No Place to Die (4 page)

Jane remembered both cases. The first because Lockyer had told her about it on a number of occasions, and the second because she had been in the unit at the time. Both cases were traumatic. Both could have affected Mark’s emotional state – along with many others, she was sure – although she still didn’t believe it. She ran her hands through her hair and closed her eyes. It didn’t matter how she looked at it. Suicide just didn’t feel right.

She walked away from the line-up and leaned her back against a tree. As she pushed her fingers into the base of her spine she wondered when spring had been replaced by summer. The Easter weekend had been a blur. Her mother and father had taken Peter on an Easter-egg hunt over in Blackheath on bank-holiday Monday. Jane remembered cooking roast lamb with all the trimmings, but she couldn’t recall eating it. She had been working flat out for so long that even the seasons were passing her by. As she moved her head from side to side the sun heated her face. Peter loved sunshine. As soon as the sun shone he would be out in their tiny back garden, sitting cross-legged on the lawn, running his hands back and forth over the blades of grass, as if hypnotized. It was the warmest April that Jane could remember. Her shirt was sticking to her back beneath her light jacket. She listened to the murmurs of the team as they talked back and forth. She wondered if they felt out of place in such a rural setting. She listened as they joked and laughed, taking the mick out of Ashford, who seemed to be today’s target. It broke the tension, helped them to concentrate. Jane understood that. As long as the press weren’t watching, she didn’t mind. How the murder squad’s presence there had been kept quiet this long was a miracle. Mind you, while they were just searching, there wasn’t much to see; but if, and when, a white tent was erected, every journalist within a fifty-mile radius would sniff them out and be camped out for the duration, their zoom lenses invading every inch of the investigation.

‘Boss?’

She turned as Chris, one of the team’s younger DCs, waved her over.

‘What have you got, Chris?’ Jane asked, pushing herself away from the tree trunk and walking towards him.

‘We’ve got some electrical wire, boss,’ Chris said, pointing a gloved finger at two lengths of black cable resting amongst the grass and leaves.

‘Okay. Track it and see where it goes,’ she said.

‘Hold up.’ Chris shouted to the rest of the team. A shuffling noise drifted through the air as twenty paper suits rustled to a stop. Jane watched as Chris passed the wires to the officer next to him, who then passed them on to the next officer and the next, each pulling gently to release the wires from the soft earth. ‘It’s partially buried,’ Chris said, ‘but not that well. Might just have been dropped here and sunk in over time.’

‘See where it ends,’ she said, looking over Chris’s head to see where Lockyer had secreted himself now. He hadn’t said a word in the car on the drive over. Not even the traffic on the South Circular had penetrated his stupor. People had cut in front of them more than once, but Lockyer had just stared out of the window, as if he couldn’t see or hear the shouts of the frustrated commuters.

‘Boss.’ Chris called. ‘Take a look at this.’

She turned and walked along the line of officers. ‘So, what have we got?’ she asked.

‘These sections appear to go underground,’ Chris said, with a shrug of his shoulders, ‘but the other end was free. One wire has an AV receptor, and the other isn’t a cable at all. It’s a tube – polyethylene, I’d guess – about a quarter-inch wide.’

Jane took a pair of gloves from her jacket pocket and pulled them on. She stepped forward and Chris handed her the wire and the tubing. She pulled both, but there was no give. She thought for a moment, trying to decide how much time the cable and tube warranted. ‘Chris, can you give Natasha a call, over at the SOCOs’ office, and see if they can bring down the GPR?’ Chris nodded in response and made a quick note on his report pad. The GPR was a ground-penetrating radar they sometimes used to locate clandestine graves or buried evidence. It should be able to pick up the wire and track it to its source. ‘Leave this for now – move on,’ she said to the rest of the team, who obliged by dispersing, bowing their heads and resuming their shuffled walks, moving forward in unison. It was then that she spotted Lockyer.

He was standing with the perimeter officer. He wasn’t talking, just staring into space. This was getting beyond a joke. She walked over to join them. Lockyer took a step back.

‘How’s it going?’ he asked.

‘Nothing so far, sir,’ she said, trying to catch his eye, to see if he was really listening. ‘We’ve found a wire with an AV receptor and some hollow tubing. I’ve asked Chris to get the GPR down here. It might turn out to be nothing – fly-tipping – but we have to check, don’t you think?’

‘Sure,’ Lockyer said, ‘anything else?’

Well, at least that confirmed what Jane suspected: that her boss was barely listening to a word she said, let alone computing the information. ‘No, sir,’ she said with a sigh. They both turned in unison, and in silence watched the team making their way slowly towards them. ‘Sir,’ Jane said, searching for the right words. ‘It’s not looking good.’ If she expected some emotion, some clue as to how Lockyer felt about his friend’s disappearance, she was wasting her time. He just shrugged his shoulders and continued to stare off into the distance. ‘Sir, are you all right?’ Even as the question left her lips it seemed ludicrous. ‘We haven’t really had chance to talk properly, since you . . . since you’ve been back in the office.’

Lockyer turned to look at her, his eyes finally meeting hers. Jane found herself wanting to look away. There was so much pain there. What was she meant to say now? She had asked the question, but now she didn’t know what to do next. He was her superior. This wasn’t, and had never been, how their working relationship functioned. Without realizing it, she was seeing his face the night after they had slept together. His haunted expression the next morning had both attracted and repulsed her. She had spent years keeping her life as simple as possible. No boyfriends, no lovers beyond a few weeks – nothing that could potentially distract her from Peter or the job. In those brief seconds she had envisioned a different kind of relationship with Lockyer, and it had frightened her. She felt that same fear now. He was standing in front of her, his face open, his grief hers for the taking. But she didn’t want it. He seemed to sense her discomfort and turned away. Jane felt the weight of her cowardice settle on her shoulders.

Forty-five minutes later Jane was looking at the screen of the GPR machine, her brow creased, her head cocked to one side. Lockyer was standing behind her, his face unreadable. ‘What is it?’ she asked Jared, the SOCO who had brought the equipment down from headquarters.

‘It’s an underground space – a cave of some sort.’

Jane moved her head to block out the sun and squinted at the screen, trying to see the lines: the edges of whatever lay no more than a yard or so beneath the ground. ‘Natural?’ she asked.

‘No,’ Jared said, shaking his head. ‘Look at the edges here and here,’ he said, pointing to two black lines on the screen. ‘It’s been excavated . . . shaped. It’s been done well. There’s nothing supporting the roof, no struts of any kind that I can make out. The pressure from the compacted earth is all that’s keeping the structure intact.’ He sounded impressed.

‘And the cables?’ Jane asked.

‘There,’ Jared said, pointing to two tiny dots on the screen. ‘They both end at the point of entry to the area. Here,’ he went on, using a pencil to indicate two small dots, one slightly larger than the other.

‘What’s that?’ she asked, pointing to a shadow to the left of the screen.

‘Hang on. I need to move the sensor – it’s almost out of range,’ Jared replied, already unplugging leads and shifting the machine a few feet to the left. Jane felt Lockyer step back. ‘Here,’ Jared said, ‘look at this.’

‘Oh God.’ she said, her heart thudding harder in her chest, her pulse loud in her ears.

‘It’s a body,’ Jared said, his voice hollow.

24th April
–
Thursday

Jane stood in the shower, debating how long she could delay getting out. She had managed to stay in a warm bubble since 5 a.m., when her alarm had woken her. In a semi-conscious state, curtains still drawn, she had tiptoed around the house in her fleecy dressing gown, making tea and toast in a daze. Peter was still out for the count. He didn’t stir when she kissed his warm forehead. She wouldn’t be here when he woke up. It was becoming a bit too familiar: seeing her son only when he was sleeping. Her mother was snoring in the spare room. Jane would see how the day turned out, before asking her to stay another night.

She closed her eyes and turned up the temperature of the shower. As she soaped her body she couldn’t help but notice the differences she felt. Time and a crappy diet of late were taking their toll on her skin. Her breasts sagged more than she remembered. She would be forty soon. Well, not soon, but she was closer to forty than thirty, and the thought of middle age terrified her. She didn’t want grey hair, bad eyesight and wrinkles – or, in truth, more wrinkles. A line from a film came into her head as she covered her face with a flannel: ‘Time marches on, honey, and eventually it marches right across your face.’ The water was beginning to cool. The tank was almost empty. If she stayed there any longer, the pipes would start to wheeze and cough, filling the system with air. She hung the flannel over the soap dish and turned off the shower.

As she stepped out, a chill raced over her skin. She wrapped her dressing gown around her and opened the door to the bathroom. The sun was making its way across the landing. She tiptoed into her bedroom and over to her wardrobe. Everything in her bedroom was white. Her own piece of New England in Lewisham. Ikea’s clever marketing seemed to mock her, wherever she looked. The store in Croydon was too close. A quick trip to stock up on pillar candles and nightlights for a pound turned into a battle to find the last Hogbo mattress in their labyrinth-like warehouse. She picked out her most user-friendly outfit from the array of black, grey and brown in front of her. A silk camisole, a pale-blue shirt and a pair of tan trousers. Today wasn’t a skirt day.

Once she was dressed, she took her jacket off the hook on the back of her bedroom door and padded down the stairs and into the kitchen. She kept all of her make-up and hair stuff downstairs. It aided a quick getaway, but it also meant she didn’t have to sit in her room in silence for any longer than was necessary. Late nights on the job had never bothered her, but the early mornings still grated. To be awake and active when half of London was still sleeping just felt wrong. It was an eerie time of day, as if some great disaster had wiped out the population and she was alone. Lewisham was either too loud or too quiet. There was no happy medium, it seemed.

She flicked on the radio to break the silence; banging pop music filled the room. She shook her head, turned it off and opened her make-up cupboard. There was a mirror stuck to the inside of the door, not that Jane needed it. With practised movements she applied moisturizer, concealer under her eyes and foundation over her face and neck. A swipe of pinkish lipstick and a brush of bronzer and she was done. She glanced at her handiwork. She didn’t look much different. With her paddle-brush she pulled her dark bob into some semblance of order, and tried in vain to get her fringe to stay down. She shrugged into her jacket, picked her keys out of the bowl that Peter had labelled ‘Keys’ and walked to the front door. She debated about her windbreaker for a second, before shoving it under her arm and sneaking out into the morning sunshine. As she climbed into her car she looked up at Peter’s bedroom, his X-Men curtains still drawn. This was probably the best she was going to feel all day.

Jane stamped her feet, trying to encourage blood into her toes. She had been standing in the same spot for over an hour, watching the excavation team. The sun was out. It was hot and clear, only the jet-streams of passing aircraft breaking up the expanse of blue sky. She had left her jacket and windbreaker in the car. If only she had brought her sunglasses with her. She could see them now, on her kitchen counter in a bowl labelled ‘Glasses’. Peter liked his bowls.

It had taken the excavation team two hours just to decide where to start the dig. They had been on site since six-thirty. There had been lots of talking and nodding, but very little action, which further convinced Jane that her decision had been right. Once Jared had confirmed no signs of life with the GPR last night, she had postponed the dig until this morning. The thought of trying to manage all of this at night, blinded by dozens of floodlights and observed by London’s press contingent, had not appealed. At least this way everyone had been able to get a good night’s sleep. It was going to be a very long day – of that Jane was in no doubt.

A twelve-foot-square area had been cordoned off, screens put up, a white tent erected waiting to be put in position, another fingertip search completed and pictures taken. Only then had the team begun the excavation of an entrance hole. As she walked into the cover of the trees she thought about all the evidence that would have been lost already. Yesterday’s search, walkers – in fact anyone who had visited Elmstead Woods in the past few days – would have disturbed fibres, footprints and any evidence relating to the underground cave, or tomb, as it had turned out to be. A camera flash caught her eye. The press were here. She counted four, then five lenses pointed her way. She turned her back.

‘It’ll be about five or ten minutes, boss,’ Chris called, from his position next to the hole.

‘Great,’ she said, shifting from foot to foot, before rocking back and forth on her heels. She caught sight of Dave. He was attending as the on-site pathologist. She waved him over to join her. ‘They’ll be ready soon,’ she said when he was within earshot.

‘About time,’ Dave replied, taking up position beside her. ‘I see we have an audience,’ he said, motioning towards the photographers.