All the Rage (DI Adam Fawley #4) - Cara Hunter Page 0,75

Faith, it won’t be enough for an arrest. Not on its own.’

‘And Brotherton’s just going to carry on insisting no one else could have borrowed it,’ says Gis with a sigh.

Baxter is frowning. ‘Well, he’s right, isn’t he? I mean, the van keys would either have been on him or in the house. How could someone else have got hold of them without him knowing?’

Ev shrugs. ‘Perhaps they keep a spare door key under a flowerpot? That’s what my gran used to do.’

‘In Blackbird Leys?’ says Quinn, openly incredulous. ‘You’re having a bloody laugh. The place would be cleaned out in under a week.’

‘No, it wouldn’t,’ says Everett. ‘That community – they look after their own. And Mr Brotherton is one of them.’

I get to my feet. ‘Well, that’s one question we should at least be able to answer. Let’s find out, shall we?’

* * *

It’s pouring now, and at the search site Barnetson is up to his knees in dirty river and in danger of losing his footing at every step. He moves gingerly forward, feeling the mud slip under his waders as he steadies himself with his pole. The Cherwell is over its banks in places now, bleeding brown sludge across the fields on either side, where cows steam dejectedly in the teeming rain. With the water so high, all the rubbish and dead leaves and pleasure-boat litter is swirling downriver and catching in the overhanging trees. A few yards away Barnetson can see a bicycle frame, a shopping trolley and several old carrier bags caught in low branches and rimmed with white bubbles, one ripped against the bark, another bloated with –

No, he thinks.

Please

No

* * *

Adam Fawley

5 April 2018

17.22

I’m not the first on-site; I can see Colin Boddie’s car, and the CSI van is already parked up. But the two technicians are still sitting inside. They know I’ll want to see the scene for myself before it’s touched. Before it’s disturbed.

I turn up my collar before I get out, hoping rain this heavy will give me some sort of anonymity, but the hacks have already worked out something is up. There are too many of us here now: however casually we play this, it’s only a matter of time.

The uniform at the tape sends me in the right direction without (thankfully) being witless enough to stand there and actually point, and soon I’m over my boots in mud and slurry and struggling to keep vertical. We’re in enough shit, frankly, without the literal version. Up ahead I can see a white tent, a scattering of search party members, and Ian Barnetson, standing unmoving, watching me approach. His face is bleak.

‘Are we sure it’s her?’ I say as I draw level.

He nods. ‘As sure as we can be right now, sir, based on what she was wearing.’

‘Have we found anything else?’

‘No weapon in the immediate vicinity, but we don’t know where she went into the water, so it could be anywhere. Likewise there’s no handbag and no phone.’ He holds my gaze. ‘And no underwear either. The state of the body – I don’t think there’s much doubt about what he did to her.’

I swallow hard. Force myself to put up some professional protection. And then I think about Sasha’s mother, who won’t have that luxury. About her father, who’s only just found her again. I wonder what I’d do, how I’d feel if it was me – if I had a daughter. And then I think – and it comes almost as a wonder – perhaps I already do.

In the gloom inside the CSI tent the only thing I can see at first is Colin Boddie crouched on the ground, his paper suit slightly luminous in the failing light. I say his name and he stands up and turns towards me and gestures to what they found.

There’s no blood, because the river has seen to that, but there is damage. A cruel, relentless, again-and-again damage that would have taken time and intent to inflict. Dozens of cuts and contusions on her bare legs, and the washed-out stains of the same violence on her clothes. The flesh around her wrists sliced and swollen by the cable ties where she tried desperately to get free. And worse – worse than all this – the plastic bag, knotted hard behind her neck, clinging half transparent to the mess of brain and bone and hair.

A plastic bag. Cable ties. I can’t pretend I wasn’t expecting this. But it’s a kick in