by C. S. Barnes
30
DC Chris Burton felt the frosted grass crunch beneath her. October had brought with it some terrible conditions, and this wasn’t the sort of night that anyone wanted to be outside for. Ahead of her in the near distance, she could already see the light show of flashing police vehicles and, the closer she got, she could make out the silhouette of her DI standing in front of a patrol car. Chris closed the remaining distance and stepped over the police tape that had been pinned in place. In her manoeuvre, she spotted Edd Carter treading the same path that she had just come along so she waited, giving her colleague a raised eyebrow expression with a reserved smile as he crossed the cordon.
‘Shit’s going to hit the fan now, isn’t it,’ Edd said, his tone flat.
‘Come on, let’s get it over with.’ Chris crossed to greet the DI and Edd followed behind her, their crisp footsteps announcing them enough for Melanie to turn and face them before either detective could offer a greeting.
‘Jesus, am I glad to see you,’ Melanie said and from the heavy exhale, Chris believed that her superior really was. ‘There was a patrol vehicle monitoring the playing fields,’ she said, speaking directly to Chris. ‘Edd and I thought, after we’d spoken to the Nelsons, it would be a worthwhile idea to have a PC or two on the ground just in case any kids played silly arses while we weren’t looking.’
Chris nodded her understanding. It was a good decision, she thought, one that she would have liked to have been included on – but she tried to let the thought slide. ‘They were doing their second lap for the evening, about an hour after their first, when three kids came running out of this clearing.’ She pointed behind her. ‘They were shouting something about a body.’
A car door slamming closed caught the DI’s attention. She cast a look around her and found that the source of the noise was George Waller, closing the door of his unmarked people-carrier. From the outside, no one would know that the vehicle was specially modified to transport bodies from one location to another. Inside, the vehicle was hardly recognisable from its original state.
‘Medicine man is here,’ she said, stepping away from her colleagues.
‘Detective, we must stop meeting like this,’ George said, tipping an invisible hat to Melanie. The DI’s face remained expressionless; she wasn’t quite in the mood for light-heartedness. ‘Tough crowd,’ George said, more to himself, as he cocked a leg over the cordon and joined Melanie on the investigative side. ‘What have we got?’
‘Young male, a little frosty around the edges. We haven’t moved him but we’re ready to.’
‘Bag over the head?’
Melanie tutted at her colleague’s curtness. ‘No, no obvious cause of death that any of us can spot at first glance. We’re hoping to find more when we flip him, and when you look at him too.’ Melanie held out an arm to gesture to the clearing where the body had been discovered. ‘Right this way, doc.’
Melanie nodded for Chris and Edd to follow her. Under normal circumstances they might have tented the body on arrival, but the frost had already gotten to the boy. There were small beads of ice clinging to his spikes of hair, and Melanie couldn’t help but flash back to the pinned image of Jenni, Patrick, and Eleanor in their shared happiness – the image of Patrick specifically, with too much gel in his brilliant blond locks. The DI shook away the memory, trying instead to focus on Waller who was down on one knee, pulling on a latex glove.
‘Have we called the parents?’ Edd asked.
‘Not yet,’ Melanie replied. ‘Not until we’re certain.’
Chris and Edd shared a sceptical look. Now they’d seen the body, the detectives thought that there was nothing uncertain about it – but they wouldn’t bring themselves to contradict their boss. Instead the DC and DS hovered in the background, overhearing George Waller’s preliminary thoughts and findings.
‘Young man,’ Waller said, rubbing his fingertips over the pale face to dislodge some of the detritus that clung there. ‘I’d guess somewhere between fifteen and eighteen, hard to say for definite without thawing him out and having a good look at things.’ Waller moved his hands to the boy’s neck. Melanie thought he was likely looking for the same, or similar, injuries that had been inflicted on Jenni Grantham. ‘It’s difficult, you see, because some areas are hardening against this weather.’ Waller spoke more to himself than the many officers that surrounded him. ‘Professional, preliminary opinion.’ He looked pointedly at Melanie to hammer home his meaning and the DI nodded her understanding. ‘It’s a different method entirely and the boy wasn’t strangled or suffocated, which means we’re looking for a different something or other here.’ Waller scanned over the body as he spoke, looking for obvious injuries or anomalies. ‘But there’s nothing up front to spot, is there?’ he said, agreeing with Melanie’s tentative assessment.
‘Are we moving him?’ Melanie asked.
George appeared to grimace at the suggestion. ‘Let me get a bag from the car. I’m not having him flipped here; it’ll do more harm than bloody good.’
The ME disappeared, backstepping his way toward his vehicle. Melanie told the surrounding officers to take a breather – ‘Thaw your hands out on a car heater or something, we’ll need you soon enough.’ – giving her a moment of quiet with her DS and her best DC. Chris and Edd both shared a concerned expression, but while Edd made firm eye contact with his boss, Chris looked like she was struggling to pull her eyes away from the young male lying spread on the frosted floor in front of them.
‘Burton?’ Melanie grabbed her attention.
‘Sorry, boss,’ Chris said, meeting her senior’s look. ‘It’s just–’
‘It’s just it looks like Patrick Nelson,’ Melanie finished, and Chris couldn’t help but let out a gentle sigh of relief that her boss had made this announcement on her own. ‘I know it does, Chris. It’s important that we get the body with Waller, so he can start countering the effects of the weather, the best he can, at least. Forensics need to be here.’ She looked around to check that they weren’t. ‘We shouldn’t be moving the body without them, but I don’t see that we have a choice, given the state of things. Nathan Vaughan is the first response for their team.’ Melanie nodded towards a man just three feet from the officers who was peeling away a protective layer of department-approved plastic. ‘He’s taken as much as he can while we were waiting for everyone to arrive.’
‘Surely he’ll need samples from under the body?’ Edd chimed in.
‘You’d think so.’ Melanie saw George Waller making his way back over to them and she shouted at the resting officers, encouraging them to make their way back to their original standpoint. ‘Edd, will you lift?’
Carter threw a nervous look at the boy on the floor and gave his senior a reluctant nod. Meanwhile, George Waller was flattening out the body bag, underneath which he’d already placed an additional layer of plastic sheeting. That’ll please forensics, Melanie thought. When the plastics were in place and the officers were properly gloved up, six pairs of latex-covered hands reached towards the body to find a part that they could comfortably hold.
‘For the love of God,’ Waller snapped. ‘Don’t drag him. We need him clear of the floor entirely, lifted over, and gently placed inside the black plastic covering. Does everyone understand?’ While his tone was a touch patronising, Melanie was glad to see the ME taking the situation so seriously. It wasn’t always his way, often preferring to make light of things where he could, but perhaps even Waller had his limits. ‘Ready on three,’ the ME continued. ‘One.’ The officers tightened their grips. ‘Two.’ They bent their knees, ready to lift. ‘Three.’ They heaved the body a clear four inches off the ground, grunts of surprise and discomfort moving around the group as the weight of a lifeless individual dawned on them. ‘Now, into the black lining.’ The men followed the instruction and when Waller had zipped up the black casing that would carry the boy to the lab, he carefully folded the underneath layer of plastic around the body bag and, reaching for a clip stashed in his back
pocket, Waller tacked the edges together in the centre like a small gathering of filo pastry – an unsavoury filling inside.
Without instruction this time, the same group gathered around the body again and lifted, carrying the boy over broken bark and discarded litter, over the cordon of police tape, and eventually into the back of Waller’s ready and waiting vehicle. Waller was only just strapping in the body when Nathan headed toward the new scene.
‘Mind if I get started?’ he asked Melanie who nodded approval.
‘Please do,’ she said. ‘Are the others likely to join you?’
Nathan let out a curt laugh. ‘When they’re ready,’ he said, as he zipped up his second protective suit of the evening. ‘I’ll need a couple of officers to fetch and carry various bits, if you don’t mind? But I’ll try to work quickly.’
Melanie headed toward the congregation of officers who were loitering around George Waller’s vehicle, but she noticed that Edd wasn’t among them. She scanned the area and spotted her DS leaning over the cordon to address a small herd of journalists who had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere – as was their way, Melanie thought. ‘How do they get here so fucking fast?’ she asked, pulling Chris’s attention to the cameras and questions that Edd was fencing. ‘Okay, Edd has put himself on press duty which means that we’ll–’
‘DI Watton?’ the shout came from somewhere behind her and Melanie bolted, with Chris close behind her.
There was a small mobile light angled at a patch of ground that had, not too long ago, been underneath the body. Nathan was staring at a sample of something smeared across a small glass plate, his eyes narrowed at the discovery. He lowered his glasses toward the end of his nose and looked up at Melanie:
‘Your ME is looking for a head wound. This small pool.’ He pointed toward the discoloured patch that he’d illuminated. ‘Looks to me like a lot of blood.’
31
Melanie had grabbed at the opportunity to try for an hour of sleep in her office before the team arrived. After everything that had happened, she hadn’t bothered going home; she already knew that sleep would evade her there. Instead she had watched while the body was taken away by George Waller to be deposited at his lab for a rushed autopsy in the morning. ‘It’ll go to the top of my list,’ he’d said. And she watched as Nathan and eventually one or two other forensics experts picked at and bagged up the area that had surrounded the boy. By the time they had finished, Melanie was helping them to carry five bags of evidence over to Nathan’s car.
‘Do you really need all of this?’ she asked Nathan, who shrugged.
‘It’s better to be safe,’ he replied, pulling down the boot of his black Corsa. ‘I heard what George said, about bumping this to the top of the pile. There’s only so much I can do in terms of what everyone else is working on, but I’ll personally do what I can over the next few hours.’ He flashed Melanie a taut smile before climbing into his vehicle and driving out and away from the woodland.
Since then she had passed the hours checking and double-checking information, reading and rereading files, and napping, her neck cricked at an awkward angle against the back of her desk chair. She had been half and half when her desk phone howled and pulled her fully into wakefulness. She snatched at the handset and mumbled, ‘DI Watton.’
‘Are you coming down for this?’ George Waller asked.
Melanie took a quick look at her watch. Seven forty-five in the morning, which meant that the team would be arriving any minute – assuming one or two of them weren’t already out there. She rubbed at her forehead and ran her tongue around her teeth, which felt coated with the morning fuzziness that always originated from nowhere.
‘Can you give me half an hour?’ she asked. ‘I need to brief people.’
‘Thirty minutes and I start, okay, Mel? It’s a busy day here.’
Melanie thanked her colleague and disconnected the call. In the bottom drawer of her desk she kept her essentials, which consisted of make-up – for the mornings when she absolutely needed it – and a clean shirt, among one or two other priceless items. She quickly whipped out a pale blue shirt and changed into it, before giving her eyes a lick of mascara in the hope that it would at least detract from the bags beneath them. She took two deep breaths to steady herself before pulling open her office door and, while many of her team – complete with their own tired eyes and weary expressions – were waiting for her, there was an unexpected visitor standing in the centre of the office space as well.
‘Mr Nelson,’ Melanie said, her hand outstretched as she walked toward him.
‘Detective,’ he replied, reciprocating the gesture to shake hands. ‘I understand you’re all very busy.’ He seemed to be addressing the room rather than Melanie in particular. ‘But I was wondering whether I might have a chat with you, about the boy, in the woodlands?’ His voice quivered the further he got into his request; pushed on by a furious wave of sympathy, Melanie found herself standing next to the man in order to guide him by the elbow into her office. It had been a day since she’d seen him, but Mr Nelson looked as though he’d aged beyond his years in that time.
‘Please, Mr Nelson, take a seat,’ she said, closing the office door behind them.
‘It’s Philip,’ he replied. ‘Phil, if you like. Or Philip is fine.’
Melanie sat opposite him and flashed a quick smile. ‘What can I do for you, Philip?’
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ he asked, and Melanie’s heart sank. The detective wasn’t sure what facial expression she’d pulled but whatever it was spurred the man on further. ‘I don’t mean to put you in an awkward spot, but Rachel and I, we watch the news, and we weren’t sleeping, and we saw in the early hours that there was a boy and we thought, God, you know what we thought, and we both said we’d wait and I said I’d get a paper but I ended up here…’ His voice trailed off, cracking with emotion in the final words.
‘Philip,’ Melanie said, making a conscious effort to steady her voice. ‘We don’t know, that’s the honest truth of it, and it’s also the reason why we hadn’t contacted you and your wife yet. The body that we found is currently with the Medical Examiner who will hopefully tell us more about what happened, and once that’s done we’ll be able to arrange an identification.’
The tired man opposite Melanie let out a laboured sigh. ‘How long will that take?’
‘I’m meant to be with him in the next twenty minutes or so, so I can be there when he starts,’ she explained, double-checking her watch. ‘I promise you, you and your wife will be the first people contacted when these early preliminaries are out of the way. Until then the best thing you can do is stick together and avoid the news,’ she said with a soft smile, but it didn’t spread to her visitor. Mr Nelson stood with the same tired and withered look that he’d walked in with, and Melanie felt foolish for thinking anything she said would change that.
Without a formal goodbye, Mr Nelson walked toward the door of Melanie’s room but, remembering something, turned to face the detective again. ‘He has a birthmark.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘On his stomach,’ he said, gesturing to his own abdomen. ‘It’s like a thumbprint and it’s on his left side, not quite on his ribcage but you’ll know it, if you see it.’
‘Thank you.’ She nodded, and he went on his way then, having turned down her offer of company for the journey out of the station. Melanie deliberately waited long enough for Mr Nelson to have cleared the main office space before she stepped out into it again. When she pushed through her door for the second time, she found her team buried in work already. ‘Did I miss anything?’ she asked, addressing the room, but it was Burton who answered her.
‘Morris and I are on CCTV still, trying to piece together Patrick’s whereabouts through the camera feeds to see if we can get a timeline in place for the night he went missing. Read is looking through Michael Richards’ notes, on the off chance there’s a link somewhere there, and Fairer is hounding forensics.’ Melanie glanced over in time to se
e Fairer give her a quick wave, his desk phone fixed to his ear and a determined tone heavy in his voice for whomever he was speaking to.
Burton continued. ‘We’ve also got a PC or two on standby in case we get a positive ID on it being Patrick Nelson, so we can lift and shift things from his home; laptop, any consoles he might have used to talk to people, that sort of thing, just to get a jump on tech as quickly as we can as well.’
‘Where’s Carter?’ Melanie asked.
‘He’s not here. Bad traffic, I suppose. So I took point.’
The two women shared a knowing smile. ‘Thanks, Burton.’
‘Anytime, boss.’
When Melanie pushed open the door to George Waller’s examination room – wearing a faded blue overall and a paper mouth-mask – she was five minutes later than their pre-agreed time and, as also agreed, Waller had already started. Melanie had to make a conscious effort not to recoil in horror at the sight of the young man with a newly made rip down his chest, ready for exploration at a later stage in the autopsy process. Meanwhile, Waller continued with his incisions as Melanie approached, looking up at her only when she was a mere foot away from the table.
‘You’re late,’ he said, standing upright and speaking through his mask. ‘But I started early, so I guess we’re even.’ He crossed to the bright yellow bin leaning against the nearest wall and peeled off his bloodied gloves, before depositing them in there, followed by his mask. ‘I didn’t need to cut him open for cause of death,’ Waller announced, crossing the room again to move back to a laptop that sat toward the front of the office.
‘It was that obvious?’ Melanie asked, following him.
With a few clicks of the mouse, Waller pulled up a series of pictures that were enlarged by a separate computer monitor. At first it was hard to discern what the images were showing, a close up of something that much was obvious, but beyond that Melanie felt as though she were looking at an optical illusion. At certain angles she saw a dip, but at others she didn’t, although she was certain there were at least two colours overlapped in the image.