An earthy, spicy smell rose from the crushed vegetation beneath his feet and her body, making him think of lovers entwined in a hillside bower. “Have you found her other shoe?” he asked.
The photographer shook his head. “Not so far. The uniformed lads have started a radial search.”
All dressed up and nowhere to go, Kincaid thought as he stared down at her still body. He stood, resisting the urge to smooth the fine wayward hair from her cheek. “Maybe she left it at the ball.”
GEMMA WATCHED KINCAID MAKE HIS WAY back down the cordoned path, his face shuttered as always in such circumstances. “Have we got ourselves a nutter, then, guv?” she asked when he reached them. You didn’t say “serial killer,” not when there was the remotest possibility of being overheard by the long ears of the press, but it was always the first thing you thought with a young woman murdered like this.
Glancing back at the crime scene technicians crouched like strange white insects near the corpse, Kincaid shook his head. “I think her killer knew her. It looks as though someone arranged her clothing, and if she was sexually assaulted it’s not obvious. We’ll know more after the postmortem.”
“I’ll arrange for the mortuary van now,” said DI Coppin. “If that’s all right with you, sir,” she added with unconcealed hostility.
Kincaid’s eyebrow lifted a fraction, but, once again, he didn’t rise to the challenge. “Go ahead, Inspector. The sooner the better, in this heat. It’s a good thing the temperature dropped last night.”
Coppin made an awkward descent, hampered by the narrow skirt of her wool suit. Gemma watched her until she’d cleared the swinging gate and vanished from sight, then turned to Kincaid. “Listen, guv—”
Before she could continue, Kincaid motioned her into a small patch of shade, away from the uniformed officers. “It’s too bloody hot to stand about in the sun,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blotting his forehead with it.
A curving, split-rail fence separated the grassy area bordering the path from the sloping ground that marked the park’s edge, and from where Gemma stood it drew her eye towards the entrance. The flat, trellised top of the wooden gate gave it the look of a Japanese shrine; beyond the thick screen of trees, the gleaming buildings of Canary Wharf rose incongruously against the pastoral view.
The comfortingly familiar smell of bacon and eggs cooking in the ASDA’s cafe reached them on a faint puff of breeze and Gemma’s stomach rumbled loudly in response. Too nervous to eat before her piano lesson, she’d meant to treat herself to a late breakfast afterwards. But she should have known better, as her mobile phone had rung before she and Wendy Sheinart had finished their half hour’s conversation.
“About the DI, guv,” she said, glancing at the uniformed officers to make sure they were out of hearing. “Her chief inspector’s off at his son’s wedding this weekend, and it seems he called us in without informing her. She feels it should have been her case, and I can’t say I blame her. Maybe if you could go a bit easy on her—”
“Sets a bad precedent,” Kincaid said, grinning, then sobered. “It’s a tough break for her, but if she’s going to be an effective officer, she’ll have to learn to cope.”
Gemma’s own experience was proof enough of that, but she felt sympathetic nonetheless. “Still, I’d not like to be in her shoes.”
“My guess is they pinch,” he said under his breath, for Coppin had finished with the radio and begun the climb back up the hill from the gate.
Reaching them, the DI made a visible effort to regulate her breathing before she spoke. “They’re on their way. What next, sir?”
“Tell me what the pathologist found.” Kincaid pulled his small notebook from the pocket of his trousers.
Coppin consulted her own notebook. “The pathologist estimates that the victim died sometime in the night or the early hours of the morning—can’t have been much longer than that in this heat or the deterioration of the body would be marked. There are no outward signs of sexual assault, but there is some obvious bruising on the throat.”
“Any identification?”
“No, sir. We’ve not found her handbag, nor any obvious dry cleaner’s markings in her clothing.”
“Who found her?”
“A pensioner, sir. George Brent. Lives in the council flats down the bottom of the park. He was out walking his dog when he saw her at the edge of the shrubbery, but I’m surprised no one called it in sooner—she was visible as a bloody beacon.”
“Has he been interviewed?”
Coppin frowned. “No—I didn’t see much point. I know him—he’s a harmless old man, not likely to have noticed anything important.”
After a moment’s pause, Kincaid said evenly, “Inspector, at this stage of an investigation, we don’t know what’s important, and
“But—”
“In the meantime, we’ll need to get the house-to-house inquiries started as soon as possible and the incident room set up. Our first priority is identification, and we had better be prepared to make use of the media.”
A SHREDDED PIECE OF PLASTIC BLEW fitfully across the section of the ASDA car park visible through the screen of trees. Watching from her balcony, Teresa Robbins thought of a film she’d seen once about tumbleweeds in the American desert. The giant weeds had blown in a similar way, in erratic bursts, as if they had a life of their own. The movement of the bit of rubbish made her feel vaguely uneasy, as did the hot breeze that animated it.
Yet she stayed, leaning against the chipped iron railing, craning to see beyond the trees. She’d seen the first police car arrive midmorning, while she’d been hanging out washing on her half of the narrow concrete balcony. There was a cluster of cars now, pulled up in a rough circle beyond the petrol station. It worried her, not knowing what was happening, but she couldn’t bring herself to join the crowd of onlookers gathering in the car park.
A loud thump from next door warned her that her neighbor was up, and that her time on the balcony was limited. Teresa prized her quiet mornings there, especially Saturdays, when she had the time to tend her geraniums and petunias. The evenings were his, given over to heavy metal music and six-packs of lager, and he fueled their ongoing skirmish by leaving fag ends in her flowerpots for her to clean out the next morning. She knew she should
