Jane Casey - The Cutting Place

‘Yeah. OK. I understand. No, it’s fine.’

Silence as she spoke again. He rubbed his face with the hand that wasn’t holding the phone and turned in a tight circle, impatient now. I could practically hear what he was thinking. Get on with it.

‘Yes. As soon as I can. Yes. Yes . OK.’ He ended the call and stood for a moment, staring down at the phone absently. His face was bleak.

‘Everything all right?’

‘I have to go to Poplar.’

‘Why?’

‘Another case.’ He put his phone away and started searching his pockets, distracted. ‘A cot death. Suspicious circumstances.’

‘Oh.’

‘The boss doesn’t want to send Liv. She thought it might hit too close to home.’

‘Oh,’ I said again, this time with more understanding. Liv was six months pregnant, at the stage where you couldn’t miss it. Sending her to a cot death would be hard on her, and hard on the parents whether they were guilty or not. ‘So she’s sending you?’

‘She asked me if I minded.’

‘And you said you didn’t?’ I raised an eyebrow at him.

‘Look, it’s not my favourite kind of job but I’ll do it. She’s getting Liv to help you on this one instead.’

I didn’t know if I was relieved or disappointed. By swapping a detective inspector and a detective constable, Burt was effectively putting me in charge of finding out who murdered the woman in the river. It was a vote of confidence.

I could have wished it had come on an easier case though.

‘And who are you working with?’

‘Georgia.’

Of course . I did my best to look blandly interested. Detective Constable Georgia Shaw was more or less the last person I’d want to work with, but Derwent didn’t mind her. She was pretty and ambitious and overwhelmingly irritating to me. If Derwent had been describing her, he would have stopped at pretty, and that seemed to be good enough for him.

He was still patting his pockets, swearing under his breath.

‘I have the car keys,’ I said. ‘If that’s what you’re looking for.’

‘Why didn’t you say?’ He held out his hand for them and I shook my head.

‘I’ll drive.’ I wanted him to have time to prepare himself for what lay ahead, to get his game face ready. He wasn’t as tough as he pretended to be, I knew, and when cases involved children he struggled to maintain his objectivity. Taking on this case would cost him something he’d never admit, even to himself. But I couldn’t say any of that out loud. ‘I need to get back to the office and I don’t trust you not to drop me at the nearest tube station so you can get to Poplar sooner.’

‘I would never do that,’ Derwent protested.

‘You’ve done it before.’

‘Only a couple of times.’

‘And I should have learned my lesson after the first time.’

He looked amused. ‘Thanks, Kerrigan.’

‘Any time.’ I unlocked the car. ‘Now get in. We have places to be.’

Five hours after leaving the morgue, I had looked at hundreds of missing persons files on my flickering computer screen. The smudgy images and bland descriptions had all merged into one faceless, anonymous woman. I leaned back in my chair and tipped my chin up, easing the muscles in my neck.

‘I can’t bear to look at any more. My eyeballs feel like leather. I can’t tell if there’s something wrong with my screen or my eyes.’

‘No luck?’ DCI Burt paused by my desk and peered at my notes. ‘You’ve got a shortlist, I see.’

‘Of sorts, ma’am.’ I straightened up, pulling myself together, because she was the boss after all. ‘The trouble is that there are too many women who fit the description of what we’ve found.’

‘We limited it to women who’ve gone missing in the last month.’ Liv was looking pale, I noticed, with dark shadows under her eyes. She was slight and delicate, and six months of pregnancy had left her more exhausted than blooming. It had given her backache, insomnia, heartburn, an insatiable appetite for cake and an obsession with finding the perfect pram which involved endless arguments with her girlfriend over email. I had found her relieved beyond words not to be heading to Poplar, but now I wondered if she was regretting it. Ploughing through missing persons reports was unrewarding to say the least.

‘Dr Early thought she was IC1 but we’ve included other races, just in case she’s not white. She could be light-skinned,’ I said.

‘And we’re including females aged thirteen to forty,’ Liv added.

‘Wise,’ Burt said. ‘I’ve seen the pictures from the morgue. They looked as if she could be anything. We probably shouldn’t rule too many people out.’

‘But that doesn’t really help us to narrow it down in any meaningful way,’ I explained. ‘The volume of mispers is too high. There are too many runaways and domestic violence victims and people skipping out on rent or expired visas, let alone women who might have actually come to harm.’

‘Especially since we have to look at mispers from outside the Met too.’ Liv sighed. ‘There’s nothing to say she went missing in London, just because she ended up in that part of the Thames.’

‘You’re going to have to make some choices about who you include eventually,’ Burt said. ‘Use your judgement. But remember that you’ll make things very hard for yourself if you can’t identify her.’

No shit . ‘On the bright side, she looked as if she’d been taking care of herself. I’d be very surprised if she was someone who would count as a vulnerable adult,’ I said. ‘I’m leaving out homeless people, known drug users – anyone who is unlikely to have time for a full wax and manicure every couple of weeks, basically.’

‘But what we really need is a DNA match,’ Burt said.

‘It would be a help.’

‘We might have her on our list already but we won’t know it until the DNA comes in,’ Liv said.

‘Assuming someone’s reported her missing and we’ve taken it seriously enough to put her DNA in the system.’ Burt smiled at me and carried on to her office, as if she’d said something helpful.

‘Yes, we may never identify her. Thanks so much for your input, boss,’ I muttered.

Liv yawned. ‘Do you think it’s time to knock it on the head for today?’

‘Definitely.’ I checked the time. ‘Shit, I’ve got to get changed.’

‘Going out?’

‘I’ve got a yoga class.’

‘ You are going to yoga. Maeve Kerrigan, going to yoga.’

I stood up and stretched. ‘What’s so weird about that? It’s good for my posture.’

‘Yeah, of course it is. But that’s not usually a priority.’ Liv darted over and yanked open the bottom drawer of my desk before I could stop her. ‘What the hell is this?’

‘Snacks.’

‘Nope. Don’t lie. These are not snacks. You used to have snacks in here. There used to be crisps and multipacks of Twixes. Don’t try to pretend this is the same.’ She started going through the packets. ‘Puffed peas – I don’t even know what they are. Turkey jerky, gross. Cashew butter protein balls, no thanks. Spicy chickpeas. This is so bleak. Where’s the chocolate?’