Sweet Little Lies (Cat Kinsella #1)(6)

Before everything changed.

But I can’t give Steele any more reasons to ship me out of Murder, not after Bedsit-gate. Not that this is the same, mind. There isn’t anything procedurally wrong with having once grazed your knee on the same spot as a dead body. But then you don’t get to DCI level, with no fewer than four commendations under your belt, without knowing how to exploit an opportunity, and therefore any admission that I’ve got the slightest personal connection to this case and Steele will have me counting beans with the Financial Intelligence crew before I can say ‘Excel spreadsheet.’

As Parnell continues his mournful dirge, I weigh this up one final time, staring at my reflection in the car window. All I see is someone who needs her job in MIT4 as desperately as she needs a fringe-trim and a big dose of vitamin C.

It’s simple. I’ll say nothing.

Steele’s here already, forensic-suited and booted, chatting to two SOCOs as they bob up and down placing evidence markers on the floor.

‘Jesus, she got here quick,’ I say. ‘Doesn’t she live over Ealing way?’

Parnell rummages in the boot, his voice is muffled but the square is convent quiet. ‘I keep telling you, she’s not human. She doesn’t have a shower and get dressed like you and me. She regenerates, like the Terminator.’ He straightens up and waves over to Steele, tossing me a pair of shoe covers and a protective suit with the other hand. Steele signals for us to hurry up, pointing at a hunched figure standing by the entrance to the forensic tent. ‘Oh brilliant. Is that the back of Vickery’s head?’

‘Not in the mood for being patronised in sub-zero temperatures, no?’

Joking aside, I don’t have an issue with Mo Vickery. Hats off to anyone who can stand in a ditch for eight hours collecting maggots and call it a vocation. And when you’re twenty-six, rosy-cheeked and you’ve hitched your wagon to one of the most hierarchical organisations in British society, being patronised is kind of par for the course, really. A rite of passage you can either embrace or ignore.

We suit up in silence. Parnell struggles with his zip while I scrape every last strand of my hair into a bun before Mo Vickery tells me again that she’d sooner I ‘piss on her porch’ than come anywhere near her crime scene with my thick Celtic thatch.

‘So what do you reckon?’ I say, nodding towards Steele. ‘Must be bad to get her out of her jim-jams.’

Parnell grabs his e-cig out of the car door and takes a fast, deep draw, his face etched with longing for a big-boy cigarette. ‘Chief Super gets twitchy around Christmas,’ he says. ‘Joe Public doesn’t like the idea of someone’s presents going begging under a tree while they’re being carved up in the morgue so he always brings the big guns in.’ He blows out a plume of something sickly, apricots maybe. ‘Although it could be a tramp for all we know. Some old dosser who’s shuffled off to the great cardboard box in the sky, right at the end of my bloody shift.’

‘All life is sacred, Sarge.’ I grin the grin of the lapsed Catholic.

‘Yeah well, so are my testicles, and Mags will be using them as baubles if I end up working another Christmas.’

He slams the car door and the noise has a finality to it, like the hammer at an auction. We walk across the square and duck down under the inner cordon. Parnell’s knees click loudly and he groans even louder.

I suppress a laugh, almost.

‘Yeah, all right, never get old, kiddo.’ I nod towards the tent, a reminder that not everyone gets the chance. ‘OK, never get fat then,’ he adds, sheepish. ‘And take your cod liver oil every day – the liquid, though, not the tablets, there’s more vitamin D in the liquid, it’s better for your joints.’ He looks satisfied, his good deed done for the day. ‘Don’t say your Uncle Lu doesn’t teach you anything .?.?.’

‘Masks,’ booms Vickery, not bothering to turn around. ‘He’s already handled her. We can do without any more contamination, thank you.’

I aim a sympathetic look towards ‘he’, the young PC manning the cordon, but he doesn’t look fazed.

‘Preservation of life was my priority,’ he says, in a way that must make his mum really proud. ‘I had to check for a pulse, I’m afraid. The witness was a bit .?.?.’ He makes a drinking gesture with his right hand. ‘Well, she wasn’t sure she was actually dead.’

Vickery shoots a deadpan glance towards a young girl perched on the back of an ambulance wearing stripper heels and an emergency foil blanket, and then looks back at our unmistakably dead body. I want to point out that there’s a whole world of difference between being politely informed of a body over the telephone and literally stumbling over one when you’re brain-fried from Jagerbombs and panicking about train times, but I keep my own counsel.

Steele flicks her head towards the ambulance. ‘Have a word afterwards, Kinsella. You’re more her age. You might get more out of her.’

I nod and we step into the forensic tent. Vickery leads the way.

Outside it’s about as pitch-black as London ever gets but inside, with the all the LED lights and flashing cameras, the full Technicolor horror of this woman’s last hours takes centre-stage. I hesitate to look down for a few seconds, silently counting one, two, three, in small sharp breaths before I clock Steele looking at me – irritated or concerned, I’m not sure. It’s usually a blend of both. On the count of four I give in to the inevitable and lower my gaze to see something you couldn’t really call a face anymore, more a tawdry Halloween mask – blood blanketing the head, hair completely matted, apart from a few blonde tufts that seem to have survived the flood, throat scored with long thin slashes as if someone was sharpening a knife. I crouch down and closer to the body I smell something. A fruity, floral perfume that must have been sprayed in the not-too-distant past, and a whiff of something like fabric softener on a well-cared-for coat.