Deborah Crombie - Necessary as Blood

“The lads and the photographer have gone for a bit of a break,” Kaleem continued. “And I’ve called in a forensic anthropologist. What comes next is more his province than mine.”

“You’ve found her,” said Gemma. And although it was what she’d expected, what she’d been all too certain of since she’d first looked at the garden, she felt a rush of grief that caught her by surprise. Sandra Gilles would not come home to her daughter.

“Yes, I think so,” answered Kaleem. He rubbed his arm across his forehead, leaving more streaks. “There is an adult female body beneath the layer of lime. The lime slowed decomposition somewhat, but it’s been a warm summer, so…the clothing is pretty well intact, however, and matches the description of the items Sandra Gilles was wearing the day she disappeared. The hair also fits Sandra Gilles’s description-blond and very curly.”

Gemma decided then that she was not going to look. She had seen Naz Malik’s body. She wanted to keep her image of Sandra Gilles, the vibrant woman she’d seen in the photographs in the Fournier Street house, intact-for Charlotte’s sake as well as her own.

“…we will, of course, be matching DNA and dental records,” Kaleem was saying as she dragged her attention back to him. “The victim was buried facedown, and it looks as though she received a blow to the back of the head. There’s what appears to be matted blood in the hair, and a depression in the skull.”

Kincaid stepped forward and looked down. His face was impassive. “He hit her?”

“Looks that way. I’d say when her back was turned. No guess as to the weapon without a proper examination.”

“But-” Gemma tried to work out what had happened. “If she just came to talk to him, why did he take the risk of killing her, rather than just bluffing it out? Surely he could have covered his tracks up to that point-”

There were voices from the kitchen, and two suited forensics techs came out, followed by a photographer, and then Doug Cullen. Gemma noticed that one of the “lads” was female.

Kincaid and Kaleem moved aside so the techs could go back to work. “We’re just going to remove a bit more fill, Doc,” said the woman, who appeared to be in charge. “It seems to be quite soft beneath the body.”

“I talked to the landscapers this morning,” said Cullen. “The woman next door remembered the name on their van. This”-he waved a hand towards the fountain, now moved to one side-“wasn’t the original plan. He was going to put in a fishpond, quite a deep one. They’d already dug for it, and delivered the pavers to go round it, but they hadn’t taken away the earth that had come out of the hole.

“Then Alexander rang them the morning they were scheduled to concrete the pond and said he’d decided on something else and was going to do the work himself. They thought he’d just got a cheaper bid at the last minute, because he wasn’t the type to get his hands dirty. But then he called them back a few days later and asked them to put in the fountain.”

“So, he found himself with a body on his hands and took advantage of an opportunity,” Kincaid said. “He had a hole, and the materials to fill it, and he needed to do it as quickly as possible-”

“Wait,” interrupted Kaleem. He turned to Cullen. “Did your landscaper say how deep they dug? This body is actually quite close to the surface. If there’s loose soil beneath her-”

Kaleem and the female tech looked at each other, then went to the edge of the pit and knelt, leaning down. The tech eased herself flat onto her stomach, and Kaleem steadied her while she seemed to be probing carefully in the bottom of the hole.

“Shit,” she said, suddenly still. “Get me a damned bucket.”

The other tech hurried forward and eased himself down flat as well, lowering an empty tub.

Kaleem watched intently as the female tech moved again, and Gemma heard the soft sound of earth falling into the plastic tub. Then Kaleem looked up.

“There’s another body, lower down.”

The two techs worked silently, easing soil from around the edges of the upper body. After a quarter of an hour, the woman said, “I think that’s all we can do without disturbing the upper remains. But fortunately the lower body was a bit to one side, so I think you can get some idea of what we’ve got.”

Kaleem knelt down again and peered in. “There’s a hand and forearm visible. From the size, I’d say they belong to a child. And there’s hair. Long and dark. So I would guess, given the suspect’s history, that this victim is female.”

“Oh.” Gemma drew in a breath as an added weight of sorrow descended upon her.

The little girl had stopped appearing in the window, not because she’d been passed on to another man, but because she had died.

“Was the girl there longer than Sandra, do you think?” she asked Kaleem.

“Can’t say for certain without tests, but it looks like decomposition is a little more advanced. There’s no lime over these deeper remains, however, so decomposition might have progressed more rapidly.”

Gemma frowned. “Why no lime over the girl, I wonder?”

“Maybe the girl’s death was an accident,” Melody suggested. “He got too rough with her, or…well, anyway, whatever happened…maybe he just took advantage of the work in progress.” She gestured at the garden.

“And then when it came to Sandra,” continued Gemma, “he must have figured that what had worked once would work again. But he had to put her body closer to the surface, so he risked taking the time to get the lime. It was a Sunday, after all. He could have just driven to a garden center that afternoon. He wouldn’t have buried her until after dark.”

“It must have been backbreaking,” said Kincaid, without the least trace of sympathy. “I’ll bet we find he took a few days off work afterwards.”

“But why didn’t he bury Naz?” asked Gemma.

“He was running out of room. And maybe the lime hadn’t worked as well as he’d thought.” Kincaid shrugged. “Or maybe he just didn’t want to dig up his pavers again. But whatever the reason, it was a bad decision. If Naz Malik had disappeared without a trace, we might never have learned what happened to Naz or Sandra. Or this girl.”

“We found a pair of glasses, guv,” said the female tech. “Almost forgot, in all the excitement. They were under the shrubs, covered with some leaf mold.” She gestured towards the fill buckets, and Gemma saw a small evidence bag pushed to one side. She crossed the garden and picked up the bag, studying it. They looked just like the glasses Naz had been wearing in the photos on Sandra’s corkboard.

“I’m certain these belonged to Naz,” she said. “Do you think”-she hesitated, hating the idea-“do you think he left them deliberately?”

“If Alexander invited him out here for a drink-and I wouldn’t be surprised if the idea appealed to him, the twisted bastard”-Kincaid grimaced-“then kept him here, drugged, until dark, Naz might have had periods when he was conscious enough to realize what was happening.”

Cullen was shaking his head, not in disagreement, but in an expression that bordered on wonder. “Maybe that’s what Alexander was looking for that day in the mortuary, when we thought he might have gone through Naz’s effects,” he said. “He realized he’d slipped up. But, my God, what a nerve.”

The enclosed space of the garden was beginning to bake in the afternoon sun, and the odor rising from the pit was unmistakable. Gemma stepped back until she stood partly in the shade cast by the house. She looked up at the dark brick wall. “What we still don’t understand is what brought Sandra here that day.”

“They found a camera inside,” said the tech. “In the bedroom nearest the bathroom upstairs. There were some girls’ trinkets in a drawer, and a folded sari. The camera was tucked underneath, in the folds of the cloth.”