Flea had had commendations for her work. Two. And she was only twenty-nine. She was scared stiff she’d only got them because she was a woman, scared stiff it was the only reason she’d made sergeant and was leading the unit. Being scared like this was why she over-compensated for her build and height. It was why she knocked herself out doing insane training circuits, running ten miles a day or working weights into the night – high weights, low reps – day after day after day. Under the water everyone was equal. On land she had to work twice as hard to hold her end up.
They sealed the body in a yellow biohazard bag – XL, because corpses sometimes bloated to twice their original size – and carried it along the quarter-mile track to the rendezvous point, stopping every so often to rest and swap sides. From time to time they’d check for long-range press lenses outside the cordons, waiting for a chance to snap her and the boys covered from head to toe in body fluid.
The rendezvous car park was packed with vehicles. The coroner’s private ambulance was there – two men in grey suits and black ties standing near it, smoking – and the head of the CSI team, a woman in a red Canada sweatshirt and jeans, sitting in the opened door of a car, drinking a cup of tea. It wasn’t until Flea had got the stretcher into the coroner’s van, had chucked her respirator into a little wheelie-bin, and was standing next to the unit’s Sprinter at the RV car park letting Wellard hose her down with bleach solution, that she noticed someone else.
He was just outside the cordon, holding a can of Red Bull. Medium height, lean. Dark hair cut short. Maybe nine or ten years older than her. DI Jack Caffery. MCIU. The last time she’d seen him, on Tuesday, they’d been making an arrest together. That day something had passed between them. She knew it, and she wondered if they were ever going to talk about it. She watched him carefully as he ducked under the outer cordon, using the CSI’s aluminium tread plates to cross towards her. He wasn’t limping like she’d thought he’d be.
‘OK, Wellard. That’s enough.’ She pulled off her hood, undid the storm zip on her suit, then peeled it down, pulled her hands out so the gauntlets were left inside the sleeves and stepped free of it. Without lacing her trainers, she jammed her heels down against the backs of them, and clomped across the car park. She stopped a few yards away from Caffery.
‘Hey,’ he said, taking her in from head to toe. She knew what he was thinking. The mosh-pit hairdo, the trousers sticking to her. The grey T-shirt glued tight with sweat. ‘How’re you doing?’
‘Fine. You?’
‘Yes. Nice to see you without an ASP in your hand.’
‘Nice to see you on two feet. Not on the floor.’
‘Bad, wasn’t it?’
‘Not your finest hour, I s’pose. Or mine. I still don’t know what axe they’re going to drop on my head. Keep getting memos from Occupational Health telling me I’m due for a free critical debrief, y’know. For the trauma. I haven’t taken it yet.’
‘Me neither.’
‘I was going to call you. I wanted to say sorry.’
‘Sorry about what?’
‘About that.’ She gestured to his leg. ‘About your ankle. About what I did. I didn’t mean to give you grief.’
He glanced down at his feet and gave the trouser leg a quick shake. To stop him savaging the piece of shit they’d been trying to arrest on Operation Norway she’d used her support unit stainless-steel ASP on Caffery’s anklebone. It’d been the only way she could bring him to his senses.
‘You’re not limping. I thought you might be.’
‘No. Not limping.’
‘I didn’t tell anyone. About what you did.’
‘I gathered. No rubber-heelers on my doorstep.’
‘Half of me regrets stopping you. I might’ve liked to have seen him with his head split open.’
‘Nice.’
She shrugged. ‘Honest.’
‘Thank you. For not saying anything.’ He looked at her for a long time. And then, just when she was about to speak again, he glanced at her breasts. Only for a split second. But it was enough.
‘I saw that.’
‘Couldn’t help myself. Sorry.’
‘You’re my senior officer. You’re not supposed to look at me like that. It’s demeaning.’
There was a pause. Then he raised an eyebrow. ‘Mmm. Is this the overture to an industrial tribunal? Sexual harassment?’
She stopped herself smiling. Suddenly she felt light and easy, as if she’d just woken up from a long sleep. ‘Is that why you’re here? To see if you can get a grievance accusation? Is that the sort of frathouse-initiation thing they get up to in MCIU now?’
‘Frathouse initiation?’ He half smiled. ‘No. Sorry.’ He pointed at the coroner’s van. The door stood open. Inside was the bright orange blur of Mahoney’s body on the stretcher. ‘I’m here about her. Have you signed her over yet?’
‘They’re doing the paperwork now.’
‘Got any spare respirators?’
‘Sure. I’ve always got a couple spare to stop the CSI guys vomming. Why?’
‘I’d like to see her before the coroners take her.’
‘I thought it was District’s case?’
‘It is. I’m not really here. I’m just being nosy.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Hmm. One body. Female, but fully clothed. Knickers on, skirt not pulled up or disturbed. A bottle of pills next to her, a suicide note. I pulled out of the gunk a Stanley knife she’d used to cut her wrists. Sounds to my naïve ears as ninety-nine point nine a suicide. The pathologist isn’t going to work hard for his corn today, believe me.’ She gave him a suspicious look. ‘So what’s Major Crime doing? It’s totally off your radar.’
Caffery looked at the CSI woman. She’d lowered her face and was pretending not to be listening. He turned his back to her and lowered his voice. ‘OK,’ he murmured. ‘Last week there was a suicide only a few miles from here. Young guy. Ben Jakes.’
‘Not one of mine.’
‘No. Well, excuse me for being rude but maybe he was a little fresh for you. They found him in hours.’
‘There are suicides around here all the time.’
‘Except this was different. Something had happened to the body. Someone had got to him post mortem.’
‘What’d they do?’
‘Cut his hair. Actually shaved it. At the back of his head. The psychologist’s telling us there’s something ritualistic about it.’ Caffery tipped the remainder of the Red Bull into his mouth, half crumpled the can, put it into his jacket pocket. Copper habit, this: so close to a possible crime scene you do things automatically. ‘“Ritualistic” was the word he used. Ring any bells?’
‘Operation Norway bells?’
‘Exactly. And it’s got me wondering. Have you ever asked yourself if we missed someone that day? When we came into the squat. Are you sure we got everyone? There wasn’t a chance for someone to have got away?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I mean, there was a window grille, Sitex. It had been bent back, but not enough for someone to get out.’
‘What about a child? Could a child have got out of it?’
‘A child? What would a kid have been doing in a hellhouse like that?’
‘Do you remember this word?’ He glanced over his shoulder then turned back, leant into her and whispered, ‘Tokoloshe.’
‘Ye-es,’ she said cautiously. ‘Of course. And I remember they dressed someone up to scare the living crap out of people, but I thought you had him.’
‘No. The guy we arrested was too big. Too big to be the Tokoloshe.’
Flea started to laugh, but when she shaded her eyes to study him, she saw he wasn’t joking. She’d heard that some of the people in London who’d worked on a muti case there had developed a taste for Africa, that now they took family holidays in Botswana and Ghana, not Margate. They told their colleagues they were brushing up for a future in hostage negotiation with one of the securities agencies like Kroll, when actually they’d fallen in love with the dark continent. Maybe Caffery was like them and had started to believe in the mumbo-jumbo. She’d have liked to say something, but there was an unwritten law in the police: thou shalt never ever make thine superior officer look a tit. She narrowed her eyes and kept her mouth shut.