A Shred of Evidence (11 page)

The younger ones were excited; they hadn’t known Natalie, they didn’t really appreciate the dreadfulness of what had happened. Police cars sat around, and they were intrigued by it all.

A handwritten notice on the door said that everyone had to assemble in the hall at eight forty-five; it was almost that now, as the head strode towards him.

“Ah …” The head waved his hand around. “Colin. How
is …” Another moment’s panic. “Erica? It must have been a terrible shock for her.”

Colin didn’t answer. The head must know how she was, surely.

“Yes,” the head went on, clearly not expecting an answer. “Terrible. Tell her to take her time—I’m not at all surprised she didn’t feel like coming in. Tell her … well, you know what to tell her.”

“Yes,” muttered Colin. “Thank you.”

She’d done it again. She’d done her disappearing act, like she had after she’d discovered that letter. He knew where she was, but he wouldn’t try to contact her. She would come home when she was ready to, like before.

Lloyd stood outside the door of the cramped murder room, where he couldn’t be seen by the occupants, who sat variously on or at desks.

Judy sat at the far side, a plan of Ash Road Green behind her. A board beside it bore the name of Natalia Ouspensky, and an enlarged photograph of a blonde girl with a friendly smile. The times she had been seen, a description of her clothing, not much else, not yet.

The general hubbub was quietened when Judy stood up and faced her crew. “Right,” she said. “Listen.”

It took a moment or two, but eventually everyone was aware that the briefing was about to start.

Judy looked at them, mostly seasoned professionals, mostly male, many of them drafted in from other divisions for the enquiry. Lloyd felt a little apprehensive; you could feel the hostility, just because she was a woman. You could feel them want to see her fall flat on her face.

“Natalia Ouspensky,” she said. “Known as Natalie, or Nat, to her friends. Aged fifteen years one month.”

Lloyd listened as she outlined the events of the night before as far as they were understood to have happened.

“Natalie had head injuries,” continued Judy, “and she had been strangled. There may well have been a sexual motive, as you’ll see from the photographs. At any rate, her knickers were
found in her pocket, and her tights had been used to strangle her.”

“Bra?” asked someone.

“It seems she wasn’t in the habit of wearing one,” said Judy. “Her shoes were found …” She pointed to the map. “Here, at the depot, in the doorway, about sixty yards from where she had been seen alive. Sherlock the bloodhound also led us to the shoes. Maybe we should recruit him.”

Some smiles.

She told them about the car, then. “If a car was involved,” she said, “that suggests an older man, rather than a boyfriend. Some of you may know that Mrs. Cochrane’s husband Colin teaches at Oakwood School. He was known to the dead girl, and was in the area at the time, so he could become involved in the enquiry.”

“How well did he know the girl?”

“He was involved in the same drama group at the school, which met last night, and he was running in the area at the time of Natalie’s death. For this reason, we are treating the last alleged sighting before her death as unsafe, and we are not reporting it to the press.”

“What are we telling them?”

“As far as they’re concerned, Natalie left home at seven-thirty in a neighbour’s car. She was dropped at her grandmother’s, where she stayed for an hour, then left there at eight-forty. We have had no other reported sighting since that time until Sherlock found her body.”

She read out the names of the detectives that she wanted to conduct enquiries at the school.

“I want you to talk to Natalie’s friends,” she said. “I want to know what sort of girl she was, and I want to know who her boyfriends were, if any. I have given the head an undertaking that these interviews are purely to get information about Natalie that we can’t get elsewhere—boyfriends, and so on. So if you do have reason to suspect anyone you speak to of involvement in the crime, you must caution them immediately, and the interview must cease until the appropriate people can be present.”

“My God, the kiddiewinkies won’t get too much hassle from you, will they? It was probably her boyfriend that did it.”

Judy nodded. “Probably,” she said. “Which is why I’m not going to have intimidation thrown at us in court. If we are dealing with an adolescent killer, then we’re going to get him, and he won’t wriggle out of it.”

“Why does that mean we have to give undertakings to headmasters?”

Judy addressed the room, not him. “If we’re going to find out what sort of girl Natalie really was, as opposed to the one her mother thinks she was, we need to be on good terms with the school,” she said. “So don’t throw your weight about. Natalie’s mother thinks she wasn’t into boys, but the contraceptive pills in her room suggest otherwise. Her friends will know about any boyfriend, and we have to find out who he is.”

Lloyd smiled. She was handling her hecklers so far, without pulling rank—an unwise thing to do when you needed teamwork above all else. A suicidal thing to do if the rank was temporary. She wasn’t falling into any traps so far.

“If we turn up a boyfriend or boyfriends, it could very well be that he or they will have to be asked to give a sample of blood for DNA analysis, if only for elimination purposes. In any event, the procedure will be explained in detail. He will be told exactly what DNA analysis is, and how it works, and what it means if we get a match.”

“Great. Why don’t we give them a bag of sweets and a balloon as they leave?”

Judy ignored that, as she detailed another lot to do an extended door-to-door. Ash Road again, to catch those who were unable to be spoken to yesterday, and Kings Estate, on the route from Natalia’s grandmother’s house to the bus stop. “We want anyone at all who saw her between eight-forty, when she left her grandmother’s house in Henry Way, and ten-twenty, when Sherlock the bloodhound found her body. It was daylight until about nine, so we stand a good chance.”

“Sherlock was wasting his time, for all we’re going to do about it, if we mustn’t upset the kiddiewinks. You want a gang of nannies on this, not cops.”

Judy looked at the speaker. “Whoever murdered that little girl is going to get caught,” she said quietly. “Arrested, charged, prosecuted, put away. No one is going to walk away from this because he didn’t have his rights explained to him, or wasn’t told that he could have a solicitor and didn’t understand what he was signing. No one is going to have any come-back at all on how this enquiry was conducted from day one.”

Her glance took in the entire room now. “I imagine that it will shortly be DCI Lloyd who’ll be in charge of this investigation, but today, in the absence of anyone more senior, it’s me. And if you—if any of you—jeopardize our case against a potential suspect, it’s me you’ll answer to, not DCI Lloyd. And I’ve got more to prove than him—do I make myself clear?”

There was laughter, nods of appreciation. Judy’s supporters were at last becoming vocal, as though they were at a football match they were beginning to think their team might just have a chance of winning.

Lloyd grinned. Attagirl, Judy.

“Natalia was an only child. Her father died three years ago in an accident at work,” Judy went on. “Her mother has a boyfriend, who does live there, but he wasn’t there when I saw her last night. He’s a long-distance lorry driver, and was supposed to be on the road. DC Marshall—I want you to check him out. I want to know that he was where he was supposed to be, because I’m pretty sure that Natalie knew her killer, felt at home with him. Felt safe with him.”

“Is there any suggestion that he abused her?” asked Marshall in his slow, Glasgow drawl.

“No,” said Judy. “I’m just covering all the angles. So be discreet—he probably has nothing to do with it.” She looked round. “One other thing,” she said. “How Natalie died is not to be discussed outside this room with anyone. God forbid that there’s another murder, but serial killers have to start somewhere, and if we do get another one, I want to know for a fact that it is by the same hand, and not a copy-cat killing. Any questions?”

“Yeah. What are you doing other than playing at being the investigating officer?” asked the most persistent of her hecklers.

“Going to the post-mortem,” said Judy sweetly. “Do you want to swap duties, Sergeant?”

He smiled, and lit a cigarette. “No thanks,” he said.

“After that I’ll be at the scene, and then at the school, if anyone wants me. All information has to be channelled through DS Sandwell. Evening briefing will be at six o’clock sharp. Let’s get on with it.”

Lloyd allowed the exodus to sweep round him and finally caught her eye, receiving a wide, genuine smile of welcome.

He went into the room, empty now save Judy and Sandwell, who diplomatically found something he had to do elsewhere.

“They sent for me, I’m afraid,” he said.

“I thought they might let you finish the course, since you were due back in a couple of days anyway,” said Judy.

“Does it bother you?” he asked.

She smiled. “No, of course not. They couldn’t let me take charge of it.”

“You sounded as though you were doing all right to me,” said Lloyd. “The grammar wasn’t all it might have been, but …”

“Were you listening to all that?”

He grinned as she went faintly pink.

“Well … I’ve got a date with Freddie,” she said, to cover her slight embarrassment. “Tom’ll let you see the witness statement, and what we’ve got so far.”

“What’s this about Colin Cochrane’s involvement?”

“It’s very flimsy stuff, but it does involve Tom’s nose, and it’s quite interesting.”

“Oh, good,” said Lloyd. “I’ve been a bit concerned about policemen’s noses lately.”

He went into the CID room and let Finch bring him up to speed, as he insisted on calling it.

Finch’s suspicion of Cochrane seemed a touch premature, in Lloyd’s opinion, but he gave the sergeant his blessing to do some gentle digging about him at the school, on the pretext of being an interested fan. Finch could get away with that; with his fair curly hair and look of eager innocence, he had fooled a
great many people into believing he was harmless. As harmless as a cut-throat razor.

And he knew, of course, that Finch would be right about the deodorant—his sense of smell had come in handy in the past. But it was a popular brand, and there was no real reason to suppose that that meant she had been with Cochrane.

Lloyd was less interested in jumping to conclusions than he was in finding out as much as he could about the victim. Judy had had a look in the girl’s bedroom, and found nothing of any interest other than the contraceptive pills, but her mother had been too distressed to be interviewed.

She wouldn’t be feeling any better today, Lloyd thought with a sigh, but it had to be done. And talking about her daughter might just help.

Patrick wasn’t listening to the head as he spoke gravely about what had happened. He doubted if anyone was; everyone knew what had happened.

He was scanning the sea of faces in front of him for one particular face, and he couldn’t see it. His legendary inability to remember faces meant that he had had no idea who the girl was, or whether she was in his class, even.

He could see her face now, in his mind. She had long dark hair, with a sort of elfin look, and large, dark eyes. He would know her if he saw her again, but try as he might he couldn’t see that face in the rows of people who sat in front of him. The staff were sitting awkwardly on the stage, as they were given to doing when there were gatherings of the whole school, apparently. That was fine at prize givings and the like, but it seemed absurdly theatrical this morning.

Everyone looked pale and drawn, especially Cochrane. Patrick hadn’t even been able to talk to Erica; she hadn’t come in at all. And he couldn’t find this girl. He had to. It was desperately important. Because whatever he had made himself believe last night, the truth was still there to be reckoned with, and he had to find that girl. She had to be somewhere, for Christ’s sake. He began again, from the back, where the older children were. Students.

He rubbed the back of his neck, and looked at every female face in turn, but she wasn’t there. And he had to talk to Erica. He’d ring her at lunchtime. No, better than that. He would go and see her.

Judy stood stiffly and silently by the table, looking up at the lights. The stiffness and silence was occasioned entirely by her horror of post-mortem examinations, but Freddie, well into his grisly task, had obviously misinterpreted it. He looked up.

“I think I owe you an apology for last night,” he said.

Judy allowed her eyes to meet his. She didn’t speak.

“I was unforgivably rude about Lloyd and to you, and I seem to have made a rather clumsy and very unromantic pass at you,” he said. “I’d had a very hard day. It’s no excuse, but it’s the reason. Am I forgiven?”

“Nothing to forgive,” said Judy.

“I didn’t mean what I said about Lloyd. Sheer envy prompted that bit of bitchiness,” Freddie said, then carried on as though he had said nothing personal at all. “The vaginal swabs were positive,” he said. “So DNA identification shouldn’t be difficult, if you get a suspect. And there’s good news on that front—they’ve got digital profiling now. The result should only take a few days to come through.”

“Good,” said Judy. It was an unbelievable improvement on the old system, which had taken up to six weeks, but she couldn’t enthuse about anything right now.

“No external or internal bruising, no sign that she put up any resistance.” He carried on working as he spoke. “No sign of any sexual violence of any sort,” he added.

She had never fainted. It had taken superhuman effort to stay conscious at her first post-mortem, and she wasn’t going to start now that she was almost inured to it, just because she had seen the victim on a bus prior to her death.

She tried not to think of the body as a person, but it was difficult not to see her flashing a smile at the boy on the bus, running off home. She’d gone home, changed, gone to her gran’s, left there to get a bus … and then what? Met a boyfriend?