‘It’s not a female only squad, that would be ridiculous. Often boys are more comfortable talking to males than females; we’ve just not had that many guys apply for the job.’
‘Well,’ he puffed himself up like a rooster. ‘What do you reckon on my chances?’
Stevie pinched her thumb and forefinger into a zero.
Barry didn’t skip a beat. ‘That partner of yours, Tash, is she available?’
She hid her smile. ‘Fancy her do you?’ He certainly wouldn’t be the first.
Barry didn’t respond straight away. He looked at Stevie and then stepped back as if he’d just discovered she’d been in contact with a contagious disease. ‘She’s not gay is she?’
Stevie flicked him a shrug. ‘She’s never tried to crack on to me.’
Barry relaxed, rubbed his hands together. ‘Good. So here’s hoping we combine forces on this case, then. Where’s the boss?’ He moved over to the closed bedroom door, was about to thump on it when Stevie grabbed him by the arm and pointed to Izzy, putting her finger to her lips.
‘Sorry,’ Barry said in a stage whisper, plonking himself on the other end of the couch. She looked at his face as he regarded the child and sensed a crack peeping through the brash schoolboy veneer.
‘Barry, is it really bad?’ she asked softly.
He nodded, smoothed his shaved scalp, dashed her a smile and turned back to face Izzy before she could read it. ‘One of those times when I wonder how we do this,’ he said in a voice barely audible.
Monty emerged from his room and Barry sprang to his feet. ‘Ready boss?’ he boomed. Izzy stirred on the couch and mumbled in her sleep. Stevie shot him another scowl.
Monty kissed her goodbye. As he opened the door to leave the distant breakers greeted her like the sound of giant guns pounding the shore.
5
EXCERPT FROM CHAT ROOM TRANSCRIPT 200107
BETTYBO: Danil says Im sexy and cute
HARUM SCARUM: did u send photo?
BETTYBO: no im not that dum!
HARUM SCARUM: then how does he know?
BETTYBO: Ooo ... ur jelos!
HARUM SCARUM has left the room.
Barry pulled up alongside the several police cars parked on the perimeter of the floodlit building site, jumping from the car before the blue light on the unmarked stopped whizzing. Monty stayed where he was for a moment, closed his eyes and counted to ten. He should be used to this, but he wasn’t. He’d lost count of the body dumpsites he’d been to, men, women and kids, their bodies hidden in ways that made the desecration even more monstrous, one more stab of the knife into the flesh of those grieving their loved ones.
The scene could have been a movie set and he the director, summoned now the props and the actors were in place. Portable lights shone from newly erected scaffolds, the rubbish skip centre stage, like a World War One tank stuck in the mud. Monty changed his mind. This wasn’t like a film set at all, this was a battleground. He donned overalls, took another deep breath and stepped into the fray.
A police photographer circled the skip, let off a few flashes and retreated to make room for the scene of crime officers. One man was dusting the bin for prints. When he’d finished with one side of the bin, another hauled himself into it and began clambering around. He pointed out the protruding limb to Monty, as if he could have missed it. The leg emerged from the rubble like a spindly tree from a barren hillside, twisted, small and naked.
Her head was also exposed. Someone had already wiped away much of the dust and debris from the small waxy face. He mentally compared the features with the file photo of ten year old Bianca Webster: hamster cheeks, badly dyed hair. Just a runaway he’d hoped, until he’d been told about the missing computer. It was still early, they might find her yet, he had thought at the time. Jesus, his own optimism surprised him sometimes.
The mortuary chief, Henry Grebe, arrived in his white van. Funny, Monty thought, child abductors had a propensity for white vans too. The rings on Grebe’s fingers flashed under the lights as he rubbed his hands, addressing his band of body snatchers who rattled the gurney along the rough ground beside him. His voice carried to Monty across no man’s land. ‘Come on lads, chop, chop. If we get rid of this one good and fast we might still catch the end of the test.’
Monty caught the eye of the pathologist, Melissa Hurst. She beckoned him over. ‘I thought you were supposed to be doing something about that odious man.’ She’d pulled the hood of her overalls off and powdered cement covered her short wavy hair, making it appear greyer than it was.
‘That’s just what I was about to say to you,’ Monty said.
‘He’s been at the mortuary twenty years, it’s easier said than done.’
‘Can we take it now?’ the object of their dislike called out.
Monty clenched his fists. ‘No,’ he snapped. ‘Doctor Hurst and I aren’t finished. Go back to the van and wait till you’re called.’ To the doctor he said, ‘C’mon, I’m sure you’ve got something to show me, let’s stretch this out.’
The doctor spoke from the side of her mouth. ‘A grebe is a bird that under certain circumstances will eat its own young—did you know that?’
For a moment Monty forgot his misery and smiled. ‘You going David Attenborough on me?’
Someone had fashioned some loose bricks into a crude set of steps for the doctor to stand on, but Monty was tall enough to view the body without aids. He forced himself to follow Doctor Hurst’s gloved fingers as she manipulated the jaw like the star of one of those American forensic shows. ‘She’s not been dead long, no signs of rigor yet. And look at the eyes,’ she pointed.
Monty recognised in them the glaze of the newly dead.
‘At a rough guess, I’d say she’s been dead no more than a couple of hours. I’ll be able to tell you more when I examine her at the mortuary.’
‘Any idea of the cause?’ Monty asked.
‘Nothing confirmed, but it looks like the preliminary cause could be asphyxiation.’ She extracted a paintbrush from her overall pocket, flicked away more dust and shone the beam of a penlight up the child’s nose. ‘Look at her nose, can you see the congestion?’
Monty put on his glasses, held his breath and peered as closely as his position allowed, not seeing a thing, not wanting to see a thing; he’d take the doctor’s word for it.
‘The poor kid had a bad cold, lethal when combined with a duct-tape gag.’ Doctor Hurst circled a finger above the child’s mouth. ‘There are sticky marks around her mouth from the glue, see how the brick dust has adhered to it? And look at the petechial haemorrhage in the whites of the eyes—a sure sign of asphyxiation. At this stage I’d hazard a guess that murder might not have been intentional.’
Small comfort, as if that would make it easier for the wretched mother, Monty thought. ‘That’ll do for now, get the ball rolling,’ he said, holding his hand out to her and helping her down from the wobbly brick steps, something he would never have dared do for Stevie. Then again, Stevie wasn’t sixty years old and five feet tall. He beckoned to the men from the mortuary van and told them they could collect the body.
Standing well back from the taped area, he lit a cigarette. He turned his back on the body snatchers and took a deep drag as if it might mask the odour of every crime scene he’d ever attended. And this wasn’t even bad; he’d detected nothing but the smell of brick dust from the skip. Imagination can be a powerful thing.