Karen stopped with her hand reaching to open the front door. She had never thought much about her father before, not as a real person rather than just a dad. Who could blame him for wanting to be his own boss, take on the cases he found intriguing, instead of spending his time sorting out petty housebreakers and gangs of shop-lifters? Now she thought about it, starting up a detective agency had been a great idea. Just what she would have done herself in his position. Like father, like daughter, and one day soon, when he found out what a smooth operator she was, he would take her on as his assistant, no problem at all.
‘Shan’t be long,’ she yelled, as the front door slammed behind her. ‘Just going for a walk.’ No point in telling them she was on her way to the reservoir – to look at the place where Natalie Stevens was last seen alive.
Chapter Two
A cloud had covered the sun and a cold breeze was making ripples on the water. Small waves lapped against the concrete barrier, making it clear, in case anyone thought it was a proper lake, that the stretch of water was man-made, unnatural.
Karen zipped up her jacket and re-tied the trailing lace on one of her boots. At the other end of the reservoir – where it had happened – there was a shore line that in times of drought extended out towards the receding water until the shingle gave way to hard mud, covered in open cracks.
Now, at the end of September, following several weeks of rain, the reservoir was fairly full. Karen wondered if Natalie had come here alone. From what she had heard about her she couldn’t imagine her doing anything much on her own.
The body had been found on a Saturday. That was all Karen could remember for certain. How long had it lain at the water’s edge? All night? For several days? She would have to look up the reports in the local paper. Did they keep old copies at the library? Could anyone ask to see them or did you need special permission?
After her mother’s mushroom tortellini she would go round to her father’s flat and ask him, in a casual kind of way, what he knew about the murder and how it would be possible to discover a few more facts about what had happened.
Two ducks were bobbing on the water. They moved towards her, hoping for bread, then turned away and started pecking at a clump of greyish-looking reeds. The sky had darkened. Karen glanced up at clouds, wondering if there was going to be a downpour, then started along the path, her heart starting to beat a little faster as she approached the spot where the body had been found.
Simon had showed her the place. There had been a picture in the newspaper and, using his superior powers of observation, he had picked out two or three landmarks and pinpointed the exact position.
Standing with one foot resting on a rotting, moss-covered log she gazed across the water and tried to remember the reports on the television news. The cause of death had been drowning but a post mortem showed that Natalie Stevens had been hit on the back of the head before entering the water. She had drowned in only a few inches of water and somehow that made it worse, more of a tragedy, more of a waste. Had the person who hit her known she was still alive, or had he panicked, believing she was dead, and rolled the body down the bank, hoping it would float out, then sink to the bottom of the reservoir?
Something crackled in the undergrowth. Only a blackbird. It flew up, alighting on one of the beech trees behind the fence. Karen strolled along the water-line, looking for clues, but without any real expectation of finding anything. Six months had passed and in any case the police would have carried out a thorough search of the area, probably using tracker dogs. Part of a sheet of thick blue polythene had attached itself to the remains of a hollow plastic gnome with half its dopey face missing. Did people throw rubbish in the reservoir or had the garden gnome been stolen from a garden and chucked in the water for a joke? Apart from a couple of ice-lolly sticks and a baby’s dummy Karen could see nothing but slimy mud and thin patches of shingle.
Why had she come? Because that was what you were supposed to do. Start at the scene of the crime, soak up the atmosphere, cast your mind back to a night in April and try to picture the scene. A shudder jerked her shoulders. Turning away from the reservoir she jumped up the grassy bank, climbed the tall perimeter fence and walked quickly across the rough ground that led back to town.
*
Her father was out. She phoned just after eight but there was no reply. Working on a case, or had he found himself a girlfriend at last? Karen was always full of helpful suggestions – computer dating, clubs for the divorced and separated – but up to now he had shown little interest. Perhaps, like her, he was hoping her mother would realise her mistake, Alex would move out, and everything would return to normal.
The following day she skipped the auditions for the school play, and went round to the house in Cobb Street where three rooms on the ground floor doubled as her father’s office and living quarters. R. J. CADY. PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR. The sign on the door should have been larger, more eye-catching, but presumably people looked up ‘private detective’ in the yellow pages and phoned for an appointment.
