Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(96)

The section where the police were due to search sat on the edge of the housing estate, where a long line of fences backed onto the trees. A police support van was parked up next to the fence with a couple of squad cars. A man with two cadaver dogs had arrived, and he was talking to an officer. Tristan grabbed a cup of tea from the support van and came over to Victoria. Her eyes were puffy and red from crying, and she wore a huge orange fur coat.

“Thanks for coming,” she said. “I can’t believe we’re doing this.”

“I was expecting two huge ferocious Alsatians,” said Tristan as they watched the dog handler open the van. Two fluffy Cavalier King Charles spaniels jumped out and started to bark and scamper. Their white, furry heads in contrast to their long, floppy brown ears.

Victoria laughed. The dogs came galloping over and then rolled over to have their bellies scratched. The dog handler followed and introduced himself.

“I’m Harry Grant,” he said. He was in his late fifties, a cheery man with thin gray hair. “This is Kim and Khloe.”

“They’re so cute,” said Tristan as Kim, the slightly bigger of the two, playfully chewed on the collar of his jacket.

“Don’t underestimate their cute, fluffy faces. They’re incredible. They are both trained to smell decomposing flesh.”

“But Caitlyn went missing twenty years ago. Even if she was buried here, what would be left of her after all that time?” asked Tristan.

“I’ve tested them with so many variables. Kim was able to detect the presence of rotting flesh in a cold case going back eighteen years. The police believed that a man had killed his daughter, buried her in the garden, and then moved the body shortly afterward. They were able to detect where the body had been buried, even though it had been moved eighteen years ago and buried somewhere else. When the police dug, they found small fragments of tooth and skull belonging to the young girl.”

“How deep can they pick up on a scent?” asked Victoria.

“Up to eight or ten feet,” he said as Khloe lay on her back and let Victoria scratch her pink belly.

After they’d finished their tea, the police and Tristan walked with Victoria back to the area where she remembered having the picnic with Paul Adler.

They moved in silence to the edge of the trees, Victoria in her huge orange coat, flanked by four police officers and Tristan. Harry stayed back with the dogs in his van, waiting until she had identified the area where they would start to search.

She walked unsteadily on the rough ground, and they were silent apart from the faint sound of far-off traffic on the motorway. They reached the edge of the trees and stepped into a clearing covered with pine needles. The weak sun shone through the branches and dappled the ground.

“It’s changed so much,” she said. Despite her thick coat and the weak sunshine, Tristan could see she was shivering. “This used to be fields for miles.”

“Where was the lake?” he asked.

“There was a lake about a quarter of a mile over there,” said one of the police officers, who was holding a map. He pointed toward what were now rows and rows of roofs. Victoria looked around and nodded.

“It was somewhere here, near this clearing. We went deeper into the woods, but not too far, as the trees were very dense.”

A police officer with a neatly trimmed black goatee looked around. “What makes you sure?” he asked. It was a question without hostility or doubt.

“I remember the turnoff from the main road. There’s that really old King George phone box, a little way before the dead end and it turns into fields. The trees are bigger, but I’ll always remember what bit they brought me to,” she said.

“Roughly how wide is the area that you think we should search, from what you remember?”

“This whole clearing, and a little way into the trees there,” she said. Her eyes welled up again, and she scrabbled for a tissue in her coat.

“Okay,” said the officer. He reached for his radio. “Harry, we’re ready for Kim and Khloe.”

Despite the seriousness of the situation, Tristan had to suppress a smile. It’s all down to cute, fluffy Kim and Khloe. Let’s hope no one drives past in a burger van to distract them. He just couldn’t imagine that the dogs would be able to smell anything other than moss and rotting leaves.

Kim was brought over first by Harry, and everyone stood back as he let her off her lead and she ran about sniffing around the area Victoria had described.

Harry worked methodically with her, making sure that she moved up and down, in the same way as you would mow a lawn, working her way across the clearing. After about ten minutes, she reached a tall, wide oak tree and stopped, circling round and sniffing intently, her long, furry ears disturbing the piles of leaves and pine needles. She sat down, tipped her head back, and started to bark.

A police officer marked the spot, and she carried on sniffing around for the next fifteen minutes, then came back and barked again. Tristan and Victoria had been watching in silence, and when the dog barked for the second time, he could feel the tension in the air.

“What if she’s smelling a dead bird or a fox?” asked Victoria, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Harry said she’s only trained to detect human remains,” said Tristan, feeling a tension and excitement in his stomach.

Harry gave Kim some treats and then took her back over to the car. The police officers remained at the edges of the clearing.