Page 21 of Dead Fall

Bacon?! Suppressing a smirk, she took his outstretched hand. It felt warm and slightly damp, and she surreptitiously wiped it on her jeans.

After leading him to the autopsy suite, she talked him through the ladder-to-window incident – him taking no notes, she noticed.

‘Who did you deal with at Camden?’ he asked.

‘I didn’t report it.’

Seeing his frown, she said, ‘Look, there was nothing to see, just the ladder outside where they’d dropped it.’

‘That’s not really your call though, is it?’ he said mildly.

‘Do you seriously think they’d have sent anyone?’ she retorted. ‘When we reported a missing body a couple of years back the nick had to be bullied even to send a uniform. The guy had barely started shaving.’ Recalling how the spotty little twat had patronised her, doubting her report that a body was missing.

DI Bacon looked at her assessingly. ‘This photo of Bronte, your boss reckons it’s for real. In a case like this we’d usually start by looking for someone on the inside. Someone looking to make some money out of this poor girl’s death.’

She dropped her gaze, recalling Jason’s cringe-making excitement at having a celeb in the body store. He might be a sexist twat but he wouldn’t .?.?. would he .?.?.?

‘Yeah, well last time we had an intruder break in you lot wasted a ton of time hounding me for stealing a body instead of finding the real villains.’ Cassie was getting testy. ‘Why don’t you start by asking this TikTok “detective” where she got the image?’

‘Trouble is, since you didn’t report we have nothing other than your word that it happened,’ he mused, hitching his waistband up over his beer belly.

‘For Chrissake, if I was going to invent an intruder story, then I would’ve made sure to call the cops to cover my back, wouldn’t I?!’ In the silence that followed she realised her voice had become quite heated.

DI Bacon seemed unperturbed by her outburst. He pulled out his notebook. ‘Could you give me the names of everyone with access to the mortuary?’

Once that was done, she walked him to the front entrance in silence.

He paused with his hand on the half-open door and his gaze fell on Cassie’s chest again.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

Cop or not, she was about to call him out when he nodded to her T-shirt. ‘I saw her play once,’ he said with a nostalgic smile, and she realised it was the image of Siouxsie he’d been looking at all along. ‘The Roundhouse, 1978. Happy days.’

And with a beatific smile, he was gone, leaving Cassie blinking at his departing back.

FLYTE

It was an odd feeling, facing her old boss DCI Malcolm Bellwether across his desk. When she’d worked as a detective in Camden CID eighteen months back she’d often been sitting here in the position of a supplicant: asking to be given a more interesting case, or having to apologise for going off-piste. Despite his recent elevation to DCI rank, it was Bellwether who was on the back foot now. Flyte was here to put CID’s actions in the Bronte case under the microscope and her report would make public any failings in their investigation, as well as deciding whether there should be any disciplinary proceedings.

‘Obviously I’ll need full access to the investigation team,’ she said. ‘Which detective attended the scene?’

He hesitated before admitting, ‘None actually. Sergeant Hickey who attended found no suspicious circs, the neighbours heard nothing out of the ordinary, and there was no sign of forced entry.’ He opened his hands. ‘Add to which the deceased has a history of drug abuse and she had texted a suicide note to her mother.’

‘When I was here it was policy for a detective to attend a Cat 2 death’ – pinning him with an unforgiving gaze.

‘I am aware of best practice, Phyllida,’ he said with a hint of asperity. ‘But we’re a detective down and we have to prioritise. If the level of media and public interest had been anticipated then a detective would have attended as a precautionary measure. Unfortunately, Sergeant Hickey had no idea this young woman was a celebrity – to be fair she’s not exactly a household name.’

‘She is now,’ said Flyte.

Bellwether grimaced. ‘And now there’s this mortuary photo of her splashed all over the media. I just had Sophia’s father screaming down the phone at me.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ she said. ‘I assume someone has questioned the mortuary staff?’ – picturing Cassie Raven, who could be spiky when on the defensive.

Before he could answer there came a knock at the door followed by the entrance of a large shabby figure in a brown suit that looked like it had been bought for a wedding in the nineties. She eyed him. Was that .?.?. tomato purée on his tie?

‘Speak of the devil.’ Bellwether seemed relieved to see the new arrival.

‘DI Bacon,’ said the man, putting out his hand to Flyte. She looked down at it in confusion. ‘I’ve been assigned to the Ange-pop-olous case from East London Major Crimes.’ Mangling Bronte’s name.

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