For the Sake of Elena (Inspector Lynley, #5)(102)
Sheehan cocked his head at her in surprise. Lynley said, “She’s a city dweller, Superintendent.” And then to Havers, “It’s pheasant season.”
Sheehan went on with, “Anyone wanting to have a bash at the pheasants is going to own a shotgun, Sergeant. The killings begin next week. It’s the time of year when every idiot with an itchy finger and a need to feel like some real blood sport’s just the way to get him back to his roots will be out blasting away at anything that moves. We’ll be seeing wounds every which way by the end of the month.”
“But not like this.”
“No. This was no accident.” He fumbled in his trouser pocket and brought out a wallet from which he extracted a credit card. “Two runners,” he said pensively. “Both of them women. Both of them tall, both fair, both long-haired.”
“You’re not thinking we’re looking at a serial killing?” Havers sounded a mixture of doubt and disappointment that the Cambridge superintendent might have reached such a conclusion.
Sheehan used the edge of his credit card to clean off a patch of dirt and leaves that clung to the front of the girl’s blood-soaked sweatshirt. Over the left breast the words Queens’ College, Cambridge were stencilled round the college coat of arms.
“You mean someone with a nasty little bent for bringing down fair-haired college runners?” Sheehan asked. “No. I don’t think so. Serial killers don’t vary their routines this much. The killing’s their signature. You know what I mean: I beat in another head with a brick, you coppers, are you any closer to finding me yet?” He cleaned off the credit card, wiped his fingers on a rust-coloured handkerchief, and pushed himself to his feet. “Shoot her, Graham,” he said over his shoulder, and the photographer came forward to do so. At that, the scenes-of-crime team began to move, as did the uniformed constables, beginning the slow process of examining every inch of the surrounding ground.
Bob Jenkins said, “Got to get in that field, if you’ve a mind to let me,” and tilted his chin to direct their attention to where he had been heading in the first place when his dog had come upon the body.
Perhaps three yards away from the dead girl, a break in the hedge revealed a gate giving access to the nearest field. Lynley eyed it for a moment as the crime scene people began their work.
“In a few minutes,” he said to the farmer, and added to Sheehan, “They’ll need to look for prints all along the verge, Superintendent. Footprints. Tyre prints from a car or a bike.”
“Right,” Sheehan said, and went to speak with his team.
Lynley and Havers walked to the gate. It was only wide enough to accommodate the tractor, and hemmed in on both sides by a heavy growth of hawthorn. They climbed carefully over. The ground beyond was soft, trodden, and rutted as it gave way to the field itself. But its consistency was crumbly and fragile, so although the imprints of feet were everywhere, nowhere did they leave an impression that was anything more than merely another indentation in the already choppy ground.
“Nothing decent,” Havers said as she scouted round the area. “But if it was a lying-in-wait—”
“Then the waiting had to be done right here,” Lynley concluded. He worked his eyes slowly over the ground, from one side of the gate to the other. When he saw what he was looking for—an indentation in the ground that didn’t fit with the rest—he said, “Havers.”
She joined him. He pointed out the smooth, circular impression in the earth, the barely discernible narrow, extended impression behind it, the sharp, deeper fissure that comprised its conclusion. As a unit, the impressions angled acutely perhaps two and a half feet beyond the gate itself, and less than a foot from the hawthorn hedge.
“Knee, leg, toe,” Lynley said. “The killer knelt here, hidden by the hedge, on one knee, resting the gun on the second bar of the gate. Waiting.”
“But how could anyone have known—”
“That she’d be running this way? The same way someone knew where to find Elena Weaver.”
Justine Weaver scraped a knife along the burnt edge of the toast, watching the resulting black ash speckle the clean surface of the kitchen sink like a fine deposit of powder. She tried to find a place inside her where compassion and understanding still resided, a place like a well from which she could drink deeply and somehow replenish what the events of the past eight months—and the last two days—had desiccated. But if a well-spring of empathy had ever existed at her core, it had long since dried up, leaving in its place the barren ground of resentment and despair. And nothing flowed from this.
They’ve lost their daughter, she told herself. They share a mutual grief. But those facts did not eliminate the wretchedness she had felt since Monday night, a replay of an earlier pain, like the same melody in a different key.
They’d come home together in silence yesterday, Anthony and his former wife. They’d been to see the police. They’d gone on to the funeral home. They’d chosen a coffin and made the arrangements, none of which they shared with her. It was only when she brought out the plates of thin sandwiches and cake, only when she had poured the tea, only when she had passed them each the lemon and the milk and the sugar that either of them spoke in anything other than weary monosyllables. And then it was Glyn who finally addressed her, choosing the moment and wielding the weapon, a superficially simple declaration that was skilfully honed by time and circumstance.