LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Why is that?’

      ‘The kids,’ he said. ‘They hang around here all evening, circling customers on their bikes, asking people to buy their booze and fags for them, because I know most are too young. If I try and get rid of them, I get abuse. All my customers want is to come in and buy some milk or something, maybe some cans for later, but the kids put them off.’

      ‘Have you spoken to their parents?’ Jack said.

      The shopkeeper gave a wry smile. ‘Drunk most of the time.’

      Jack returned the smile and guessed his predicament. ‘You sell them the booze,’ he said.

      ‘They’d only go somewhere else for it. And they do mostly, stocking up on the three-for-two offers. They come here when they run out, or when they want to start early and don’t want to drive to the supermarket.’

      ‘Do the police come round much?’ Jack said.

      The shopkeeper scoffed. ‘Hardly ever, and when they do, the kids treat it like a game, looking for a chase. They shout abuse and then starburst whenever the van doors open. Sometimes one of them trips and the police catch them, but nothing ever happens.’

      ‘Is that why the estate has private security?’ Jack said.

      ‘It makes people feel safer.’

      ‘Who pays for it?’

      ‘Whoever wants it.’

      ‘What about drugs?’ Jack said. ‘Could the police be doing more about that around here?’

      ‘No, not drugs around here,’ he said. ‘Maybe some weed, but it’s booze mainly. Always has been. I’m not saying that no one round here does drugs, but the kids that cycle around causing trouble aren’t on drugs. They’re pissed.’

      ‘You don’t paint a glowing picture,’ Jack said.

      He nodded to the voice recorder in Jack’s hand. ‘And I bet you won’t either, by the time it makes the paper.’

      When Jack started to protest, the shopkeeper jabbed his finger at the paper. ‘I read them as well as sell them, and I’ve seen the way the Telegraph has gone.’ Then he returned to whatever had occupied his attention before.

      Jack turned away, frustrated, and left the shop. He watched the cars heading in and out of the estate. They were mainly old Vauxhalls and Fords, most driven by young men who didn’t look like they could afford the insurance. His phone buzzed in his pocket. When he checked the screen and saw that it was Dolby, he thought about not answering, but he knew he needed to keep on Dolby’s good side.

      He pressed the button. ‘Dolby, what can I do for you?’

      ‘There’s been another murder,’ he said, his voice a little breathless. ‘A young woman.’

      Jack paused as he tried to work out what he meant, but then his mind flashed back to the young woman found in a pipe by the reservoir on the edge of town a few weeks earlier, a gruesome find for a father and son on an angling trip.

      ‘Whereabouts?’

      Dolby told him, and Jack realised that he was only half a mile away.

      ‘Do you want me to cover it?’ Jack said.

      ‘I’m not calling to spread the gossip,’ Dolby said, some irritation in his voice.

      ‘On my way,’ Jack said, and jabbed at the off button.

      He gave the shopkeeper a smile, but there was no response.

      Chapter Three

      It was just after nine-thirty as Laura McGanity looked around at the scene in front of her and tried to shake away the nerves. Someone had died, and now it was for her to show that she deserved her sergeant stripes. Nine months in uniform, working in the community, but now she was back where she wanted to be, on the murder squad. And even though this was a tragedy, she felt a familiar excitement as she took in the blue-and-white police tape stretched tight around the trees and the huddle of police in boiler suits holding sticks, ready for the slow crawl through the undergrowth, looking for scraps of evidence – a footprint, a dropped piece of paper, maybe a snag of cloth on the thorns and branches. This was it, the start of the investigation, the human drama yet to unfold.

      She had pulled on her paper coveralls, put paper bootees over her shoes, and now her breaths were hot against her cheeks behind the face mask. But Laura knew the excitement wouldn’t last long, because in a moment she would face the lifeless body lying in a small copse of trees behind the new brick of a housing development, just visible as a flash of pink in the green. Then the tragedy would hit her, but for now it was all about concentration, so that she didn’t miss something crucial.

      Joe Kinsella came up behind her, poised and still, his face hidden, the hood pulled over his hair. His eyes, soft brown, showed a smile, and then he said in a muffled voice, ‘C’mon, detective sergeant. Let’s see what there is.’

      Laura smiled back, invisible behind the mask. The title still felt new, but as Joe set off she realised that the back-patting would have to be put on hold for the moment.

      The ground sloped down to a small ribbon of dirty brown water that ran into underground pipes that carried it under the houses. Sycamore and horse chestnut trees filled the scene with shadows. Ivy trailed across the floor like tripwire, but Joe strode quickly through it, crunching it underfoot, in contrast to the soft rustles of Laura’s suit as she trotted to catch up. Laura was grateful that it was dry, or else she imagined she would have found herself skidding towards the small patch of pink by the edge of the stream.

      The body had been found by teenagers, looking for somewhere to do whatever they did in the woods, and since then the area had swarmed with police and crime scene investigators, the ghoulish and idly curious hovering on the street. There was a detective posing as a journalist, mingling with those craning their necks to get a view, snapping pictures of the onlookers, in the hope that the killer might be among them, having come back to marvel at his work. That had been Joe’s idea.

      As Laura reached the body, she saw that her inspector, Karl Carson, was there. Karl was large and bombastic, shiny bald, no eyebrows, his blue eyes glaring from the forensic hood.

      ‘Looks like we’ve got another one, McGanity,’ he said, his eyes watching her, waiting for her response.

      Laura sighed. That word, another. It made everything harder, because it meant that the murder wasn’t just a family falling out, or maybe a violent boyfriend faking it as a stranger attack.

      Laura watched as Joe got closer to the body and kneeled down. She knew that he wasn’t looking for forensic evidence, but for those little signs, hidden clues that reveal motivation. That was Joe’s expertise: not the what, but the why. Laura was still new to the team, but she had worked with him before, and so he had eased her into the murder squad. It was good to be back doing the serious stuff. She had moved north a few years earlier, away from her detective role in the London Met, and had done the rounds of routine case mop-ups and a short spell in uniform to help grease the push for promotion, but this was where she felt most at home.

      Laura kneeled down alongside Joe, and as she looked at the body, she saw that Karl Carson was right, that it confirmed everyone’s worst fear, that the murder three weeks earlier wasn’t a one-off. There were two now.

      The victim was a young woman, Laura guessed, in her early twenties, more there than the skinny hips and ribs of a teenager but with none of the sag of the later years. There was a tattoo on her left wrist. A pink butterfly. The body had been hidden under bark ripped from a nearby tree, and when it had been disturbed, the kids who found her had been swamped by bluebottles. Laura gritted her teeth at the smell – a mix of vomit and off-meat, and even outdoors, with her nose shielded by a mask, the stench still made it through. As she looked at the floor, she could see the shifting blanket of woodlice and maggots spilling onto the ivy leaves, their work of turning the corpse into just mush and bones interrupted. The body’s

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