Page 9 of The Girl in the Grave
Tomorrow was going to be a very long day. She glanced up at the clock in her office, surprised to see it was almost eight. She saved the files onto the computer then stood up and stretched; poor Abe would be ready to go home. Going back through to the mortuary she saw him hosing down the tables and floor, which were already spotless. He was so good, always paying attention to the details, to the things that really counted. She wished she could hire him to be her full-time assistant.
‘Hey, I didn’t realise it was so late. You can go home you know.’
‘So can you. There’s nothing to do here tonight, so you might as well go home and get some sleep.’
He was right: tomorrow was going to be busy. ‘I will if you do.’
He laughed and his brown eyes crinkled, his perfect white teeth showing. Watching him as he checked each fridge door to make sure the bodies inside were secure, she wondered what his girlfriend made of him working day in, day out with dead people. He walked across to her, tugging off the plastic apron he’d been wearing. He screwed it up and threw it into the special yellow waste bin then followed her out and locked the door behind them.
Waving at Abe as he strolled towards his bike, Beth carried on towards the patch of gravel where she’d abandoned her car. Her stomach growled and she realised she needed to eat. A few years ago she’d have happily spent her evening curled up in front of the television with a family size bag of crisps or large bar of chocolate, sometimes both depending upon how stressful her day had been. But since that night seven years ago, she’d swapped junk food for wine, sometimes neat vodka. Her nights of vegging out in front of the television had been replaced with exercise classes, running and self-defence training. After the night she’d almost died, she’d promised herself that she would never put herself in that position again. She’d learnt how to fight, got fit enough to run fast if she had to. The extra weight she’d carried had dropped off along with her zest for life. She walked up to the car and stared through the window into the back seat, making sure it was empty. Her heart sank. This was her life now; always living on the edge. Once upon a time she wouldn’t have even double-checked if she’d locked her car and now look at her. Even though the windows were all intact, the alarm wasn’t sounding, and everything was secure, she still felt her heart race.
As she climbed into the car she watched Abe unlock the huge chain from around his bike. He waved at her before racing off into the distance. She waved back even though he couldn’t see. Good manners cost nothing, that was another reason she had a soft spot for him. Her stomach growled and thoughts of dinner took over. There was an amazing takeaway not too far from the hospital. Checking her phone, she read a message from Josh: he didn’t think he’d make it; he was working late and wouldn’t be free for supper after all. She sighed: she should have realised that he would be up to his neck in it back at the station, but the thought of spending time with him had kept her going all afternoon. It had taken away the churning in her stomach thinking of being home alone all night with a broken security system. Dialling the number, she placed her order for a Szechuan beef chow mein, salt and pepper chips and the obligatory bag of prawn crackers.In for a penny in for a pound, she smiled to herself.
By the time she got to the takeaway and nipped in the Co-op opposite for a bottle of wine, it would be ready. She would be home in forty-five minutes if the traffic wasn’t too bad. Then she would try and spend the night relaxing, not worrying about anything other than her workload tomorrow.
Thirteen
Jason slammed the rusted metal locker door shut. Checking there was no one around, he shoved the small ziplock bag into his trouser pocket. He had been on edge since they’d found that body yesterday; even though he’d only caught the slightest glimpse of her his stomach tied in knots every time he thought about it. She’d been a mess covered in soil, her face all squashed and the flesh slipping off it like some wax mask that was melting. He shuddered as his stomach lurched again. The door to the men’s changing room slammed, making him jump. He looked up to see Barry heading towards him.
‘What’s up with you? You look like shit.’
‘I feel like shit. Not good at all. I think I’m coming down with something.’
‘Yeah, well keep away from me then. I’ve got a big night out planned. If you pass your germs onto me and ruin it, I’ll kill you.’
Jason smiled; Barry was okay for an older bloke. A bit of a pain in the arse about not cutting corners, but he’d worked with a lot worse though, some real idiots.
‘I won’t. I’m going home to bed and might not be in tomorrow.’
‘Make sure you ring in then, but not before I’ve left for Manchester and they can’t ring me to come back and work.’
‘Yes,Dad. I will.’
‘Cheeky git, I’m not your dad. Even your mother doesn’t know who he is.’ Barry laughed at his own joke, grabbed his rucksack from his locker and walked out.
Jason stood up, his legs like jelly. He didn’t know what to do. If the coppers brought in sniffer dogs, they’d find out what he’d been keeping in here, then there’d be an investigation and he could end up being arrested. He needed to get the stuff out of here, but he didn’t want to take it home with him. He felt the weight of the bag in his pocket. Christ, if the coppers got wind of it, they’d still drag him in and try to pin something on him. Well they could do one – he wouldn’t let that happen.
Fourteen
Josh cleared the whiteboard of the pictures of old suspects that had been stuck on there that long ago the edges were curling. He then folded them neatly and pushed them through the slot of the box where all the official documents were put ready to be shredded. Next, he took a damp cloth and began to rub away the faded red writing from the board. He knew they were all watching him. It had been at least a year since they’d last investigated a murder in this part of Cumbria. Barrow, the largest town in south Cumbria, seemed to have more murderers than here in the heart of the county at the Lakes: CID down there were kept a lot busier, and Josh was grateful for it. Around here it was mostly rural crime: thefts, burglaries; the odd travelling gang from one of the cities would come in, ram raid a few shops and cash machines then move on. He was only thirty-four but had ten years’ experience under his belt which counted for a lot in this job. Seven of them had been in CID, working his way up from detective constable to sergeant. He’d begun typing up the application for his inspector’s board a couple of times only to have stopped midway and deleted it. He didn’t know if he could handle being stuck in an office most of his shift and not being able to go out and conduct a lot of his own enquiries. A higher rank brought more power, which he definitely didn’t care about; it also brought more responsibility. For now he was happy being in charge of his small team and mucking in with them to get the results they all wanted.
He’d emailed Claire from the Barrow Scenes of Crime Department for a blown-up picture of the victim. Tomorrow, he’d have a cleaner, clearer image once Beth had completed the PM, but this would do for now. He wanted the rest of the team to realise just how horrific and serious this was: somehow just describing what they’d found didn’t do the crime justice. Pulling the photo from the printer, he rolled up a couple of blobs of Blu-Tack and stuck it on the board. A whistle and some groans made him nod his head in appreciation. He turned to look at them.
‘It’s bad; no actually it’s beyond bad. It’s terrible. I want you to look at this young girl and feel the same anger that I do. Why did someone believe she deserved to end up dead, hidden in someone else’s grave?’
There were a few headshakes, shoulder shrugs, the usual collective ‘we have no idea’ expression on their faces. DC Alison Bell held up her hand. ‘Whoever it is, they’re sick.’
Josh nodded. ‘They are, and we need to find out who that individual is before something like this happens again.’
‘Boss, how do we know this is the first time it’s happened? I mean, maybe they got unlucky this time. They wouldn’t have known the grave was going to get exhumed, would they? They’re probably panicking big time. How do we know that there aren’t more bodies hidden beneath coffins all over the graveyard, or in other graveyards?’
Josh paused for a moment to let the idea sink in with the rest of the team. DC John Paton was right, the possibility was very real. There was no way to know, not unless they started exhuming the whole bloody cemetery, and that wasn’t going to happen. He cleared his throat. ‘What I want is for you to focus on missing person reports. Start local and then widen the net. Is anyone aware of any recent reports of missing young people?’
DC Tina Sykes rolled her eyes. ‘What? Apart from the usual ones who are never really missing, just acting up to worry their parents?’
‘Yes, them. Everyone. Have any of them been missing a couple of months? We know that Florence Wright was buried eight weeks ago, so anyone who went missing just before then. We need to identify our girl in the grave, until then we’re working blind. She’s young from the looks of her; surely someone out there is missing her.’
‘What if she’s in care? Or it’s possible she could be a runaway?’
