“Yes.” Kincaid didn’t meet her eyes.
“How rotten for you.” Gemma knew he hated to let Kit down, and she also suspected that any guilt he felt over failing in his commitment to Kit was strengthened by his guilt over Vic’s death. Although he didn’t talk about it, she’d sensed it gnawing at him the past few months, and she felt it driving a wedge between them.
“Worse for him, poor little beggar.”
Gemma thought of Toby, who accepted her frequent unexpected absences with equanimity because it was all he’d ever known. “He will get used to it, and you’ve not much choice, have you?”
“We’ll have her out of here in a tick, guv,” called out the talkative attendant, returning from the van.
Glancing at Gemma, Kincaid seemed about to reply, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the corpse on the stretcher. Frowning, he said, “If she were dumped here, how did the killer get her into the park? That gate would have made things bloody difficult.”
“I suppose you could get through it with a body over your shoulder, if you were strong enough. But you’d be visible, even at night. There must be other entrances.” Watching the men strap down the body, then hoist the stretcher into an upright position and maneuver it through the gate, Gemma added, “Did you find anything under the body?”
“No. Nor any definite evidence of dragging. But the ground’s hard. It might not have left traces.”
Leveling their burden on the far side of the gate, the stretcher-bearers moved down the path to the car park. As Gemma and Kincaid followed, the attendants slid the stretcher roughly into the van and slammed the doors.
Gemma winced as she thought of how carefully the woman’s body had been placed in its bower of grass. “That wasn’t necessary. There’s no bloody hurry now, is there?”
Kincaid gave her a surprised glance. “You know it doesn’t mean anything to them. She’s not a person anymore.”
Gemma shook her head. “She is to someone, somewhere.”
“She did look remarkably peaceful,” he said, and she heard the understanding in his voice. It was odd, thought Gemma, that the more disfigured the corpse, the easier it seemed to distance oneself from the victim’s humanity. With a light touch on her shoulder, Kincaid added, “I suppose we’d best get on with it. I think we should see the pensioner who discovered the body. And I’d like to have a look at the geography of the park on our way.”
When he’d retrieved his jacket and his A to Z from his car, they climbed back up to the Mudchute plateau. Skirting the crime scene, they continued eastwards along the path. To their left lay a steep bank, and at its bottom the high-fenced back gardens of a new housing estate. The dense growth of brambles and bindweed that covered the slope and spilled over to crowd the edge of the path showed no signs of trampling. Pausing to look down, Gemma felt the palpable weight of the sun beating against her scalp as the air over the high ground of the park shimmered in the midday heat.
Beside her, Kincaid picked a ripe blackberry and popped it in his mouth. “From the map, it seemed possible that she’d been killed in the housing estate, then dragged up into the park.” He shook his head. “But there’s no access, unless you can fly.”
Gemma tentatively considered a blackberry. She’d read about berry-picking in books, but it was something she’d never done—in her childhood, berries had come in punnets at the greengrocer’s, and her family hadn’t had time for holidays in the countryside. As Kincaid moved away she reached out and plucked one. It left sticky purple stains on her fingers, and as she hurried after him, the wild, sweet-tart taste of it on her tongue gave her an unexpected sense of liberation.
Before them both path and bank made a sharp right turn. Gemma thought of the brief glimpse she’d had of the slightly irregular square of park on the map. “I thought it would be an ordinary city park, but it’s more like the rolly bits of Hampstead Heath laid out on a tabletop, isn’t it?”
“A living tablecloth?”
“I suppose so. But it is an odd place, and an odd name.”
“The Mudchute was built from the silt dredged up from the Millwall Dock—I think the mud was quite literally pumped through a chute,” Kincaid said. When Gemma gave him a surprised look, he smiled and added, “I asked Inspector Coppin about it and got the penny lecture from her for my pains. The land belonged to the Dock and, being off-limits, was a huge temptation to the local children for years. It was only made a park about twenty years ago.”
They had reached a bench set back from the path, a sort of natural lookout point. Gemma stopped and gazed round at the rolling, scrubby grassland, dotted with the occasional tree. “But it’s enormous. What was it all for?”
“Dockworkers’ allotments, mostly, and timber storage. Look, there’s someone’s garden.” He pointed down the now-gentle slope at a small vegetable patch fenced off with chicken wire. “Some of the park is still used for allotments, though I wonder if they’ll be kept up when the pensioners are gone. There’s a demonstration farm here now, used mostly for educating schoolchildren.”
“It sounds like you managed to thaw Inspector Coppin.”
He grinned. “Only because she enjoyed knowing more than I did.”
Ahead of them, the path disappeared into a wide, level expanse of dirt, and the breeze brought them a distinct whiff of manure. “Is that a road?” asked Gemma.
Kincaid consulted the map. “We’re coming to the farm now, and it looks as though a track comes up from the farm entrance. We’ll have to see if it’s accessible at the bottom.”
“If you could drive a car this far, you could carry a body to where we found her.”
Looking back along the path, Kincaid mused, “A good walk, carrying such a burden.” He knelt and felt the dry earth with his fingers. “But as hard as the ground is, you might be able to drive partway along the path without leaving a trace.”
They started down the gentle incline and soon reached the main farm buildings. Inside the central courtyard a group of small children ate ice creams bought from the concession kiosk. “A thriving business, that,” said Gemma. The sight of the children made her think of Toby, left in her sister’s care by default. A day spent with Cynthia’s little hellions and her son would be wound up like a top for a week, but what choice had she had?
Where the dirt farm road met paved street, a large, metal-barred gate stood propped open. A rusty padlock hung from a chain looped through its leading edge.
“Doesn’t look as though it’s been closed recently.” Kincaid rubbed the toe of his shoe against the dusty road surface. “No sign of scraping or dragging that I can see.”
Gemma touched the pitted surface of the gate. “So the murderer could have driven her into the park.” She looked round at the council flats lining the paved cul-de-sac. “But in this area you’d surely run a risk of being seen even in the middle of the night. Nosy neighbors.”
“They might remember seeing an unfamiliar car, even if they thought it was just teenagers looking for an uninterrupted cuddle.”
Smiling at his choice of words, Gemma touched his arm briefly as they turned towards the street. “How delicate of you, Superintendent. Where do we find Mr. Brent, then?”
He consulted the map. “This is Pier Street. It should take us right into Manchester Road if we continue along it.”
The council houses they passed as they walked were built of the gray concrete blocks typical of the sixties, but most appeared well-kept. Front doors stood open in the midday heat, and although the bead curtains hanging in most doorways afforded inhabitants a bit of privacy, they allowed cooking odors an easy escape. Gemma sniffed appreciatively at the scent of garlic mingled with spices not quite as familiar.
Some of the tiny front gardens had been paved over entirely, others had a few pots and hanging baskets or revealed a small attempt at a plot of flowers, but the garden of the flat they approached would have made a garden center green with envy. Every inch of the eight-foot square was filled with something blooming, and as they came nearer Gemma saw that one would have to squeeze through a gate held ajar by a mass of purple clematis.