Detective

North Greenwich. Late May. Three hours before sunup and the river was

deserted. Dark barges strained upstream on their moorings and a spring tide

gently nosed small sloops free of the sludge they slept in. A mist lifted from

the water, rolling inland, past unlit chandlers, over the deserted Millennium

Dome and on across lonely wastelands, strange, lunar landscapes – until it

settled, a quarter of a mile inland amongst the ghostly machinery of a half derelict aggregate yard.

A sudden sweep of headlights – a police vehicle swung into the service

route, blue lights flashing silently. It was joined moments later by a second

and a third. Over the next twenty minutes more police converged on the

yard – eight marked area cars, two plain Ford Sierras and the white transit

van of the forensic camera team. A roadblock was placed at the head of the

service route and local uniform were detailed to seal off riverside access.

The first attending CID officer got onto Croydon exchange, asking for

pager numbers for the Area Major Investigation Pool and, five miles away,

Detective Inspector Jack Caffery, AMIP team B, was woken in his bed.

He lay blinking in the dark, collecting his thoughts, fighting the impulse to

tilt back into sleep. Then, taking a deep breath, he made the effort, rolled

out of bed and went into the bathroom, splashing water onto his face – no

more Glenmorangies in standby week, Jack, swear it now, swear it – and

dressed, not too hurried, better to arrive fully awake and composed, now the

tie, something understated – CID don't like us looking flashier than them –

the pager, and coffee, lots of instant coffee, with sugar but not milk, no milk

– and above all don't eat, you just never know what you're going to have to

look at – drank two cups, found car keys in the pocket of his jeans, and,

bolted awake now on caffeine, a roll-up between his teeth, drove through

the deserted streets of Greenwich to the crime scene. There his superior,

Detective Superintendent Steve Maddox, a small, prematurely grey man,

immaculate as always in a stone-brown suit, waited for him outside the aggregate yard – pacing under a solitary streetlight, spinning car keys and

chewing his lip.

He saw Jack's car pull up, crossed to him, put an elbow on the roof, leaned

through the open window and said: 'I hope you haven't just eaten.'

Caffery dragged on the handbrake. He pulled Rizlas and tobacco from the

dashboard. 'Great. Just what I was hoping to hear.'

'This one's well past its sell-by.' He stepped back as Jack climbed out of the

car. 'Female, partly buried. Bang in the middle of the wasteland.'

'Been in, have you?'

'No, no. Divisional CID briefed me. And, um-' He glanced over his

shoulder to where the CID officers stood in a huddle. When he turned back

his voice was low. 'There's been an autopsy on her. The old Y zipper.'

Jack paused, his hand on the car door. 'An autopsy?'

'Yup.'

'Then it's probably gone walkabout from a path lab.'

'I know-'

'A med-student prank-'

'I know, I know.' Maddox held hands up, stalling him. 'It's not really our

territory, but look-' He checked over his shoulder again and leaned in

closer. 'Look, they're pretty good with us usually, Greenwich CID. Let's

humour them. It won't kill us to have a quick butcher's. OK?'

'OK.'

'Good. Now.' He straightened up. 'Now you. How about you? Reckon you're

ready?

'Shit, no.' Caffery slammed the door, pulled his warrant card from his

pocket and shrugged. 'Of course I'm not ready. When would I ever be?'

They headed for the entrance, moving along the perimeter fence. The only

light was the weak sodium yellow of the scattered streetlamps, the

occasional white flash of the forensic camera crew floods sweeping across

the wasteland. A mile beyond, dominating the northern skyline, the

luminous Millennium Dome, its red aircraft lights blinking against the stars.

'She's been stuck in a bin liner or something,' Maddox said. 'But it's so dark

out there, the first attending couldn't be sure – his first suspicious

circumstances and it's put the wind up him.' He jerked his head towards a

group of cars. 'The Merc. See the Merc?'

'Yeah.' Caffery didn't break step. A heavy-backed man in a camel overcoat

hunched over in the front seat, speaking intently to a CID officer.

'The owner. A lot of tarting up going on around here, what with the

Millennium thing. Says last week he took on a team to clear the place up.

They probably disturbed the grave without knowing it, a lot of heavy

machinery, and then at oh-one-hundred hours-'

He paused at the gate and they showed warrant cards, logged on with the

PC and ducked under the crime-scene tape.

'And then at oh-one-hundred hours this a.m., three lads were out here doing

something dodgy with a can of Evostik and they stumbled on her. They're

down at the station now. The CSC'll tell us more. She's been in.'

DS Fiona Quinn, the crime scene co-ordinator, down from the Yard, waited

for them in a floodlit clearing next to a Portakabin, ghostly in her white

Tyvek overalls, solemnly pulling back the hood as they approached.

Maddox did the introductions.

'Jack, meet DS Quinn. Fiona – my new DI, Jack Caffery'.

Caffery approached, hand extended. 'Good to meet you.'

'You too, sir.' The CSC snapped off latex gloves and shook Caffery's hand.

'Your first. Isn't it?'

'With AMIP, yes.'

'Well, I wish I had a nicer one for you. Things are not very lovely in there.

Not very lovely at all. Something's split the skull open – machinery,

probably. She's on her back.' She leaned back to demonstrate, her arms out,

her mouth open. In the half-light Caffery could see the glint of amalgam

fillings. 'From waist down is buried under pre-cast concrete, the side of a

pavement or something.'

'Been there long?'

'No, no. A rough guess' – she pulled the glove back on and handed Maddox

a cotton face mask – 'less than a week; but too long to be worth rushing a

special. I think you should wait until daylight to drag the pathologist out of

bed. He'll give you more when he's got her in the pit and seen about insect

activity. She's semi-interred, half wrapped in a dustbin liner: that'll've made

a difference.'

'The pathologist,' Caffery said. 'You sure we need a pathologist? CID think

there's been an autopsy.'

'That's right.'

'And you still want us to see her?'

'Yes.' Quinn's face didn't change. 'Yes, I think you need to see her. We're not

talking about a professional autopsy.'

Maddox and Caffery exchanged glances. A moment's silence and Jack

nodded.

'Right. Right, then.' He cleared his throat, took the gloves and face mask

Quinn offered and quickly tucked his tie inside his shirt. 'Come on, then.

Let's have a look.'

Even with the protective gloves, old CID habit made Caffery walk with

hands in pockets. From time to time he lost sight of DS Quinn's flagged

forensics torch, giving him moments of unease – this far into the yard it was

dark: the camera crew had finished and were shut in their white van,

copying the master tape. Now the only light source was the dim, chemical

glow of the fluorescent tape the CSC had used to outline objects either side

of the path, protecting them until AMIP's exhibits officer arrived to label

and bag. They hovered in the mist like inquisitive ghosts, faint green

outlines of bottles, crumpled cans, something shapeless which might have

been a T-shirt or a towel. Conveyor belts and bridge cranes rose eighty feet

and more into the night sky around them, grey and silent as an out-of season

roller coaster.

Quinn held a hand up to stop them.

'There,' she told Caffery. 'See her? Just lying on her back.'

'Where?'

'See the oil drum?' She let the torch slide over it.

'Yes.'

'And the two reinforcing rods to its right?'

'Yes.'

'Follow that down.'

Jesus.

'See it?'

'Yes.' He steadied himself. 'OK. I see it.'

That? That's a body? He'd thought it was a piece of expanding foam, the

type fired from an aerosol, so distended and yellow and shiny it was. Then

he saw hair and teeth, and recognized an arm. And at last, by tilting his

head on one side, he understood what he was looking at.

'Oh, for Christ's sake,' Maddox said wearily. 'Come on, then. Someone stick

an Incision over her.'