Page 24 of Dying Breath
‘See, you should listen to me more often. Feel better?’
‘Slightly.’
‘Come on, let’s have a slow drive back to the station. We might spot him on the way and if we don’t we’ll go get a couple of vanilla lattes. At least none of this is anything to do with us.’
She laughed. ‘For a change, you’re right. Thanks.’
They got back into the van, this time Mattie driving slowly as they both scoured the streets for Lewis Waite on the journey back. Someone would grass him up, especially if they knew that he was wanted on suspicion of murder. All they had to do was offer a small reward for his whereabouts and he’d be back in custody by tonight. Mattie turned into the retail park with the café where Ellie worked. The car park was empty. So was the coffee shop. He jumped out before she could, so she let him go. His dark grey suit was nice; he must have bought a new one. The staff in the coffee shop were staring out of the window at her and she wondered what the hell was wrong with them. Mattie soon emerged carrying two paper cups in a cardboard carrier. He opened the door and passed them to her.
‘What are they all staring at?’
‘Well, they thought that we’d stolen a police van.’
‘What?’
He started laughing. ‘We don’t exactly look like coppers, do we?’ Lucy realised that neither of them was in uniform and blushed.
‘Oh God, I forgot.’
‘Yes, well I had to show them my ID to stop them phoning the police and reporting us. Guess what, though? If you show your warrant card you get ten per cent off everything in there, so it was just as well. I bet you didn’t know that, did you?’
She began to giggle. ‘Only you could do that.’
‘I know, I keep telling you. Always make the best out of a bad situation.’
She looked at her watch. ‘It’s not even eight o’clock and I feel as if I’ve worked a full shift. We’ve got the post-mortem this morning.’
‘Better enjoy your coffee, then. Come on, let’s take this junkmobile back and hide somewhere in the station before it goes completely mental – because someone is going to be after blood.’
Lucy held the coffee carrier in one hand and was nibbling at the nails on the other. Even though she wasn’t one hundred per cent positive that Waite was the killer, it was her job to prove it one way or the other. He was all they had and now he could be anywhere.
Chapter Twenty-One
Patrick arrived at the woods and hoped to God this wasn’t going to take all day. He’d had to stop off at a chemist to buy some insect repellent. There was no way he was going to stand there and get eaten to death by midges. He nodded at the PCSOs who were on scene guard and carried on walking to where they’d found the body. This was a first for him – he’d never seen a full set of skeletal remains, so at least it should be interesting. It made a change from the blood and gore that he usually had to deal with. He wondered if Lucy realised that she had done him a favour by giving him this case to run; breaking him in gently was very kind of her. There were two CSIs here already: a man slightly older than him and two much younger men. They were all hovering around in white suits. If he had to guess he’d say this was the anthropology team. He’d never worked with anthropologists, either. It was usually a pathologist on the scene, but the removal of the skeleton from its burial site and dealing with old human remains didn’t fall under the pathologists’ remit. The older man walked over to him and held out his hand.
‘Dr Chris Corkill. Is Lucy coming?’
He shook his head. ‘No, I’m afraid she’s tied up. There have been a couple of serious incidents. I’m Patrick Baker and I’ll be the DI for this job. How are you getting on?’
‘Surprisingly well; the body isn’t in too deep. A couple of hours and we should be good to go.’
Patrick walked towards the tent.
‘There’re spare suits in my case, if you’ve forgotten yours.’
He paused.Damn.He bloody hated those white paper-sauna suits. He was hoping to take a quick peek, then pass the anthropologist his contact card before disappearing back to the station until there was something tangible he could work with.
‘Thanks, that’s great. I’ve left mine in the car.’
He looked for an extra-large size and ripped the bag open, then stepped into the suit, zipped it up and grabbed a couple of pairs of gloves from the box. He didn’t have the proper shoe protectors so he slipped on a pair of shoe covers and headed towards the tent. All three of the team were kneeling on the floor working over the body. Patrick felt his heart skip a beat; he didn’t know how he’d feel about seeing a corpse that had been buried for so long. Chris looked up at him.
‘It’s okay, you can come closer. I don’t think she’ll mind – in fact, I’m pretty sure she’s relieved that she’s been found.’
‘How do you know it’s a she?’
‘By the pelvic area – females have a larger subpubic angle than us males. It’s indicative of the female body’s child-bearing requirements, which males obviously don’t share. There’s also an area around the middle of the pelvic bone that’s larger in females. We can tell that our victim hasn’t given birth because there are no scars of parturition on the pelvis.’
Patrick nodded, trying to look as if he’d understood everything that he’d just been told. ‘What about her age?’
