frightened to let go. The uniform, the fluorescent jacket, should have given him an air of authority. Instead, he was like a lost child. His posture looked defeated and his peaked cap was discarded on the pavement beside him. There was a fresh pool of vomit near his feet. He looked up, and she almost didn’t know him then either, because his face was grey with shock. She’d worked for a while with Mitchell on late patrols, weeks ago, the usual boring driving tour of night-time Cardiff, enlivened only by the chance to break up a bottle fight in a dingy pub at closing time.
‘Mitch?’ Gwen asked him. ‘Oh God, what’s happened to you?’
Mitch opened his mouth, but for a moment couldn’t speak. There were flecks of vomit in his moustache. He gestured wordlessly back down the alley. Should she leave him to take a look, or stay with him to make sure he wasn’t injured or badly in shock? An angry shout from Jack decided the matter, and she hurried down the alley to join him.
Jack stood by the corpse, his hands on his hips. He tilted his head up towards the blue afternoon sky and screwed up his eyes, whether from the bright sun or from sheer exasperation it wasn’t clear to Gwen. ‘What do you see?’
She studied the body. It lay supine, half on the pavement and half in the gutter. Legs folded over to one side, arms splayed out at shoulder height. The back of the head had leaked blood and brains into the roadway, and wetted the otherwise dried mud that caked the nearby drain. ‘Looks like the same cause of death as the others’ she said.
‘Look again.’
Gwen took a broader view of the alley. ‘This is a new location. Still out of the way. Secluded. But further into town.’
He dropped his gaze and his pale blue eyes stared directly at her. ‘Look again.’
‘Time of death must be early this morning.’
He clucked his tongue. ‘Let’s leave that for Owen to decide at the autopsy. Now, look again.’
Gwen stooped for a closer examination. The corpse’s lower face and chest were spattered with fresh vomit. Gwen coughed and gagged abruptly. ‘This is too recent. It wasn’t him.’
‘It wasn’t him, right,’ agreed Jack. He raised his voice to a shout. ‘It was someone else who barfed over the evidence!’ Gwen could see Mitch further up the alleyway, still staring silently at his own feet. ‘It was someone,’ Jack continued, ‘who had two corned beef sandwiches and a Tango Orange before he came on duty.’
Gwen arched her eyebrows at him. ‘I don’t believe you can work that out from just looking at that pile of sick.’
‘It’s the smell,’ he told her.
‘Dog shit, vomit… Now I feel sick.’ She hunkered down to examine the corpse again, unsure whether to breathe through her nose or her mouth in the process. The face seemed familiar. And why did she associate that face with the smell of fish and raw meat? Not from the stench of Mitch’s acid vomit, that was certain. She could see that the victim had been a tattyhaired vagrant who looked much more than his teenage years. ‘The previous victims were older than this guy.’
Gwen remembered where she’d seen this kid before. He’d been selling magazines by the covered market. He was one of the badged vendors who cheerfully cajoled shoppers to part with their money, and who didn’t scowl even when the passers-by gave him the finger instead of cash. And now here he lay, dead in a grubby back alley in Splott. Someone or something had extinguished that lively look in his eyes by crushing the back of his skull. Crushing it so completely, Gwen already knew, that when they turned him over they would be able to see the cracked remains of his top vertebrae.
‘Youngster.’ Jack nodded, satisfied. ‘Won’t be so hard for Tosh to cover up,’ cause he won’t be missed.’
‘He will be missed.’ Gwen was surprised how angry she felt about it. ‘He’ll be missed by me. I’ve seen him selling the Big Issue in town.’
‘So, what’s his name?’
‘I don’t know what his—’ She bit off the rest of her sentence. ‘That’s not what I meant, and you know it.’
Jack smiled at her. Now she’d been working with him for a while, Gwen knew that he was trying to encourage her, not mock her. That still didn’t stop her feeling like he was patronising her. ‘It’s all relative,’ Jack said. ‘Which of us will