by Lisa Hartley
At home she slammed the door, tempted to leave the keys in the lock so Thomas wouldn’t be able to get in. She didn’t, of course. Thomas wouldn’t change and both he and Anna were adults; what they did was up to them. A tiny voice asked her if her anger stemmed from a touch of jealousy, but she ignored it. That the person she’d thought she was falling in love with had deceived her was irrelevant.
Catherine climbed into bed, snapped off the light and glared out into the dark. The truth was that the person she was really angry with was Claire. She should have been there tonight, sitting beside her, laughing and joking, chatting - loving. Instead, Claire was dead and gone, buried without ceremony in the corner of the cemetery on the other side of town. Catherine and Jonathan Knight had been the only people at her funeral apart from the minister, who had said a few perfunctory words and then left them to it. She had stared down into the grave, unable to untangle the emotions she was feeling. Grief, yes, but more than that. Disbelief. Horror. Anger; a violent, white-hot fury. Knight had stood beside her, his face expressionless, skin almost as pale as the white shirt collar that just showed beneath his thick black overcoat.
She was grieving for a love that had almost been, a future that had been snatched away. Stronger still was the fury. She wouldn’t live like this anymore. Claire wasn’t coming back, and she didn’t deserve Catherine’s devotion. She had made her own choices and set herself on a path that could only have ended in disaster, then paid with her life.
Catherine reached for the bedside cabinet, picking up her mobile phone. She looked again at the name and closed her eyes for a second, remembering. Claire’s smile, the delicate, thrilling touch of her hand … No. Edit. Delete contact. She replaced the phone and turned onto her side.
It was over. She was alone.
16
She hadn’t heard Thomas come in, but he obviously had at some point as he was standing by her bed, wearing a t-shirt and some old jogging bottoms. Catherine rubbed bleary eyes.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Haven’t you heard your phone? The landline’s been ringing as well.’ He held up her mobile.
She reached a reluctant hand from under the duvet and rolled onto her stomach.
‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ Thomas said with a shiver. ‘And the heating.’
She tucked her hair behind her ears and touched the phone’s screen.
‘Catherine Bishop.’
‘Hi Catherine, it’s Raj Dhirwan.’
A uniformed inspector calling her at home. It didn’t bode well.
‘Morning Raj, what’s up?’
‘I’m just going off duty, but I thought you’d want to know – we’ve had a call about a body.’
Catherine sat up, fully awake now.
‘A body? Where? Who is it?’
‘It’s female, that’s all I can tell you. You’d better get over here.’
Catherine thanked him and scrambled out of bed with one thought running through her mind: Lauren Cook.
DI Knight was waiting in his car when Catherine arrived at the station. She hurried across the car park, her unfastened coat blown straight back by the icy wind like black wings. Knight called to her over the noise of the idling engine.
‘Catherine, there’s no point going inside. The DCI told me to wait out for you. Get in, we may as well travel together.’
She nodded, climbing into the car. Knight had the heater going full blast but still had a black woollen beanie hat pulled low over his ears.
‘Wasn’t the bloke we arrested for the cash point muggings wearing that when we brought him in?’ she asked, fastening her seatbelt.
He shook his head.
‘Found it in the lost property box.’
‘Just need a pair of tights over your face. So where are we going?’
Knight pulled out onto the main road.
‘Somewhere called Moon Pond? The DCI said you’d know where it is. Popular with courting couples, he said.’
‘Courting couples? Where did he wake up, the nineteen fifties?’
‘You know it then?’
‘Yeah, next left.’
‘Have you been there as part of a courting couple?’
‘Certainly not. Any fumbling and groping I did was somewhere a bit warmer than the back of a clapped-out old banger parked in a field of geese.’
Knight flicked the indicator on.
‘Geese?’ he queried.
‘I’m assuming. Carry straight on for a couple of miles. What do we know about her?’
‘Her?’
‘Raj said the body is female, that’s why he phoned me.’
‘Because of Lauren Cook?’
‘It’s a bit of a coincidence, don’t you think?’
‘I don’t have any details. It was called in at about six this morning.’
‘Who’d be out at Moon Pond at that time of day, especially at the end of November?’
‘I’m told the call came from a teenager who was parked up there last night with her boyfriend.’
‘Ah.’
‘Yes. He’s older than her and she didn’t want her parents to know about it. I don’t think they were sure about what they saw, but she’d been awake all night worrying about it and finally rang in.’
‘And some of our lucky uniforms went to see?’
‘Yep. PC Lawrence and PC Roberts.’
‘Good thing we didn’t stay out too late last night then.’
Knight hesitated, then asked, ‘Did you have a good time?’
‘Apart from Chris and Faye doing their Cilla Black act, you mean?’
‘Ellie seemed nice.’
‘I’m sure she is, but that doesn’t mean I fancy her or that she fancies me. It’s only a month since Claire died.’
‘I know. They had good intentions.’
‘I’d rather they didn’t bother,’ Catherine muttered, sounding like a spoilt brat even to her own ears. ‘It’s the next right.’
They were out in the countryside now, the trees bare and the verges thick with frost, the road little more than a track. Catherine peered through the windscreen.
‘It’s here somewhere … Here, left here.’
Knight slowed down and they turned into a gravelled area. There were a couple of small white vans parked close together and a squad car stood to one side. Knight pulled in beside it. As they crossed the car park, the tiny stones crunching beneath their shoes, PC Roberts appeared with a clipboard in her hand. The outer cordon had already been set up, the familiar ‘POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS’ tape moving in the breeze.
‘Good morning. She’s by the pond, that way. Mick Caffery’s just getting set up.’ She gestured with her thumb. Catherine took the clipboard from her and signed her name, then handed it to Knight.
‘Morning, Nat. Good thing you were on the mineral water last night then?’
Roberts shuddered.
‘I’ll say. She’s not a pretty sight, I’m afraid, poor woman.’
‘Is it Lauren Cook?’ Catherine’s voice was quiet. Her stomach, already tight, seemed to turn over and she swallowed.
‘You’d better see for yourself, Sarge. To be honest, I’m not sure who she is and I don’t think you will be, either. You can see her from the path, you won’t need to get near enough to worry about contaminating the scene.’
‘I thought the kids who called it in were in a car?’ Knight asked, rubbing gloved hands together.
‘The boyfriend got out for a pee and thought he saw a body. He couldn’t believe his eyes and got his girlfriend to go and have a look.’
Roberts stamped her feet, the chill of the frozen ground finding its way through to her toes despite the uniform boots and her thickest thermal socks.
‘That was considerate of him,’ Catherine commented.
‘Yeah, now they’ll both be having nightmares. They couldn’t tell if it was human or just a roll of carpet or a lump of wood. So they said.’ She shrugged. ‘It was dark, I suppose. Emily’s staying by the body, I’ll wait h
ere. There are a couple of other paths leading to the pond but this is the only one with a car park. Mick says that because of the severe frost last night he’s not expecting to find footprints, so we might never know which path she was brought down, if she was killed somewhere else and the body was dumped here. We’ve cordoned off all the possible routes anyway.’
After they had donned their white protective suits, shoe covers, face masks and gloves, Knight led the way down the narrow winding path towards the pond. Catherine followed close behind him, careful where she put her feet. Although the ground was frozen, it would have been easy to trip and fall over the many stones and pieces of tree branch that littered the ground. Caffery had placed footplates here and there and she took care to set her foot in the centre of each one.
The path soon opened out into a clearing with the pond itself beyond it. It was about the size of an average swimming pool, the water greenish-grey and still. The grass around the edge was short and trampled, but longer grass grew around the far side. Several trees surrounded the pond, a large fallen branch lying half in, half out of the water. Constable Lawrence stood about ten metres away, her hands tucked under her armpits, her breath visible in the freezing air. Catherine couldn’t see the body. The stocky figure of Mick Caffery, easily recognisable despite the protective suit, stood a few metres away talking to three members of his team.
‘You okay, Emily?’ Catherine called as they approached.
Emily Lawrence looked up and nodded a greeting. They were silent as they moved closer, almost reverent. Emily realised she was blocking their view and stepped away.
On the far bank, lying on her side, propped against the trunk of another fallen tree was the dead woman. She was naked, her skin mottled. Her long blonde hair, tangled with pond weed, tumbled over her shoulder, covering her breasts. Her stomach gaped, a terrible wound that looked like raw meat but colourless, anaemic. And her face … Catherine swallowed, fighting the almost irresistible urge to close her eyes. Knight took a shaky breath beside her and Catherine reached out a hand and rested it on his shoulder for a second, as much for her own comfort as for his. Emily Lawrence was pale too, biting the inside of her lips, but keeping her back straight and her chin up. Catherine wanted to go to her, to tell her that this was the worst she would ever see, even though it wouldn’t be true. She knew only too well that there was no limit to the horror people could inflict on each other.
The woman’s face had been obliterated. The bones of her face were pulverised, the flesh a churned mess of blood and tissue.
17
‘I’ve asked them to set a tent up over her,’ Mick Caffery said. He nodded towards two members of his team who were leaving the area. A third had started taking photographs of the body. ‘I’m not hopeful of finding too much because of the conditions, but we’ll do our best.’
‘Do you think she was killed out here?’ Catherine asked, though she had a good idea what Mick would say. His eyes twinkled at her for a second above the face mask he still wore.
‘Do you, Sergeant?’
Catherine glanced over at the body again, before saying, ‘No.’
‘I’d be inclined to agree, but you know how it goes. We’ll need to wait for the pathologist. Is she on her way?’
‘I’ll call her now,’ Knight said, taking his phone from his pocket. ‘I’ll also request some uniforms so we can get a fingertip search started, okay, Mick?’
Caffery nodded, then carried on speaking as Knight moved away.
‘If she wasn’t killed here, she must have been dragged or carried. There’s no way a vehicle could have been brought near. I’ve already established that the widest path leading from the car park to the pond here should be our common approach path. There’s no way we could get our equipment down any other way, they’re barely big enough for one person.’
With a frown Catherine asked, ‘Doesn’t that mean that the same path is the most likely way of whoever dumped her here getting in though?’
‘It looks to me as if she’s been dead for a couple of days,’ Mick said. ‘If that’s so, we’ve no way of knowing yet when she was brought here. Any number of people could have walked down that path in the meantime. I’m not hopeful of finding much in the way of evidence out here, so it’s important that we preserve the body as best we can and hope the post-mortem gives us more clues. I’m fairly confident that the path we’re using wasn’t used by whoever brought her; there are few snapped branches and signs of trampling on another of the paths which leads from a side road. Maybe they didn’t want to leave their vehicle in the car park.’
Knight rejoined them. ‘Doctor Webber is on her way. I presume we’ll need to search the pond as well?’
Mick nodded. ‘We should do. Who knows what might be down there.’
‘I’ll update the DCI.’
As Knight stepped away again with his phone, Mick lowered his voice. ‘How are you getting on with him?’
Catherine frowned. ‘With DI Knight?’
‘He seems all right to me, but I’ve heard mutterings about him being a bit odd.’
‘I like him.’
‘That’s good.’ Mick glanced over to where the body lay, the tent now almost fully erected around it. ‘I better get back over there. I’ve a bad feeling about this one, Catherine. Her face …’
‘And her stomach.’
‘Well, I have an idea about that, but we’ll wait for the pathologist.’
Catherine watched him walk away. She had a bad feeling herself. Worse, she had no idea if the dead woman was Lauren Cook. The corpse’s battered face made comparisons with the photographs she’d seen of Lauren impossible. The hair was the same colour and looked to be a similar length, but they would need much more than that.
As soon as Mark opened his eyes, he wrapped the duvet around himself, reached over to the other side of the bed for Lauren’s pillow and held it close. The scent of her perfume lingered on the pillowcase and he pressed it to his face, breathing it in. He could hear Celia’s voice; she and Geoff must be up already. They had insisted on staying the night, or at least Celia had. Geoff would no doubt rather have gone home to his own bed. It sounded as if they were in the kitchen, probably drinking some of the milky tea that they preferred and Mark hated. Celia had never asked how he liked his tea, or coffee, or anything else. It would never have occurred to her that other people might have different preferences to herself. Though she was generous in her own way, she wasn’t a considerate woman. He’d better get up; it wasn’t polite to leave them down there on their own, though it was what he felt like doing. At least he could be sure that the kitchen was spotlessly clean.
‘Did you sleep, Mark? I didn’t get a wink,’ Celia started bleating at him straight away. Mark didn’t think it wise to mention that Celia’s snoring had practically rattled the windows, so he just shook his head and went over to refill the kettle. Celia swooped on him.
‘You sit down, let me do that. I want to keep myself busy. Now, Geoff and I have been talking about what we can do.’
Mark silently corrected her: You mean you’ve been telling Geoff what he’s going to do.
He sat at the small table in the corner of the kitchen, opposite his father-in-law. Geoff was drinking from Lauren’s favourite mug, which was oversized and decorated with a beach scene. They’d brought it back from a holiday they’d taken before they were married. Corfu, he thought. His hands clenched into fists beneath the tabletop. Mark wasn’t sure why Geoff using the cup was bothering him so much, but he wanted to rip it out of the other man’s hand. He didn’t, of course; Mark never lost control.
Almost never.
Celia set a mug of tea in front of him. Pale, weak and unappealing. He picked up the cup and sipped anyway.
‘I think we should go back to the police station today,’ Celia went on. ‘That Sergeant Bishop had no intention of helping us. Well, we’ll see about that. I’ll insist on seeing her boss if we’re not satisfied. Geoff will have to go out for his walk first, the doc
tor’s insisting he gets more exercise since he retired. At least three miles a day, isn’t it, love?’ Geoff nodded, winking at Mark as he did so. Mark gave Geoff a tiny smile. More like three pints a day. Celia bustled back over to the worktop. ‘I’ll do you some toast, Mark.’
Mark tuned her out. He didn’t want any toast, but it was pointless saying so. Celia had toast for breakfast, therefore so did everyone else. Geoff still hadn’t spoken.
As Mark stood to take his plate to the sink, having managed to force most of the toast down his throat, there was a knock at the front door. Celia looked at him.
‘Do you want me to go?’ she demanded. Geoff sighed, lifting his gaze to the ceiling.
‘It’s their house, Celia, not ours. I’m sure Mark can manage.’
‘I’m only trying to help. He’s got enough on his mind,’ Celia tutted.
Mark ignored them both and turned away. He felt sick, his stomach lurching. It could be anyone, of course: someone wanting to read the gas meter, a delivery driver or lost motorist. It wouldn’t be though, he knew it.
Sure enough, as he approached the front door he could see two hazy figures silhouetted through the privacy glass panel, one tall, one shorter. Dark clothes. He gulped and all at once seemed to be floating, not walking, down the hallway with his breath coming in uneven gasps. The door felt heavy when he pulled it open.
‘Good morning, Mr Cook. I wonder if we could come in?’
Mark knew he was staring, but he couldn’t help it. He gazed at them, his mouth working. Then he was aware of movement behind him and Geoff pushing him aside, his hands gentle.
‘Sergeant Bishop. Good morning.’
‘Hello, Mr Chantry. This is my colleague, Detective Constable Lancaster. Could we come in, please?’
Celia shouted from the kitchen. ‘Let them in, Geoff. I hope she’s got some good news for us.’
Geoff winced. ‘I’m sorry about my wife,’ he said in an undertone. ‘She’s very worried.’