by Helen Phifer
Tomorrow was going to be a very long day. She glanced up at the clock in her office, surprised to see it was almost eight. She saved the files onto the computer then stood up and stretched; poor Abe would be ready to go home. Going back through to the mortuary she saw him hosing down the tables and floor, which were already spotless. He was so good, always paying attention to the details, to the things that really counted. She wished she could hire him to be her full-time assistant.
‘Hey, I didn’t realise it was so late. You can go home you know.’
‘So can you. There’s nothing to do here tonight, so you might as well go home and get some sleep.’
He was right: tomorrow was going to be busy. ‘I will if you do.’
He laughed and his brown eyes crinkled, his perfect white teeth showing. Watching him as he checked each fridge door to make sure the bodies inside were secure, she wondered what his girlfriend made of him working day in, day out with dead people. He walked across to her, tugging off the plastic apron he’d been wearing. He screwed it up and threw it into the special yellow waste bin then followed her out and locked the door behind them.
Waving at Abe as he strolled towards his bike, Beth carried on towards the patch of gravel where she’d abandoned her car. Her stomach growled and she realised she needed to eat. A few years ago she’d have happily spent her evening curled up in front of the television with a family size bag of crisps or large bar of chocolate, sometimes both depending upon how stressful her day had been. But since that night seven years ago, she’d swapped junk food for wine, sometimes neat vodka. Her nights of vegging out in front of the television had been replaced with exercise classes, running and self-defence training. After the night she’d almost died, she’d promised herself that she would never put herself in that position again. She’d learnt how to fight, got fit enough to run fast if she had to. The extra weight she’d carried had dropped off along with her zest for life. She walked up to the car and stared through the window into the back seat, making sure it was empty. Her heart sank. This was her life now; always living on the edge. Once upon a time she wouldn’t have even double-checked if she’d locked her car and now look at her. Even though the windows were all intact, the alarm wasn’t sounding, and everything was secure, she still felt her heart race.
As she climbed into the car she watched Abe unlock the huge chain from around his bike. He waved at her before racing off into the distance. She waved back even though he couldn’t see. Good manners cost nothing, that was another reason she had a soft spot for him. Her stomach growled and thoughts of dinner took over. There was an amazing takeaway not too far from the hospital. Checking her phone, she read a message from Josh: he didn’t think he’d make it; he was working late and wouldn’t be free for supper after all. She sighed: she should have realised that he would be up to his neck in it back at the station, but the thought of spending time with him had kept her going all afternoon. It had taken away the churning in her stomach thinking of being home alone all night with a broken security system. Dialling the number, she placed her order for a Szechuan beef chow mein, salt and pepper chips and the obligatory bag of prawn crackers. In for a penny in for a pound, she smiled to herself.
By the time she got to the takeaway and nipped in the Co-op opposite for a bottle of wine, it would be ready. She would be home in forty-five minutes if the traffic wasn’t too bad. Then she would try and spend the night relaxing, not worrying about anything other than her workload tomorrow.
Thirteen
Jason slammed the rusted metal locker door shut. Checking there was no one around, he shoved the small ziplock bag into his trouser pocket. He had been on edge since they’d found that body yesterday; even though he’d only caught the slightest glimpse of her his stomach tied in knots every time he thought about it. She’d been a mess covered in soil, her face all squashed and the flesh slipping off it like some wax mask that was melting. He shuddered as his stomach lurched again. The door to the men’s changing room slammed, making him jump. He looked up to see Barry heading towards him.
‘What’s up with you? You look like shit.’
‘I feel like shit. Not good at all. I think I’m coming down with something.’
‘Yeah, well keep away from me then. I’ve got a big night out planned. If you pass your germs onto me and ruin it, I’ll kill you.’
Jason smiled; Barry was okay for an older bloke. A bit of a pain in the arse about not cutting corners, but he’d worked with a lot worse though, some real idiots.
‘I won’t. I’m going home to bed and might not be in tomorrow.’
‘Make sure you ring in then, but not before I’ve left for Manchester and they can’t ring me to come back and work.’
‘Yes, Dad. I will.’
‘Cheeky git, I’m not your dad. Even your mother doesn’t know who he is.’ Barry laughed at his own joke, grabbed his rucksack from his locker and walked out.
Jason stood up, his legs like jelly. He didn’t know what to do. If the coppers brought in sniffer dogs, they’d find out what he’d been keeping in here, then there’d be an investigation and he could end up being arrested. He needed to get the stuff out of here, but he didn’t want to take it home with him. He felt the weight of the bag in his pocket. Christ, if the coppers got wind of it, they’d still drag him in and try to pin something on him. Well they could do one – he wouldn’t let that happen.
Fourteen
Josh cleared the whiteboard of the pictures of old suspects that had been stuck on there that long ago the edges were curling. He then folded them neatly and pushed them through the slot of the box where all the official documents were put ready to be shredded. Next, he took a damp cloth and began to rub away the faded red writing from the board. He knew they were all watching him. It had been at least a year since they’d last investigated a murder in this part of Cumbria. Barrow, the largest town in south Cumbria, seemed to have more murderers than here in the heart of the county at the Lakes: CID down there were kept a lot busier, and Josh was grateful for it. Around here it was mostly rural crime: thefts, burglaries; the odd travelling gang from one of the cities would come in, ram raid a few shops and cash machines then move on. He was only thirty-four but had ten years’ experience under his belt which counted for a lot in this job. Seven of them had been in CID, working his way up from detective constable to sergeant. He’d begun typing up the application for his inspector’s board a couple of times only to have stopped midway and deleted it. He didn’t know if he could handle being stuck in an office most of his shift and not being able to go out and conduct a lot of his own enquiries. A higher rank brought more power, which he definitely didn’t care about; it also brought more responsibility. For now he was happy being in charge of his small team and mucking in with them to get the results they all wanted.
He’d emailed Claire from the Barrow Scenes of Crime Department for a blown-up picture of the victim. Tomorrow, he’d have a cleaner, clearer image once Beth had completed the PM, but this would do for now. He wanted the rest of the team to realise just how horrific and serious this was: somehow just describing what they’d found didn’t do the crime justice. Pulling the photo from the printer, he rolled up a couple of blobs of Blu-Tack and stuck it on the board. A whistle and some groans made him nod his head in appreciation. He turned to look at them.
‘It’s bad; no actually it’s beyond bad. It’s terrible. I want you to look at this young girl and feel the same anger that I do. Why did someone believe she deserved to end up dead, hidden in someone else’s grave?’
There were a few headshakes, shoulder shrugs, the usual collective ‘we have no idea’ expression on their faces. DC Alison Bell held up her hand. ‘Whoever it is, they’re sick.’
Josh nodded. ‘They are, and we need to find out who that individual is before something like this happens again.’
‘Boss, how do we know this is the first time it’s happened? I mean, maybe they got unlucky this time. They wouldn’t have known the grav
e was going to get exhumed, would they? They’re probably panicking big time. How do we know that there aren’t more bodies hidden beneath coffins all over the graveyard, or in other graveyards?’
Josh paused for a moment to let the idea sink in with the rest of the team. DC John Paton was right, the possibility was very real. There was no way to know, not unless they started exhuming the whole bloody cemetery, and that wasn’t going to happen. He cleared his throat. ‘What I want is for you to focus on missing person reports. Start local and then widen the net. Is anyone aware of any recent reports of missing young people?’
DC Tina Sykes rolled her eyes. ‘What? Apart from the usual ones who are never really missing, just acting up to worry their parents?’
‘Yes, them. Everyone. Have any of them been missing a couple of months? We know that Florence Wright was buried eight weeks ago, so anyone who went missing just before then. We need to identify our girl in the grave, until then we’re working blind. She’s young from the looks of her; surely someone out there is missing her.’
‘What if she’s in care? Or it’s possible she could be a runaway?’
‘Good shout; can you and Sykes start ringing around the local foster homes, young people’s hostels, and speak to the staff, ask them if they have anyone who has disappeared without any warning that they haven’t reported yet. I’m hoping we might be able to get some prints from her tomorrow and run them through the system. You never know, we might get lucky.’
He said a silent prayer that they would and left them to it while he went into the office to go through the statements from the two gravediggers, to see if anything stood out. The two undertakers who’d been present at the discovery had been busy with funerals all day, so were scheduled for interviews first thing tomorrow morning. The environmental health officer had nothing of value to add to the investigation. She had been drafted in at the last minute and was already in hot water with her boss: a simple pocket notebook entry taken from her at the scene had been sufficient. He saw no justification in adding to her misery at the moment by bringing her into the station. Unless they came up with a reason to question her further, she was off the hook. He sat down on the knackered swivel chair that he wouldn’t let them replace because he liked it and had spent years moulding it to fit his shape. They could keep their newfangled, flimsy ergo chairs. Like him, this chair had been built to last.
Fifteen
Beth had managed to eat most of the chips and prawn crackers before she’d arrived at the gates to her house. As she turned onto the road which led to her house she hit the brakes as a huge stag with antlers almost as big as her jumped over the drystone wall and in front of her car. Screeching to a halt into the middle of the road, she missed it by millimetres. Another jump and it was across the wall on the opposite side of the road and out of sight. Her heart racing, she looked at the grease-covered steering wheel and berated herself: she could have lost control of the wheel and careered into a drystone wall, killing herself because she’d been too greedy to wait until she’d got home. She knew the perils of driving through the countryside, yet still she’d taken the risk. She’d been lucky, not as lucky as the stag though. Pressing the button on the keyring remote she glanced around, noticing a discarded bunch of flowers on the grass verge near her gates and wondered if someone had been killed along this stretch of the road. No one had since she’d moved here, but perhaps it was an anniversary from years ago. She waited for the gates to open, then drove through, waiting again on the other side whilst they shut. Not that it was very likely anyone would follow her through: there had been no cars on the road behind her. She drove along to her usual spot outside the front door, got out of the car, grabbed her tea and slammed the door shut. The security light turned on at her movement, illuminating the house and immediate gardens. She turned to look at the lake behind her. Whenever she needed to think or clear her head, staring at the expanse of water surrounded by lush green countryside always did the trick.
Turning back towards the front door, she froze, her head tilted to one side: what were those reddish-brown streaks all over her usually pristine white door? Moving closer, she was trying to think how on earth they’d got there when she stepped on something and she heard the crack of bones beneath her foot. Jumping back she looked down and screamed in horror at the crushed dead bird on her doorstep. How the hell had that got there? The poor thing must have flown into the door and broken its neck. She shuddered as she tried to convince herself it was a common thing for birds to do. She’d had a few fly into the huge glass windows along the front of the house, but they’d only ever stunned themselves before flying off. This one must have been old, or ill.
With trembling hands she opened the front door. ‘Light’s on,’ she commanded, and the hallway was flooded with light. Suddenly no longer hungry, she walked down to the kitchen, abandoning the bag of food on the worktop and grabbing a pair of rubber gloves, bleach spray and some cleaning rags from under the sink. She couldn’t leave the poor bird there like that, its guts smeared all over her door until the morning. It wasn’t right.
Back outside, she bent down and picked the little creature up by its wing and carried it over to her bin. She would have buried it, but it was going to be dark soon and she wasn’t risking standing outside at the far side of her garden at night digging a grave for a bird. After the last two days she’d had enough of graves. Placing it gently inside the bin, she let the lid slam shut; sorry, bird. Then she went to the door and began spraying copious amounts of bleach onto the dark trails. After some serious scrubbing the door began to look clean once more. Satisfied there were no entrails left, she scooped up the rags and deposited them inside the bin on top of the dead bird. Peeling off the rubber gloves, she dropped those on top and went back inside the house, shutting and locking the door behind her.
The food no longer interested her, but the wine did. Pouring herself a large glass, she took it with her to the bathroom. Turning on the shower, she stripped off her clothes and stepped under the hot stream of water, though Beth knew the best way to cleanse herself of the last two days wasn’t going to be a hot shower; it was more likely a dip in the icy cold waters of Lake Windermere would do the trick. If she wasn’t so scared of being out of the comfort of her own little fortress in the dark then she’d have run outside and dived right in. Her fingers curled into tight fists; she hated the person she’d become so much that it made her want to punch the wall. She wanted to punch him, hit him until he was dead and couldn’t hurt her or anyone else ever again. That upset her more than anything because she’d never been a violent person before, now rage bubbled up inside her without warning.
The incident had come out of the blue. Her life as a busy accident and emergency doctor before the event in 2012 had been so good: hectic, tiring, busy, but most of all fun. Back then life had been normal and pretty much carefree, but it all changed that night. Work had been busy, just like any other shift, but Beth remembered every stitch she had sewn to repair the ripped skin on the teenage boy’s leg; it had been a deep gash. He’d come into the accident and emergency department on a trolley, pushed by two paramedics. A woman she’d assumed was his mother following behind, berating him for his stupidity. Her high-pitched voice echoing around the A & E department.
‘Do you know how lucky you are, Ben? You could have died; you’ve never been on a moped in your life. What possessed you to decide that you were some kind of stuntman? Did no part of your common sense kick in and tell you that you might have an accident?’
Ben was shaking his head as Beth peered out from behind the curtain of the elderly male she was treating for shingles. The poor lad had looked as if he was in enough pain without the added embarrassment of his mum shouting at him for all the hospital to hear. The paramedics had taken him through to resus; she heard one of them ask him if he wanted his mum to come in and he’d whispered no. She’d offered to treat him, sewing up his leg and commiserating with him about embarrassing parents.
‘You kno
w, she’s only shouting because you scared her.’
He’d grunted at her.
‘Can I suggest you stay off mopeds until you have had a bit more practice?’
He’d laughed and so had she. Once he’d been patched up it had been time to clock off. She’d been looking forward to that night: a surprise party for Ellen, one of her close friends, and she’d decided she was going to get steaming drunk. It had been a long week and she needed to let her hair down.
She blinked back tears, unable to even blame it on the shampoo because she hadn’t washed her hair yet. She was crying for the messed-up shell of the person she’d become. Drying herself, she smothered her face in moisturiser, and her body in expensive body lotion to cover the smell of bins and death that lingered on her skin. She’d finished the glass of wine without even realising.
Wrapping her hair in a makeshift turban, she picked up the empty glass and headed back downstairs to refill it. Spying the carton of takeaway on the kitchen counter, she decided she was ready to eat. Wine didn’t agree with her on an almost-empty stomach. The food could soak up some of the alcohol, so her head wasn’t too fuzzy tomorrow morning. She wondered how Josh was and if he was still at work. Looking at the clock on the microwave, it was almost ten and she realised there was a very good chance he would be. He was a good man and an even better detective. There was no way he would be able to go home while his team were hard at work looking for an ID on their victim. She was tempted to phone him, but the ping of the microwave broke her train of thought.