Peter Robinson - When the Music's Over

‘What do you think?’ Gerry asked.

‘Hard to say yet,’ answered Annie. ‘Give the boffins an hour or so and they might come up with some ideas. We don’t even know who she is or how she got here. Nobody local’s been reported missing.’

‘Early days yet,’ said Gerry. ‘She can hardly have walked here.’

‘True enough. Let’s go talk to Doc Burns. He’s been with the body long enough. He should have something to say by now.’

They walked a few yards along the road, noting the officers and CSIs probing the ditch and long grass for any clues as to what might have happened. There was a chance that the girl’s clothes and bag were nearby. A purse or mobile could help them with the identification. Others had climbed over the drystone wall and were searching for anything that might have been thrown over there. Peter Darby, the police photographer, was busy with his trusty Pentax, which he wouldn’t give up despite offers of a state-of-the-art digital SLR. He took digital photographs, too, of course, with a pocket Cybershot, as did many of the CSIs and investigating officers these days, but the Pentax shots were the ‘official’ ones, the pictures that got tacked to the whiteboard during briefing sessions and progress meetings.

Dr Burns was scribbling in his notebook when Annie and Gerry arrived by the corpse. ‘You two,’ he said.

Annie smiled. ‘DCI–I mean Detective Superintendent Banks is on another case. High profile, probably. He’s too good for the likes of us any more.’

Dr Burns smiled back. ‘I doubt that very much,’ he said.

Annie was joking. The few times she had met with Banks since his promotion, usually for a drink after work, he had seemed much as normal, complaining about the paperwork and boring meetings, but around the station he had been far more remote and preoccupied. Hardly surprising, she thought, given his added responsibilities. His new office also put him further away from the squad room, so they didn’t bump into one another as often during the day. Annie had put in an application for promotion to DCI, but budget cuts were back with a vengeance since Banks had scraped through. They were already reducing the senior ranks, and there were plenty of constables and sergeants out there who had passed their OSPRE exams and were still without positions to take up. The truth was, she’d have to take a few more courses and kiss a lot more arse before she got a promotion. Gerry, too, however well she did in her sergeant’s exams.

‘So what have we got?’ she asked Dr Burns.

‘Just what it looks like, at least until Dr Glendenning gets her on the slab. He might well discover some poison hitherto unknown to man, or signs of a blade so thin and needle sharp it leaves no trace to the naked eye. But until then, my opinion is that the poor girl was beaten to death.’

‘No chance it was a hit and run?’

‘I’d say that’s very unlikely, judging by the injuries and the position of the body. I wouldn’t rule it out a hundred per cent — hit and runs can cause any number of injuries similar to the ones this girl has — but I doubt it.’ Dr Burns paused. ‘Besides,’ he added, ‘you might ask yourselves what a naked girl was doing walking down this lane in the middle of the night.’

‘Oh, we’ll be doing that all right,’ said Annie. ‘Can you tell if she was beaten by a blunt object or anything? Is there a particular weapon we should be searching for?’

‘From what I can see, I’d say fists and kicking. Mostly the latter, while she was lying on the ground trying to protect her face and head, knees up to try to cover her stomach.’

Annie stared at the stained and bruised body, stiffened in the foetal position. She had curled herself up in a ball like that to protect herself from a rain of blows, but she had died anyway.

‘Any idea how many attackers?’

‘Could be just one,’ Dr Burns said. ‘But again, you’ll have to wait for the post-mortem for a definitive answer.’

‘What about her clothes? Any idea when or why they were removed?’

‘None,’ said Dr Burns. ‘As far as I know, nobody’s found any trace of them yet, and they certainly weren’t removed after the beating.’

‘Any signs of sexual assault?’

Dr Burns gestured towards the body. ‘As you can see, there’s evidence of bruising and bleeding around the anus and vagina.’

‘Any idea what killed her?’

‘Could have been the blows to the head.’ Dr Burns pointed to areas where the blond hair was dark and matted with blood on the skull, the broken cheekbone, the mess of the mouth and ear. ‘It could also be internal injuries,’ he went on. ‘It looks as if someone stamped on her. A beating like this is likely to rupture the spleen and God knows what else. I think her hip is probably broken, too.’

‘Any ideas on time of death?’

Burns sighed. Annie knew it was the question all crime-scene doctors and pathologists hated because it was so difficult to answer accurately, but she had to ask. ‘Based on body temperature readings and the fact that rigor is advanced, I’d say it happened sometime between one and three in the morning. It was a warm night.’

‘Thanks,’ said Annie. ‘Are you finished with her?’

Dr Burns glanced at the body again. ‘God, yes,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think you are. Not by a long shot.’ And he walked off to his car.

Annie asked Peter Darby and one of the CSIs if they had also finished with the body, and they said they had. She had a raincoat in the back of the car — always a sensible precaution in Yorkshire — and while they waited for the coroner’s van, she took it out and spread it gently over the girl’s body. For some reason she didn’t want the girl’s nakedness on display, even though everyone at the scene was a professional. Gerry still seemed especially pale and shaken by the sight.

‘Excuse me for asking,’ said Annie. ‘I realise I should know, but I can’t remember. Is this your first murder victim?’

Gerry offered a weak smile. ‘You usually keep me in the squad room chained to the computer.’

‘If you want to talk, or anything... As long as there’s a large glass of wine in it for me.’

‘Thanks, guv.’ Gerry straightened her back and stuck her long pre-Raphaelite locks behind her ears. ‘What next?’

‘We wait. Stefan’s gang are good, but they take their time. I think whatever happens, high-profile case or not, Alan’s going to find himself senior investigating officer on this one, so we’ll report to him when we get back to the station. First priority is to find out who she is. We’ll need to start checking on missing persons as soon as possible, and see how soon we can draft in a forensic odontologist to get working on dental records. We also need an artist’s impression. From what I could tell, her face is too badly disfigured for a useful photo ID. We’ll check with local schools, even though they’re on holiday. Social services. What’s your gut feeling on this?’

‘I think we need to know whether she was dumped or killed here, for a start.’

‘It seems a good out-of-the-way place to dump a body,’ Annie said. ‘Or even to kill someone. We should talk to whoever lives in that farmhouse over there.’

‘Ladies!’

Annie turned around to the source of the voice. It was Stefan Nowak about a couple of hundred yards up the road. ‘If you’d care to come here,’ he said, ‘I think we might have something interesting for you.’

‘I still find it hard to understand how a fourteen-year-old girl could be sexually assaulted in front of a witness and nothing was done,’ said DS Winsome Jackman, as she parked the police Skoda in the tiny, charming village of Minton-on-Swain. ‘She did report it at the time, you say?’