by Jill McGown
“Then where were you tonight?” she said.
“I’ve told you. Mending Colin’s car.”
She didn’t look convinced.
Patrick gave her a cuddle. “If I’d been with some woman, I’d hardly come up with a lame excuse like that, would I?” he said.
Victoria smiled. “No,” she said. “You’re usually more inventive.”
He’d usually had some time to think up a story; tonight hadn’t been planned. He kissed her. “I’m not daft,” he said. “I know if I start all that again you’ll leave me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I will.”
“I’m not going to risk that, am I?”
They kissed again, she made a nice cup of tea, and Patrick convinced her, not for the first time, that he was a reformed character who would never again have a bit on the side.
He had told his class this morning that he was a consummate liar, and it was no more than the truth; he believed the lies as he spoke them. And when he was reassuring Victoria, he really did believe what he was saying; he believed that he had done nothing at all that night to worry her or anyone else.
But he had, of course, and there would be a reckoning, one way or the other.
* * *
The call had been the answer to Tom’s prayer. A body on Ash Road Green took precedence over paperwork, even in his inspector’s book.
He was there now, feeling just a touch guilty about his wish coming true; something superstitious at the back of his mind made him feel that he had somehow caused it to happen.
The duty inspector had cordoned off the children’s playground. Tom had asked him to seal off the depot area too. There were tyre marks, rubber on the paved surface down by the depot that seemed out of place where all you should have was the odd van picking up equipment and more or less obeying the five-miles-an-hour limit on the service road. It looked as though someone had shot out of there at speed. And up on the main road there were skid marks in the nearside lane, where the service road met it.
Joyriders? The depot courtyard was a good area for showing off your handbrake turns, Tom supposed. If so, did one of them get overexcited and work off his excess energy on the victim?
The lady whose dog had found her was still too upset to be of much use. She had stumbled away from the body, and run up the overgrown embankment to the phone. She was a mess; all that anyone had got so far was that her name was Cochrane, and that the dog’s name, of all things, was Sherlock. Then she had started to cry almost helplessly when Tom had tried to talk to her. A WPC was with her now, trying to calm her down.
Not a nice thing for your dog to turn up, Tom thought. Not a nice thing at all. A young woman, beaten, strangled, probably raped; her blouse was unbuttoned, her skirt pulled up to her waist, and she had nothing on underneath.
Tom squatted down and shone his torch into the concrete pipe where the top half of the body lay, and sniffed. He could still smell it. Something not right, something that didn’t belong. He shook his head, and stood up. He knew that smell, but he couldn’t place it. A perfume of some sort, but it didn’t seem right.
On one level, he was as shocked as the next man, as shocked as Mrs. Cochrane, even, at the brutality, the horror of it all. On another, he was a little like the dog, who sat beside his dishevelled mistress, tail wagging, tongue out, pleased that his discovery had produced all this activity. Finding people was a bloodhound’s job, he was saying joyously, and that’s what he had just done.
Finding their killers was a policeman’s job, and Tom’s tail was wagging too. The duty inspector had got two teams doing house-to-house along Ash Road before it got too late; they had arranged for scene-of-crime officers to come, set the wheels in motion. Now, they needed something to go on.
“What’s the score, Tom?”
He turned to see acting Chief Inspector Hill coming towards him along the lines of ribbon.
“Lights will be here any minute,” said Tom. “If it means anything, I think a car came out of the service road going very fast,” he said. “I think someone might have had to skid to avoid him.”
“We can appeal for the drivers to come forward,” said Judy, making a note. “At least eliminate them if nothing else.”
“And the doctor’s on his way to confirm death. She’s in there.” He nodded towards the big section of concrete pipe that sat half embedded in the grass, part of the adventure playground. Only the girl’s legs were visible in the dim light from the street-lamps.
Judy went over and bent down. “Can’t see a thing,” she said, and took his torch, shining it into the pipe. She straightened up, swallowing a little, looking, it had to be said, even less happy than she usually did about dead bodies. “Do we know her name?” she asked.
“Not yet,” said Tom, and frowned. This body was having a hell of an effect on everyone; it was bad, but he’d seen worse, and so had she. Maybe he was missing something. “Are you all right?” he asked.
“I think she was on my bus tonight,” said Judy. “She’s younger than she looks, Tom. She’s a schoolgirl. The others called her Nat.”
That would be a bit hard to take, thought Tom. It was difficult to know what to say, really. You could hardly offer your condolences, but he knew how she must feel. “Are you sure?” he said. After all, she had just glimpsed someone on a bus. Teenage girls were much of a muchness, really.
“Yes, I’m sure. Sure enough to get the head teacher here, if possible.” She got brisk and efficient again. “Have we found her underwear?” she asked. “Or her shoes?”
“Not yet,” said Tom. “She’s got her tights round her neck, though,” he added, with a sudden surge of outrage, now that the body had a name, an identity, however vague, and now that he knew she was little more than a child. “We’ve not found anything else.” He glanced over to where Mrs. Cochrane sat. “That’s the lady who found her,” he said. “Beside the smug bloodhound. I haven’t been able to get any sense out of her so far—she was too shocked.”
“Right—let’s go and talk to her now,” Judy said as the police surgeon arrived and disappeared into the concrete pipe.
Mrs. Cochrane was calm now; she apologized for breaking down, after Tom had introduced Judy.
“Nothing to apologize for,” said Tom. “It must have been a very nasty shock. Do you want the doctor to have a look at your leg?”
“Oh, no—it’s just a scratch.” She examined the graze through her torn and laddered tights. “I didn’t know if she was dead,” she told Judy. “Sherry found her, and I couldn’t see into the pipe. I was going to ring for an ambulance. I fell when I went up there. I should have used the road, but all I could think of was getting to the phone box as fast as I could.”
“If you’re sure you’re all right,” said Judy. “I’m afraid we have to ask you some questions.”
“Yes, of course,” she said.
“Did you see a car, Mrs. Cochrane?” Tom asked. “Or hear one, maybe?”
“A car?” She shook her head. “No,” she said firmly.
Pity. But it added up. Joyriders, kids watching the fun and games, getting themselves all hyped up. Car goes, crowd goes. Just the girl and some youth left, out of his mind on drugs or booze or both.
“But the thing is …” she said, “I saw a girl just before.” She looked at Tom, her face drawn. “It can’t be her,” she said. “It can’t be. I saw her not twenty minutes before Sherlock—” She broke off.
“Can you describe the girl you saw?”
“I know her, sort of. She goes to Oakland School. I can’t remember her name—it’s Russian, I think. She has long blond hair, and she was wearing—”
She broke off again as Tom glanced at Judy.
“It is her, isn’t it?” she said, dully. “I thought … the skirt. It looked the same. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.”
“Where did you see her, Mrs. Cochrane?” Her voice was gentle, despite the importance of the question, because Mrs. Cochrane was on the verge of becoming incohe
rent again.
“Down by the depot. I had come down the footpath from Ash Road. She was just standing there, by the depot,” she said.
“Did you speak to her?” Judy asked in the same even tones, not getting excited. Keeping things calm.
“I asked her what she was doing there. She just told me to mind my own business and walked up towards the adventure playground.”
“And you saw no one else hanging round the adventure playground?”
“No. But I didn’t go that way—I took the dog on to the grass down by the depot. He ran around for a bit, and then he went into the wood, and I had to go in after him …” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand. How could that have happened to her in such a short time? How could I not have heard anything, seen anything? Why didn’t I make sure she was—” She wiped the tears, and held herself under control.
“Why did you ask her what she was doing there?” asked Judy.
There was just a moment’s hesitation before Mrs. Cochrane answered. “She’s very young to be here at this time of night,” she said.
“Was she distressed? Frightened?”
“No. She was just—rude, I suppose,” said Mrs. Cochrane.
“How do you know her?” asked Tom.
“I work at the school. I’ve seen her there.”
“Do you teach there?” Judy asked.
“No—I work in the office.”
Tom realized who she was. “Are you Colin Cochrane’s wife?” he asked.
She nodded.
“He teaches sport at the school, doesn’t he?”
“Part time,” she said.
“Is he at home now?” asked Judy. “He might be able to tell us her name.”
“He will be,” said Mrs. Cochrane. “He was due back at ten. He might know her …” She didn’t finish the sentence, still fighting tears. “I … I just took the … the dog on to the grass,” she said again. “I let him go, and he ran into the wood. I went in after him—how could she have died in that short time? How?”
“How long were you in there?” asked Tom.
“Just—” Tears threatened again.
“Take your time, Mrs. Cochrane,” said Judy. “There’s no hurry.”
She took a moment to compose herself. “He played about in there for … I don’t know, five, ten minutes. Then we came out and I threw things for him to chase for a little while. Another ten minutes or so. Then I put his lead back on, and we walked back past the playground. He was straining to go and look at something, so I just followed him, and he went into that awful pipe, and—”
“Do you know what time it was when you saw the girl alive?” asked Judy.
“About five to ten.”
“Would you mind showing us where you saw her?”
They walked down the service road to the cordoned-off depot, with the dog, tail wagging, walking beside them, his nose to the ground. Tom kept an eye on him; his own keen sense of smell had detected a scent he couldn’t place, and which he hadn’t discussed with anyone; a bloodhound’s sense of smell might actually lead them to something, and Sherlock was following some scent of his own.
They arrived at the police line which had been slung across the road where it widened out into the courtyard.
“Just there,” said Mrs. Cochrane, pointing towards the wall opposite the depot, steep, brick-lined banking up to the road above. The depot building was faintly lit by the road, but the wall was in deep shadow.
The dog confirmed Tom’s belief in him, straining at the leash to go beyond the barrier.
“Do you mind?” asked Tom, taking the dog’s lead. “I think he’s on to something.”
He ducked under the ribbon, and followed the dog towards the door of the depot, both of them sniffing. Tom’s smell wasn’t there, but Sherlock’s obviously was. He shone his torch down into the darkness. “Over here, guv!” he shouted.
The shoes sat neatly in the doorway, rather as though they had been put out for cleaning. Tom thanked God he had had the foresight to cordon off the depot, and got a glance of gratitude from Judy when she came running over in answer to his shout.
“Get one of the scene-of-crime people down here,” said Judy quietly. “Tell them we’ll need lights down here as well, and then I think you should take Mrs. Cochrane home. See if her husband can help with identification.”
Tom took Mrs. Cochrane home. He still hadn’t entirely abandoned the idea of joyriders, even if she had seen the girl alive. Mrs. Cochrane had been told to mind her own business; that suggested that the girl had had some business she wanted to keep private, and whoever she had been with could have been waiting up at the adventure playground. He tried again as they walked up her path.
“What time did you leave the house, Mrs. Cochrane?” he asked.
“Quarter to ten,” she said.
“Did you hear anything odd as you were walking down to the Green?” he asked. “A car—noisy braking, that sort of thing? Kids making a bit of a racket?”
“No,” she said, fumbling with her door key. “Nothing.”
Colin Cochrane, looking just like he did in the ad he had made for deodorant, came to the top of the stairs clad only in a bathrobe.
“Erica?” he said, startled. “I thought you were in bed.”
Tom looked up at the handsome Mr. Cochrane, his dark hair wet from the shower. He had been due home at ten, Mrs. Cochrane had said. He could have seen something, if he had driven along Ash Road recently. But he’d have to explain to the man what he was doing there before he started asking him questions.
“DS Finch, Stansfield CID,” he said.
Cochrane’s eyes widened when he really looked at his wife, the trickle of blood on her leg, her torn tights, her grass-stained clothes. “What is it?” he said. “What the hell’s happened?”
Mrs. Cochrane didn’t enlighten him; she just walked into the sitting room with the dog.
“Your wife’s had a rather unpleasant experience, Mr. Cochrane,” Tom said.
“What?” He came downstairs. “Is she hurt? Has some bastard—?”
That was it. The smell. The smell he had noticed when he had bent over the body. It was deodorant, the stuff Cochrane advertised. The stuff he was wearing now. That was it. That was why it had been wrong. It was a man’s deodorant, and that girl had smelt of it.
“No, no, nothing like that,” said Tom. “But I’m afraid your dog found a body, sir.”
Cochrane stared at him, then went into the sitting room. “Erica? Are you all right?” he said.
Tom followed him in, watching with interest as Cochrane tried to put his arm round his wife, who moved away in a neat, obviously much practised, manoeuvre.
“Where were you, anyway?” Cochrane was asking her.
“Just on the Green,” she said.
“But … but why?”
“I had forgotten to take Sherry out,” she said.
“But the Green! At this time of night?”
“It was an hour ago! It was only ten o’clock.”
“But it’s very dark down there—why did you go there, for God’s sake? Why not across the road in the light?”
“Because I thought you’d be there!”
Tom had thought that there was more to this than Mrs. Cochrane had been letting on. Something about that tiny pause before she had replied to Judy’s question.
Erica Cochrane’s face turned pink as she waited for the inevitable question.
“You were expecting to meet your husband at the Green, were you, Mrs. Cochrane?” he asked.
“Well … he’s usually there,” she said.
“And were you there, Mr. Cochrane?” asked Finch.
“Obviously not,” he said testily.
“Why did Mrs. Cochrane think you would be?” Tom persisted. He had smelt that deodorant, and now things were getting interesting.
“I do a training run. I usually finish by crossing the Green.”
“From the Byford Road
area?”
“Yes. I come back along Byford Road, then down into Woodthorpe Close and across the Green from there.”
Tom nodded. “And did you do that tonight?” he asked.
“No. Tonight I went along Byford Road until I got to Beech Street, and went down that way.”
“Why?”
“I had to pick up my car from school,” Cochrane said.
“Sorry—I still don’t see why you didn’t cross the Green,” said Tom stolidly. “I mean, Beech Street takes you further away from the school, doesn’t it?”
“Does it?” said Cochrane testily.
“I think you know it does, sir,” said Tom. “The school’s got an annex on Byford Road, hasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And the kids come across the Green when they have to get from there to the main school, or vice versa, because it’s the quickest route—Larch Avenue is practically across from the Green. So why didn’t you? Especially if that’s your usual route?”
“I just changed my mind! Is that against the law?”
“No,” said Tom. “It was a schoolgirl, by the way,” he added, watching Cochrane closely as he spoke, “who was killed.”
He needn’t have bothered; close scrutiny was hardly necessary, as Cochrane went pale and sat down with a bump on the arm of his wife’s chair. “Oh, no,” he said. “No.”
Tom stepped closer to him. “Does that mean something to you, Mr. Cochrane?” he asked.
Cochrane looked up, his eyes barely focused. “For God’s sake!” he said. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you? A schoolgirl? I thought Sherry had found a wino, or … I don’t know! Not a schoolgirl, for God’s sake! What had happened to her?”
“She had been murdered, Mr. Cochrane.”
Cochrane closed his eyes.
“Your wife knows her by sight, but not her name. We thought you might be able to identify her.”
Cochrane shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “I only teach the boys.”
Tom nodded. Erica Cochrane had hardly said a word since she had got in. Tom had had to tell Cochrane what she had found, what had happened to her. Erica and Colin were not exactly the best of friends, Tom thought. Not right now, at any rate.