The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(17)
“Hi Jack, Mel,” he nodded to them both. “What’ve we got here, then?”
“You tell us,” Lowerson said, and took a strategic step further away. “But it looks to me like an execution kill.”
Faulkner nodded.
“Yeah, I’m no pathologist, but I’d say you’ve got at least ten major stab wounds there, alongside blunt head trauma. I’d also put money on the poor bloke having died elsewhere, before being transferred to the bin.”
“How can you tell?” Yates asked, with genuine curiosity. “Not enough blood?”
Faulkner nodded.
“Yeah, wounds of that kind would normally come with significant blood loss, whereas there’s hardly any blood inside the dumpster or anywhere around it. I’ve got the team going over the surrounding area now, so maybe we’ll get lucky and find something useful.”
“Anything so far?” Lowerson asked. “Any personal belongings?”
The body had been found completely naked, except for a pair of soiled black Y-fronts. It was a long shot, but there was a chance the CSIs might have stumbled across a discarded wallet amongst the assortment of old cardboard boxes and food waste.
“No such luck, I’m afraid,” Faulkner said, apologetically. “It’ll take a while longer to finish going over the area here, so you never know. I’ll keep you posted.”
They thanked the Senior Crime Scene Investigator and then stepped outside the forensic tent, breathing deeply of the fresh air outside.
“Thank God,” Lowerson muttered. “It smelled awful in there. Like…”
“Over-ripe pumpkins and charcuterie meat,” Yates decided. “If they were spread over a dead body.”
His nose wrinkled.
“Yates, did anybody ever tell you that you have an elegant turn of phrase?”
She smiled.
“All the time, Jack. You’re just a bit late to the party.”
*
Back at CID Headquarters, the temporary truce Ryan had negotiated between Samantha and her social worker had collapsed in spectacular fashion during his absence.
“I’m not going!”
Samantha positioned herself in the corner of Chief Constable Morrison’s office, between an overstuffed bookcase and a plant stand which held a fern that had seen better days. It would have been better to be near the door or the long window on the other side of the room, but both potential exits were blocked by Mrs Carter and DI MacKenzie, respectively. The Chief Constable remained seated at her desk, attempting to deploy the kind of parental tone she’d heard mothers and fathers use to restore order to a volatile situation in the playground.
“I’m sorry, Samantha, but the rules are clear—”
“Yeah, well, your rules are stupid,” the girl said. “I don’t understand why I have to go and stay with some dodgy family in the middle of nowhere—”
“They’re lovely people, and they live in Gosforth,” Mrs Carter said, in an exasperated tone. “They already have a couple of kids you might like to play with. They’re called Freddie and Myla—”
“I knew it,” Samantha intoned.
“—and they’ll keep you safe while the investigation is ongoing.”
Sam looked across at the woman from Social Services and knew that she was only doing her job. She probably signed up to help disadvantaged people straight out of university, thinking she’d make a difference to the world. Maybe she did, sometimes. Or maybe she just got a kick out of people telling her what a good person she was, doing such a hard job.
But this wasn’t about her not having any clothes to wear or food to eat, or any of that other stuff. It was about finding out which one of the people she’d grown up with was responsible for murder. She wanted to know which of them had lied to her all these years and, even worse, smeared her mother’s memory.
This was about betrayal; something Mrs Carter apparently knew nothing about, with her cat pens and her beige jumpers.
“Why can’t I stay with Frank and Denise?” she asked.
Morrison sighed heavily.
“We’ve already been through this, Sam. It’s inappropriate for you to stay with police officers, especially those involved in the investigation. There are short-term foster families ready and willing to help.”
Sam was incredulous.
“How can it be wrong to stay with police officers?” she demanded. “I thought the police were fully vetted and checked as part of their training and stuff? If it isn’t safe to stay with them, it doesn’t say much for the service, does it?”
The three women looked amongst themselves in varying degrees of shock. Morrison was dumbfounded, Mrs Carter was frustrated and MacKenzie…
MacKenzie was impressed.
In a couple of sentences, Samantha had undermined the police bureaucracy and found its tender spot, with a bold childish logic that was hard to refute. All the same, rules were in place for a reason, and it would be all too easy to grow attached to the little cat currently spitting and snarling in the corner.
“The Chief Constable’s right,” she said quietly, and moved closer to the girl before leaning down so they could talk eye to eye. The action put pressure on her bad leg, but MacKenzie ignored the pain, deeming a little girl’s wellbeing to be much more important.