of its white thatch, Alice asked to see the images that he had taken of the victim’s face. In the biting cold, he showed her, shivering theatrically to hurry her along. But it was academic. She knew, in her heart of hearts, before seeing a single picture, that the dead woman would be Annie Wright. And, sure enough, her pale features had been captured by the camera. Her soul, lost.
‘Seen enough?’ the man asked gently, brushing the snow from Alice’s shoulders as she continued to gaze at the face, deep in thought.
Walking down a corridor formed by parallel rows of rusting gas cylinders, the dismembered entrails of a digger littering her route, she spotted the DCI, tucked behind a skip, hugging herself, trying to keep warm in the raw wind. She was in conversation with someone, and every time she spoke a cloud of pale vapour billowed from her mouth like smoke from a small dragon, followed immediately by an answering puff from the other person. Suddenly catching sight of her sergeant, she hollered across, ‘What news?’
‘We can identify the victim, Ma’am,’ Alice called back, finding that even forming the words was an effort in the biting cold, her mouth numb, lips curiously inflexible. ‘It’s Annie Wright, the prostitute who was raped a couple of months ago. I told you about her, remember – the trial that went ahead not so long ago and we lost? I’ve just seen a photograph and it’s her.’
Elaine Bell closed her eyes. ‘Christ Almighty! All hell will be let loose now. They’ll think it’s another bloody Ipswich. And it can’t be the sodding priest this time, either, we’ve had him babysat ever since we let him go.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Dr Zenabi began, stepping away from the skip and finding himself interrupted instantly.
‘What d’you mean, Ahmed, ‘not necessarily?’ the inspector demanded.
Taken aback by her intensity, and with an uneasy smile on his face, he mumbled, ‘Nothing. Well, we’ll see at the PM, eh?’
The kitchen was tiny, lit by a single, bare light bulb, and smelt faintly of stale gas. Diane led her into it, puzzled that a policewoman should call on them at such an hour. But she showed no signs of concern, her fingers travelling deftly on her play station as she walked.
‘It’s about your mum,’ Alice said, already feeling sick to her stomach.
The girl looked up from the flashing screen and replied, in a matter-of-fact tone, ‘She’s oot the noo. I’ve been away at Aviemore on a school trip the last three days, got back at tea-time. She’ll no’ be hame till later, but I can phone her if it’s important, like.’
No, she won’t. No, you can’t, Alice thought, still saying nothing but preparing herself for her role as the bearer of bad news, the destroyer of happiness. And the task became no easier for her however many times it had been done, and practice did not seem to make perfect. Over her ten years in the force she had been chosen as the herald of death nineteen times, and remembered every single occasion. Each differed from the others, but they were all, without exception, horrible. Parents weeping over the loss of a child, husbands over wives, sisters over brothers. And most other combinations, too. All of them, when linked with the word ‘death’, bringing about the collapse of small worlds, the ending of any pure, unmingled joy.
Old Mrs Wilson had been no exception, her grief as real as all the rest. But this was the first time Alice had had to break the news to a ten-year-old, fatherless girl that her mother had been killed. Hearing her own voice, she felt that in telling the child she was, in some way, complicit, as if her hand, too, had been on the knife.
Paper crumples, she thought, not people, yet it was the word which came to mind on seeing the child’s reaction to the awful news. Looking at Diane’s tearful face, she wrapped her arms around the slight body, feeling her quivering like a frightened bird, aware that the protection she could give was illusory, shielded her from nothing. Tomorrow Diane would have to face the world alone, having lost the most precious person known to her; and her childish love had not yet curdled, become judgemental, still remained open and unashamed.
By the time the family liaison officer arrived, the girl had stopped crying and was drinking from a mug of hot chocolate, sniffing to herself between sips. Alice waved goodbye to her and then crept out, feeling drained and inadequate, worried now that her replacement had seemed so cool, detached, in her dealings with the child. Should the possibility of ‘care’ even have been mentioned, when there might be a relation somewhere or other, a grandparent unaware of the existence of a grandchild, or an uncle or aunt prepared to give her a home? Preoccupied, she almost walked past the mail she had seen stacked neatly on the hall table, remembering before crossing the threshold to check the most recent postmark on the letters. And the neighbours must be seen too, questioned as soon as possible while anything of any significance remained fresh in their memories.