For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(101)
So he was prepared for the inevitable announcement that Sheehan made as they got to their feet. “We’ve got another body.”
15
Two panda cars, lights flashing and sirens howling, led the caravan of vehicles on a flight out of Cambridge, tearing down Lensfield Road, soaring over the Fen Causeway and up along the Backs to make the turn west towards Madingley. They left in their wake groups of staring students, bicycle riders veering out of the way, black-gowned fellows setting off to lectures, and two tourist buses disgorging Japanese visitors at the autumn-decked avenue which led to New Court at Trinity College.
Havers’ Mini was sandwiched between the second panda car and Sheehan’s own vehicle, onto which he had slapped a temporary warning light. Behind him charged the scenes-of-crime van and behind that, an ambulance in the futile hope that the word body didn’t necessarily mean death.
They powered across the flyover that bridged the M11 and swung through the collection of cottages that comprised the tiny village of Madingley. Beyond it, they shot along a narrow lane. It was a farming area, an abrupt change from town to country just minutes away from Cambridge. Hedgerows characterised it—hawthorn, briar, and holly—marking the boundaries of fields newly planted with winter wheat.
They rounded a curve beyond which a tractor stood half on and half off the verge, its enormous wheels crusted with mud. Atop it sat a man in a bulky jacket with its collar turned up round his ears and his shoulders hunched against the wind and the cold. He waved them to a halt and hopped to the ground. A border collie that had been lying motionless at the rear wheel of the tractor got to its feet upon the man’s sharp command and came to his side.
“Over here,” the man said after introducing himself as Bob Jenkins and pointing out his home about a quarter mile away, set back from the road and surrounded by barn, outbuildings, and fields. “Shasta found her.”
Hearing his name, the dog pricked up his ears, gave one extremely disciplined wag of the tail, and followed his master about twenty feet beyond the tractor where a body lay in a tangle of weeds and bracken along the base of the hedge.
“Never seen anything like it,” Jenkins said. “I di’ know what the ruddy world’s comin’ to.” He pulled at his nose, which was scarlet from the cold, and squinted against the northeast wind. It held the fog at bay—as it had done on the previous day—but it brought along with it the frigid temperatures of the grey North Sea. A hedgerow offered little protection against it.
“Damn” was Sheehan’s only remark as he squatted by the body. Lynley and Havers joined him.
It was a girl, tall and slender, with a fall of hair the colour of beechwood. She was wearing a green sweatshirt, white shorts, athletic shoes, and rather grimy socks, the left one of which had become rucked round her ankle. She lay on her back, with her chin tilted up, her mouth open, her eyes glazed. And her torso was a mass of crimson broken by the dark tattooing of unburnt particles of gunpowder. A single glance was enough to tell all of them that the only possible use the ambulance might serve would be to convey the corpse to autopsy.
“You haven’t touched her?” Lynley asked Bob Jenkins.
The man looked horrified by the very thought. “Didn’t touch nothing,” he said. “Shasta here snuffed her, but he backed up quick enough, didn’t he, when he caught the smell of the powder. Not one for guns, is Shasta.”
“You heard no shots this morning?”
Jenkins shook his head. “I was working over the engine of the tractor early on. I had it going off and on, playing with the carburettor and making a bit of a row. If someone took her down then—” He jerked his head at the body but didn’t look at it. “I wouldn’t have heard.”
“What about the dog?”
Jenkins’ hand automatically went for the dog’s head which was inches away from his own left thigh. Shasta blinked, panted briefly, and accepted the caress with another single wag of his tail. “He did set to with a bit of barking,” Jenkins said. “I had the radio going over the engine noise and had to shout him down.”
“Do you remember what time this was?”
At first he shook his head. But then he lifted a gloved hand quickly—one finger skyward—as if an idea had suddenly struck him. “It was somewhere near half six.”
“You’re sure?”
“They were reading the news and I wanted to hear if the P.M.’s going to do something about this poll tax business.” His eyes shifted to the body and quickly away. “Girl could of been hit then, all right. But I have to tell that Shasta might of just been barking to bark. He does that some.”
Around them, the uniformed police were rolling out the crime scene tape and blocking off the lane as the scenes-of-crime team began unloading the van. The police photographer approached with his camera held before him like a shield. He looked a bit green under the eyes and round the mouth. He waited some feet away for the signal from Sheehan who was peering at the blood-soaked front of the dead girl’s sweatshirt.
“A shotgun,” he said. And then looking up, he shouted to the scenes-of-crime team, “Keep an eye out for the wad, you lot.” He rested on his thick haunches and shook his head. “This’s going to be worse than looking for dust in the desert.”
“Why?” Havers asked.