Читать книгу The Cutting Place - Jane Casey - Страница 9

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?’

‘There’s probably something in there like chocolate.’

She pulled out a bar and inspected it. ‘This is carob. Carob. I’m going to be sick.’

‘I’m being healthy. So what?’

‘It’s not healthy to eat spiced grit for the sake of feeling virtuous. Baked hemp sticks, for God’s sake.’ She threw them back into the drawer and shook her head. ‘And they say pregnant women are supposed to eat loads of weird stuff. I wouldn’t touch any of that.’

‘Oh, come on.’ I toed the drawer shut. ‘Stop giving me a hard time.’

‘This is all his idea, isn’t it?’ She meant my boyfriend, Seth Taylor.

I felt the colour rise in my cheeks at her tone. ‘Seth did suggest it.’

‘And the yoga is his idea too, I bet.’

‘I’m meeting him there.’

‘Couples yoga? Please tell me you’re joking.’

I grinned at her horror. ‘It helps my stress levels and my flexibility. It’s fun, too. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.’

‘You’ve changed.’ Liv was looking at me as if she was confused about something. ‘I’ve never known anyone who needed to do yoga as much as you do, but I can’t help noticing that you’ve avoided doing anything healthy for as long as I’ve known you. You thrive on shit food and too much caffeine. If you’re not stressed out of your mind, who even are you?’

‘A better person. A happier person.’

‘I suppose that’s a good thing.’ She didn’t sound as if she was convinced about it though.

I grabbed my bag from under the desk. ‘I’m going to get changed. Help yourself to a snack if you’re peckish. I can recommend the kale crisps.’

‘No, you can’t.’

She was right, I couldn’t, but I wanted to get rid of them. ‘Try them. Maybe you’ll like them.’

‘What do they taste like?’

‘Indescribable,’ I said truthfully.

I’d never actually asked her, but I had a secret suspicion that Liv didn’t like Seth much. There was no law that your friends had to like your boyfriend, I reminded myself as I laced up my trainers in the locker room. And Liv was picky about men. Seth was used to winning women over on sight, but his height and build and wide smile had cut no ice with Liv. It was taking him longer than I’d expected to work out how to deal with a woman who wasn’t attracted to him, someone he couldn’t charm. Their sense of humour was very different, and Seth could come across as arrogant, unless you knew him well. He had a lawyer’s need to get the upper hand in arguments and persevered even when I was trying to change the subject, a little beyond the limits of polite conversation. But he could have been Prince Charming and it wouldn’t have mattered. She was always going to prefer my old boyfriend, Rob, even though he had broken my heart. There was no one else who would be good enough for her.

I had needed to move on, I told myself. Rob was old news. Besides, Seth cared about me. He was attentive and kind and made me feel as if I was the centre of his world, not an afterthought. As if to prove it, my phone pinged with a message.

Don’t forget we have yoga.

I snapped a picture of myself in leggings and sports bra in the mirror and sent it to him.

See you there!

The phone hummed in my hand.

Good girl.

I pulled a face and threw my phone into my bag. ‘Good girl’ sounded patronising even if he didn’t mean it that way. I’d mentioned it before, and hurt his feelings. I wouldn’t bother raising it with him again. Compared to everything else I got out of our relationship a throwaway remark was the opposite of important. He was perfect in almost every way and I was fixating on the tiniest of flaws.

He was almost too perfect.

I slammed my locker door, irritated with myself. Really, there was something wrong with me if I wanted a boyfriend who was more detached, less keen, harder work. Seth was easy. I was the one who made things difficult. I needed to relax.

Hence the yoga.

‘Going out?’ Georgia Shaw was unlocking her own locker.

‘Exercise class.’ I shrugged myself into a hoodie. ‘How was Poplar?’

‘Grim. Very, very grim. A six-week-old baby. A little girl. Both the parents are distraught, as you can imagine. We had to take the bedclothes, the toys, search everything, ask them loads of questions. The baby was so tiny. Like a doll.’ She leaned against the lockers. Her make-up had smudged under her eyes and she’d chewed off her perfect pink lipstick. ‘How were the body parts?’

‘Inconclusive.’ We weren’t friends – we might never be friends – but I was trying to make common ground with Georgia where I could. I didn’t want her as an enemy. ‘Is Derwent back?’

‘He stayed in the house.’

‘Huh.’ I shouldered my bag. ‘Interesting.’

‘You’re really unfair to him, you know.’

I stopped on my way to the door. ‘Excuse me?’

‘The way you said it was interesting. It wasn’t interesting. It was kind. He’s got a heart of gold.’ Her voice sounded strained as if she was on the edge of tears.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘The last thing I would want to do is stay in that house. We’ve been there all day, getting in the way, making cups of tea and trying to say something comforting. It was stifling. Mind-numbing. I couldn’t wait to get out of there, so I could breathe again. But Josh stayed. He said he’d be there as long as they needed him to be there.’

‘I bet they were delighted.’

‘They’re grieving. Of course they weren’t delighted. But it’s got to be a comfort for them. Josh was so kind. He even carried the baby out to the ambulance when they took it away for the post-mortem.’

I could imagine it quite clearly, I found: the small bundle held with tenderness on her last journey out of the only home she had known in her short life. Derwent would do that well.

‘Was she their first child?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the age-gap between the parents?’

‘She’s only seventeen. He’s twenty-eight. How did you know there was an age gap?’

I ignored the question. ‘Are they close?’

‘Very. They were supporting each other through it. Barely left each other’s sides all day.’

‘Josh isn’t staying because he thinks they need his support. He’s staying because one of them killed the baby and the other one will tell him the truth.’

Her eyes went wide. ‘No way. You didn’t see them. They’re devoted to each other.’

‘Some time tonight, or tomorrow, or the day after, maybe when everyone’s supposed to be asleep, one of them will come downstairs because he or she can’t stand to share a bed with their child’s killer. Guess who will be waiting. He’s shown he cares about their child, and about them. He’ll have grieved with them. They’ll have come to trust him. Even if they don’t want to get their partner in trouble, they’ll be exhausted by the effort of lying all the time. That’ll wear their resistance down until they find themselves telling him the truth.’

‘You’re so cold. Every tragic death isn’t a crime, you know, and everyone doesn’t lie.’

‘No, but—’

‘You don’t know these people. They’re a sweet couple. The nursery was beautiful. And she was a gorgeous little girl. She only started smiling two days ago.’ Georgia’s bottom lip trembled before she could stop it and there were tears standing in her eyes.

‘I know Josh Derwent and I know he’s not spending the night there because he thinks this was a tragic accident. I’ve seen him do it before.’ I shrugged. ‘It doesn’t mean he’s faking it, you know. He’ll be just as upset as you are about the baby. That’s where he gets his energy from. He won’t give up until they give in.’

‘You’re wrong. He’d have told me.’

‘Nope. He wanted them to think they’re going to get away with it. That’s more likely if you’re sincerely sorry for them.’

‘You mean he doesn’t trust me.’

‘I have no idea whether he trusts you or not.’ But I definitely don’t, so …

She lifted her chin, hurt. ‘I think you’re wrong. You don’t know anything about them, or the baby. You’re jumping to conclusions.’

‘Probably.’ I zipped up my top. ‘We’ll have to wait and see who’s right.’

‘Enjoy your exercise class.’

I thanked her as if she’d meant it, and left.