A Shred of Evidence (9 page)

She had been in school uniform the first and last time Judy
had seen her alive, and she had wondered what it would be like to be her mother; now, she thanked God she wasn’t.

She raised her eyes to Freddie’s. “Well?” she said.

Freddie sucked in his breath. “First impressions?” he said. “She’s been dead under two hours, I’d say. There are considerable head injuries, but, from the temperature readings the police surgeon took, I’d say that she died by asphyxiation due to the air passages being constricted by nylon material wound round her throat.”

“Her own tights, in other words,” said Judy angrily, moving out of the way as the body bag was brought in.

Freddie smiled. “I didn’t do it, acting Chief Inspector,” he said. “I was at a rather good dinner party at the time.”

“Sorry,” she said. “Was she raped?”

“There’s no obvious bruising or injury other than the head injuries—the shirt is unbuttoned, rather than torn open. I’ve taken swabs, of course, and I’ll know better after I’ve examined her properly.”

“Are we looking at someone who might do it again?”

Freddie shook his head. “You need a forensic psychologist for that,” he said. “And he’d need to talk to the perpetrator, and cross his fingers for luck when he answered you.”

“What do you think?” Judy persisted.

“What do you?”

She had to assume that he would. A murder room was being set up, because no one thought that this would be cleared up by morning. But Tom had noticed the tyre marks, which was good work. Cars were very visible, and if this one left in a hurry, someone on the busy Ash Road might have seen it, even if it hadn’t caused the skid. But it quite possibly had; an angry driver always noticed what sort of car had cut him up, and that was a good start.

And good old Sherlock had found the shoes down there; there was a chance of fingerprints, and the depot area might yield other clues, since it had been cordoned off immediately and not used as a makeshift car park by the investigating officers.

He was good at his job, was Tom. He looked like a
choirboy; people often underestimated him, which gave him a considerable edge. Judy hoped he would take the inspector’s exam again; he just needed to think a bit more than he did at times.

She looked at the section of pipe, now busy with scene-of-crime officers who took scrapings, made sketches, took photographs. A car had driven away at speed. Dumping the body? “Was she actually killed in there?” she asked. “Or could someone have been trying to conceal the body?”

“She was murdered in there. The head injury bled for a time before she was strangled. It looks as though it all took place here—there’s blood on the rim at the entrance, see?” Freddie grinned at her reluctance to look. “Here, at the top, and lower down. Her head came into forcible contact with the edge of the concrete. Then it looks as though she slid to a sitting position, where the action was repeated.”

Judy thought about that, and looked at those houses, where eminently respectable people had heard nothing, though all this was going on just up the road.

“How strong would her assailant have had to be?” she asked. “Tom thinks that there might have been joyriders here.”

“You want to know if a young boy could have done it?”

Judy nodded. “I think it was someone she knew. No one heard anything, Freddie. Mrs. Cochrane was only in the woods—she would have heard someone shouting for help. I think it’s possible that the girl didn’t realize she was in danger until it was too late. That suggests a boyfriend.”

“That makes sense,” said Freddie. “There are no signs of a struggle, as far as I can see from a first examination. We may find something under her fingernails, but I doubt it. There are no bruises on her arms, or her hands, like you would find if she had tried to fight off her attacker.”

Judy frowned. “No struggle at all?” she asked.

“Not that I can see,” said Freddie. “It’s almost as though she was just standing talking to someone who suddenly bashed her head against the concrete without any warning, then overpowered and strangled her.”

“Overpowered her? Does that mean you think it was a man?”

“Not necessarily. She had probably lost consciousness, from the way she seems to have slid to the ground. All you’d need to do what’s been done here is the element of surprise, not strength.” He smiled. “Child’s play,” he said. “Not inappropriate, given the location.”

Freddie’s graveyard humour was hard to take at times. Judy looked back at the scene. The pipe had a diameter of five feet two inches. The girl was five feet eight, according to Freddie. The edge of the concrete would have been level with the base of her skull. One vicious push would have been enough to render her semi-conscious. But it hadn’t stopped at one push.

“How many blows?” she asked.

“I’ll try to answer that tomorrow,” he said. “Ten o’clock sharp—don’t be late, acting Chief Inspector.” He smiled. “You’ll be catching Lloyd up any day now,” he said.

“Do me a favour, Freddie,” she said. “Just don’t say that to him.”

He grinned. “Is that why he’s knocking himself out on this course?” he asked.

Judy shook her head. No. Of course it wasn’t. She hoped. “He just wants to be clear of any rationalization that might be going to take place,” she said.

“Mm. Think he’ll make it?”

“I think he already has,” said Judy. “The course is finished, really. He’ll be back on Friday.”

“Not the course. Do you really think he’ll get promotion?”

“He’s overdue for it,” Judy said.

“Quite,” said Freddie.

Judy walked away. She liked Freddie, in a way. He could be good fun. But his matter-of-factness overrode everything; a fifteen-year-old had been savagely murdered, but Freddie just saw a corpse, the way a businessman would see a memo, as something to be dealt with, something that could be joked about. Lloyd’s future was less than certain, so Freddie saw little point in pretending that it wasn’t.

She could have done with a little less frankness. She could
have been more positive herself, come to that, and not given Freddie the opening.

“Have I offended you?” he asked, coming over to her.

She turned. “No,” she said. “You’ve probably saved me a great deal of grief. I’ll remember not to say that to Lloyd.”

“But he is overdue,” he said.

Judy shrugged. “He’s never been that bothered about promotion,” she said. “He’s no respecter of rank—that doesn’t help. And they think he lets his subordinates become too familiar with him.”

“Some more than others,” said Freddie. “I don’t imagine you call him sir between the sheets.”

Judy checked the sweep of anger and took a breath before she spoke. “They don’t pass you over for promotion on the grounds that you have a private life,” she said.

Freddie gave a short laugh. “I knew someone who had one of them,” he said. “But he didn’t have to get up before the pudding to go to work on a corpse in a surplus piece of storm drainage pipe embedded in a field. Just as well you and Lloyd did get it together, Judy—you’d have a hell of a job hanging on to anyone normal.”

Judy’s anger subsided a little as she began to realize what this was all about. “Are you having wife problems?” she asked.

“Well … let’s say that I’m under some pressure to give up the Home Office work, and will be going home to more of it.”

Judy nodded. “Would you mind giving it up?” she asked.

Freddie thought before he answered, the way he did when she was asking for an opinion about a death. “Yes,” he said. “So—if ever you get tired of being Lloyd’s private life, I may well have a vacancy.”

“I’m sorry,” said Judy, honestly, ignoring the rest of what Freddie had said.

“I don’t know if I am or not,” said Freddie, and strode away to where his sports car was parked, raising his hand above his head as a farewell.

The probationer was on his way towards her, his face eager to impart information that Judy knew she didn’t want to hear.

“Ma’am, a young girl’s just been reported missing. Her
mother says she hasn’t come home,” he said, arriving beside her. “She answers the description, including the clothes.”

Judy sighed. Nat, we’ve found your mum, she thought.

“Her name’s Natalia Ouspensky. I’ve got the address here, ma’am.”

Nat. Natalia, but people couldn’t be bothered with four syllables. They couldn’t be bothered with two; she got called Jude as often as she was called Judy. And Natalia had become Nat.

Judy looked at the constable. “Have you ever had to do this?” she asked, taking the piece of paper with the address on it, glancing at it. Malworth Road, as she had supposed from where the girl had got off the bus.

“No, ma’am.”

“Well, come with me. Everyone has to do it some time.”

But it never got any better.

Kim’s mother came in, talking excitedly about what was going on down at the Green.

“There’s loads of police, and they’ve roped it all off,” she said. “We kept hearing the police cars—we wondered what was going on. When we came out, they were everywhere.”

Ash Road ran along the bottom of Oak Street, where the bingo club was; the police had been outside, asking the customers what time they had arrived, and if they had seen anyone on the Green. Kim’s mum had got there early, so they weren’t interested in her, but her friend hadn’t come until about nine, and they had asked her a lot of questions.

“They asked her if she’d seen a young woman with long blond hair,” she said. “But she hadn’t.”

Kim stared at her. “What?” she said.

“What’s the matter?”

Kim took a deep breath. “Mrs. Ouspensky rang and asked if I’d seen Natalie,” she said.

Her mother’s hand went to her mouth, and she stood up. “I’d better ring her,” she said.

“No, Mum! You can’t do that! You’ll worry her sick!”

“I’m not going to tell her all that!” said her mother. “I just want to be sure that Natalie’s got home all right.”

Kim shook her head. “She can’t have, Mum,” she said. “Mrs. Ouspensky would have rung me back. I know she would.”

Her mother sat down again. “Oh, Kim,” she said. “What are we going to do? Should we tell the police?”

“I think she might already have told them,” said Kim. “She was really worried then, and that was over an hour ago.”

“I think I have to do something,” said her mother. “I have to call the police, or Natalie’s mum, or something.”

Oh, no. No. Supposing Nat was just with her boyfriend, and they got caught because of her? Kim couldn’t bear to think of it.

“Kim, love … That description could fit lots of girls.” She stood up. “I’m going to ring her mother,” she said.

Kim waited miserably while her mother dialled, and the phone rang out. She asked to speak to Mrs. Ouspensky, then asked who was speaking, said, “I see,” and “Thank you,” and hung up. “It was a policeman who answered the phone,” her mother said quietly.

It didn’t mean that anything had happened to Nat. It just meant that her mother had reported her missing, and they … Her mother’s arms were round her.

“I have to phone Hannah,” Kim said.

“It’s late, love,” said her mother.

“I know. But I have to.”

She had to talk to someone, share her secret with someone. Not her mother. She would have the police round here before Kim could think. And she had to think, she had to remember what Natalie had said. She needed to talk to Hannah, tell her, see what she thought.

Hannah’s mother said that she had gone to bed, but Hannah came to the phone anyway. Kim had taken the cordless extension into her room, and now she unburdened herself to Hannah.

“Colin wouldn’t do anything like that” was Hannah’s first, instant response.

“I know,” said Kim. “That’s why I … but … we don’t
know that he wouldn’t, not really. I mean, you hear about it all the time.”

“
I
know,” Hannah said firmly.

But she would say that; she thought the sun rose and set on Colin Cochrane.

“But she said she was going with a teacher, and Julie said that Colin Cochrane was—”

“Julie’s a gossip. You don’t want to take any notice.”

But she had to.

“Kim—don’t say anything, not yet. What harm can it do to wait? The police might find who did it, and you won’t need to say anything then.”

“What if they don’t?” implored Kim.

“We’ll talk about it,” said Hannah. “Properly. Just don’t say anything yet. Please, Kim.”

“All right,” said Kim.

“Promise,” said Hannah. “Promise, Kim. You know that Colin wouldn’t do a thing like that. If you tell the police, he’ll be in terrible trouble. Promise you won’t say, not yet.”

“Promise.”

Kim didn’t feel much better after her phone call, but at least someone else knew what she knew.

Finch was still here, still asking questions. They were still in the kitchen. Erica, Colin and Sergeant Finch were having a cup of tea together, of all things.

“Why all the questions?” Colin asked.

“It’s my job,” said Finch.

“It’s your job to catch this girl’s killer,” said Colin. “I don’t see how sitting here asking me about my training run is going to do that.”

“There are lots of people working on this besides me,” said Finch. “Right now, I’d like to know what exactly you were doing tonight, sir.”

Colin looked at Erica, but she was just staring into her tea. She hadn’t opened her mouth since Finch had started asking questions.

“I was running! This is ridiculous! My wife’s dog finds a body, and you seem to suspect me.”

Finch sipped his tea. “How long were you out for?” he asked.

“I did a three-hour run.”

The sergeant pulled a face. “How often do you do that?” he asked.

“Most nights,” said Colin.

“Blimey,” said Finch. “You can’t see much of him,” he said to Erica.

Erica lifted her eyes to the sergeant, then looked back down into her mug.

“That’s really none of your business,” said Colin.

“No, of course it isn’t. But that means you left the house at … what? Seven?”

“That’s when I began the run, yes, but I didn’t leave from the house. I went from the school. I told you I had left my car there.”

Finch smiled. “So you did,” he said. “So … what were you doing at the school until seven?”