Gilbourne watched her go, taking a last drag on his cigarette before nipping off the burning end with his thumb and forefinger and putting the butt into his jacket pocket. He stood for a minute, taking in the scene.
*
Holt waited, saying nothing. They had only been partnered up for a few months but he knew this was Gilbourne’sthingand that he was not to be interrupted. One of his quirks, trying to get his head into the mindset of an offender so that he could visualise the time of the offence, see the problems they might have encountered and where mistakes might have been made. He had told Holt to imagine committing the crime himself – to imagine the details, the practicalities, the specifics – if he wanted to pinpoint the most likely sources of evidence. Holt had listened politely, nodded, agreed. But it sounded more like superstition and old schoolColumbobullshit to him. In modern policing, securing a conviction was much more likely to hinge on DNA, maybe above everything else. DNA to move from arrest to charge, DNA to get a case to court, DNA to convince juries who had spent half their lives watchingPrime SuspectandDexterandCSI Miami.
DNA was the key. Holt knew that better than anyone.
Finally, Gilbourne nodded and turned to his partner. ‘So, Nathan. You think this is the primary scene?’
‘Too early to be definitive,’ Holt said, ‘but my gut instinct would be no. Not sure how you’d get the victim to come down here voluntarily. There’s nothing really to see, it’s not on the way to anywhere, it’s not a short cut. Kind of a dead end.’
‘They could have been forced to come down here, against their will.’
‘Maybe,’ Holt chose his words carefully, knowing he was being tested. ‘But I don’t know. I just can’t see it. The primary scene is more likely to be a vehicle, a property, where the injuries were inflicted. This is the secondary, the disposal site.’
Gilbourne nodded. ‘I’m inclined to agree with you. And what do you deduce from the choice of this place as a secondary crime scene?’
‘Well, they’d need to know the area,’ Holt said. ‘I mean you wouldn’t lug a body up here from the road without knowing it in advance. From back there, you can’t tell what it’s like in terms of visibility, foot traffic, options for concealment. Could be the boundary to someone’s back garden or the ninth hole of a golf course, for all you can tell. You wouldn’t know it’s a good spot to dump a body unless you’d already been here.’
‘Maybe our killer just got lucky with his location?’
‘No, I reckon he’s local. Or has local knowledge.’
‘Agreed,’ Gilbourne said again. ‘Come on, let’s have a chat to the dog walker.’
They were turning to go when Whyler called to them.
‘Stuart?’ she said, pointing to one of her white-suited SOCOs, who was picking his way along the stepping plates to the edge of the inner cordon. He was holding something in a clear plastic evidence bag. The officer stopped and held out the bag in his gloved hand, clear plastic over a credit-card sized rectangle of pink and white. A driver’s licence, edges smeared brown with mud, but the name and picture still visible.
‘Christ,’ Holt said, looking closer. ‘It’s her.’
31
The twin burn marks on my neck are covered with a large plaster. The pain has slowly subsided to a low throb around a numbness that extends down to my shoulder blade and up into my jaw. A stun gun, the paramedic said, delivering a high voltage shock on contact with the skin. Illegal, highly dangerous and readily available on the internet. There is apparently no way of knowing what level of shock I was given, but she said I’m lucky the injuries aren’t more severe: she once saw a stun gun used in a street robbery and the victim suffered a heart attack. I had been lucky, too, that I only banged my head on the windowsill as I fell. She advised me to go to hospital for a proper check-up, but it seemed like overkill to me.
By the time help arrived the house was empty, of course, no sign of my attacker apart from the destruction he left behind. The uniformed officers who turned up, a couple of well-meaning young constables with beards and big arms, noted down my limited description of the intruder and took my statement about the events of this afternoon. They were more interested in the assault; the fact that nothing of any particular value had been stolen seemed to blunt their interest in the burglary. I tell them everything I can remember, including the words that are now branded onto my brain.
You handed the baby over to the police.
Mistake.
It will make her easier to find.
The expression in his eyes when he’d said it, the flash of anticipation. Was that what it was?
The two young officers made a note about Mia but I saw them exchange a look, I could tell they didn’t really know what to make of my story and whether I was concussed in some way. They’ll likely write this up as assault and robbery on a householder, and there’s no space in that story for a baby that wasn’t here and isn’t mine. A detective from CID would be in touch, they said, to talk about evidence recovery, checking for fingerprints and DNA. In the end I gave up trying to explain it to them.
Now they’ve gone, I call Gilbourne instead. I need him to get a warning to Mia’s parents. I phone him three times, the call going through to voicemail each time.
Despite everything, I find myself missing Richard at times like this, not because he was great at fixing doors, or mending furniture – or any kind of DIY, to be honest – but because it was always easier to face things together. As a team. To have someone to talk to, be close to, to share the trouble.
Instead, I call Tara from the wreckage of my kitchen as I watch a locksmith secure the back door with plywood and new deadbolts, just a temporary fix until I can get it properly replaced. I’m telling her that I’m going to check into the nearest Premier Inn when she cuts me off.
‘Absolutely not,’ she says. ‘You’re coming to stay with us.’
‘That’s really kind of you, Tara, but I know you’ve got your hands full with the boys and I don’t want to put you in danger from—’
‘No excuses, the spare bed’s already made up and I’m opening the wine now. I’m not taking no for an answer, so you might as well get yourself over here.’
