opened his eyes and saw pale grey daylight in the room. It was the first of March. The sun was rising earlier every day. The equinox was less than three weeks away, the first day of spring.
‘Sorry. I slept in,’ he mumbled, sitting up reluctantly. His head felt thick and there was a dull ache at the back of his neck.
‘It isn’t all that late,’ she said quietly. Her voice was soft, but he had known her too long and too well to miss the strain in it.
Suddenly he was truly awake. ‘What’s happened?’ His mind raced over thoughts first of his children, then of Vespasia, or even Charlotte’s mother. Now he was cold, clenched up.
‘They’ve found another body in one of the gravel pits up on Shooters Hill,’ she answered. Her face was anxious, her brow furrowed.
All he felt was a wave of relief, as if the warm blood had started to flow in his body again. He threw off the covers and stood up.
‘I’d better get dressed and go. Who called you? I didn’t hear the telephone.’
‘Stoker’s here waiting for you, with a hansom. I’ll make him a cup of tea and a slice of toast while you’re dressing, and there’ll be some for you when you come down.’
He drew in his breath to argue, but she was already at the door.
‘And don’t tell me you haven’t time!’ she called. ‘The tea will be ready to drink, and you can carry the toast with you.’
Fifteen minutes later he was washed, dressed, hastily shaved, and sitting beside Stoker in the cab. They were going as fast as possible through the broadening daylight, rattling over the cobbles heading south.
‘Local police called me,’ Stoker told him. ‘Haven’t been there yet, came straight for you. They said this one’s worse. A lot worse.’
‘Another woman?’ Pitt asked.
‘Yes. But with fair hair.’ Stoker did not look at Pitt as he said it. Perhaps he was ashamed of it, but there was relief in his voice.
‘Does anyone know who she is? Any of the local police recognise her?’ Pitt asked.
Stoker shook his head. ‘Not at the time they called. Maybe they’ve got further now.’
Neither of them spoke for the rest of the journey as the hansom slowed a little going up the incline through Blackheath and then beyond on to Shooters Hill. Here the countryside was bare, the wind raking the grass between the few clumps of trees, which were none of them yet in leaf. Some of the gravel pits were filled with water after the winter rains.
Pitt prepared himself for the blast of the wind, which would be heavy and damp when he got out. He tried to imagine the sight that was waiting for them, as if foreknowledge could blunt the edge of the impact.
‘I ain’t waitin’ for yer,’ the cabby said gravely, his face windburned, half hidden by the muffler around his neck and chin. ‘I’nt fair ter me ’orse.’
‘Wouldn’t think of asking you.’ Pitt climbed out a little stiffly and paid the man generously more than he had asked for.
The driver found a sudden change of manner. ‘Thank you,’ he said with surprise. ‘Good o’ yer … sir.’ Then, before Pitt could have the chance to change his mind, he urged his horse on, turned in a circle, and headed back down towards Greenwich to find another fare.
Pitt and Stoker walked into the wind towards the group of men they could see huddled about a hundred yards away. The tussock grass was rough and the ground between littered with small stones and weeds. In moments their boots were covered with pale, sandy mud.
Some movement must have caught the eye of one of the men because he turned, and then started to walk towards them, the loose ends of his scarf flapping. Before he reached them he stopped, nodding to Stoker, then speaking to Pitt.
‘Sorry, sir. Looks too much like the last one not to let you know. Over this way.’ He started to walk back, head bent, feet making no sound on the spongy earth.
Pitt and Stoker followed, each consumed in their own thoughts.
The sergeant in charge was the same man as before. He looked tired and cold. ‘Mind those tracks there,’ he directed, pointing at what there was of a pathway. ‘Looks like a pony and trap, or something of the sort. Might have nothing to do with the body, but more than likely it was what the swine brought her here in.’
‘So she didn’t die here?’ Pitt asked.
The man bit his lip. ‘No, sir. Looks just like the other one back a few weeks ago. Even got the same kind of hair, same sort of build. From what you can tell, she must a’ bin real ’andsome when she were alive. We’ll need the doc to tell us for sure, but I reckon that wasn’t all that lately. Week or two, at any rate.’
‘Hidden from view?’ Pitt asked.
‘That’s it,’ the sergeant replied, ‘she wasn’t. She was right out there for anyone passing to see. Couldn’t hardly miss her, poor creature.’
‘So she was put there very recently?’
‘Last night. That’s why the wheel tracks are worth something, or might be.’
‘Who found her?’ Pitt asked.
‘Young couple.’ The sergeant pulled a grim face. ‘Bin out all night. Walking the girl home so she could pretend as she’d been in ’er own bed, like. Not fooling anyone now!’ He gave a bark of laughter.
‘At least they reported it,’ Pitt observed, keeping pace with him. ‘They could have just kept going. Then it might have been a lot longer before we found her. Could have been more wind and rain, and we wouldn’t have found the cart tracks. How far do they go?’
‘Far as the main track over there,’ he pointed. ‘Then they get lost in all the gravel ruts. But then it’s reasonable that’s the way he came. Isn’t really any other way.’
‘Which means she was deliberately brought here,’ Pitt pointed out just as they reached the group. They were all standing close together giving the illusion of sheltering each other, although the wind managed to pick them out, whip everyone’s scarves and coat tails, and bend the grasses around their feet.
They parted slightly to allow Pitt to walk through and look down at the corpse that lay in the shallow dip in the ground. Her clothes were spread out around her, dark and lacking any distinguishing shape or colour in the wet early light. Her hair was immediately noticeable because it was thick and fair, a little longer than average. Pitt thought that in life it would have been beautiful.
Her face was harder to appreciate because it was already distorted by death and, like the earlier corpse, it had been obscenely lacerated by a razor-sharp blade. The eyes, nose and lips were missing. It was worse, because decomposition had begun, and small night animals had already reached her. As the sergeant had told him, she had been dead some time before she was placed here.
‘What killed her?’ Pitt straightened up, trying to control the horror and pity that welled up inside him. His whole body was shaking, and he could not control it. He looked from one to another of the men. ‘I can’t see anything obvious.’
The sergeant spoke quietly, his voice hoarse. ‘We’ll need the police surgeon to tell us for sure, but ’er inside is broken up pretty bad, and both her legs are broke, high up, across the …’ He drew his own hand across his upper thighs. ‘God knows what did that to ’er.’
‘But no blood,’ Pitt said with surprise. He looked at the ground near her and saw nothing to mark the proximity except the claw marks of small animals. ‘And she wasn’t here last night?’ he went on.
‘She’d ’ave bin seen, this close to the main paths,’ the sergeant answered. ‘And ’er clothes are damp but not soaked. There’s the cart tracks as well. No, she was put here after dark yesterday. God alone knows what for! But if we catch the swine what did it, you won’t need the hangman …’
One of the young men cleared his throat. ‘Commander Pitt, sir?’
Pitt looked at him.
‘Sir, she’s lying kind of odd, like her spine’s bent, or something. But I were ’ere when we found the first one, sir, an’ she were lying exactly the same way — I mean absolute exactly. Like it’s the same thing all over again.’
Pitt had a flash in his mind’s eye of the woman they had thought was Kitty. It was exactly the same, as if she had the same internal pain twisting her back.
The wind was rising, whining a little in the branches above them and rattling as it knocked the dead weed
