LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘I wonder what the tabloids are saying.’ Sally winced. ‘Perhaps it’s better not to know.’

      A key scraped in the lock of the door to the landing.

      ‘That’ll be Yvonne.’ Judith gathered up her handbag, and risked a small joke. ‘Just in time for the washing-up.’

      The living-room door opened and Maxham came in. Yvonne’s blonde head bobbed above his shoulder in the hallway behind him. Judith glanced at Sally and stiffened, ready to take action. Sally put her hand to her mouth and stared at Maxham.

      ‘There’s been a development, Mrs Appleyard.’ Air hissed into his mouth. ‘It may not be connected with Lucy, so don’t get upset.’

      Maxham came to a halt a few paces inside the room. Yvonne moved round Maxham and came to stand beside Sally. Judith edged closer. My God, what are they? Wardresses?

      ‘Do you know a church called St Michael’s?’ he asked.

      ‘Which one?’ she snapped. ‘There must be dozens.’

      ‘In Beauclerk Place – west of Tottenham Court Road, near Charlotte Street.’

      She shook her head, unable to speak.

      ‘When the caretaker – churchwarden, would it be? – came to unlock this morning, he found a black bin-liner in the porch. I gather there are wrought-iron gates on the outer arch of the porch and a proper door inside. Someone must have slipped the bin-liner through the railings or maybe over the top.’

      Get on with it. Sally watched Maxham’s face, saw the pale eyes blinking behind the black-rimmed glasses and the muscles twitching at the corners of the mouth. With a shock she realized that he was stalling because he found this no easier to say than she did to hear.

      Air hissed. ‘The fact of the matter is, Mrs Appleyard, there were some clothes inside that bag. A pair of child’s tights and a pair of boots. They seem to resemble the ones you described Lucy as wearing.’

      ‘For Christ’s sake – what about Lucy? Is she there, too?’

      Maxham hesitated, greedily sucking in breath. ‘Well,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes and no.’

      St Michael’s, Beauclerk Place, stood at the end of a cul-de-sac squeezed between higher, younger buildings to either side and behind it. It was a scruffy little building built of red brick, rectangular in design, with pinnacles at the corners and debased perpendicular windows. The visible windows were protected with iron grilles and decades of grime. The church was like a child who has never had quite enough love or money devoted to it.

      The uniformed policeman pulled aside the barrier to allow Maxham’s unmarked Rover to drive into the cul-de-sac. The buildings on either side were post-war, with plate-glass windows and Venetian blinds: probably offices, empty on a Sunday. As yet, there were no sightseers, but the police were ready. The car slid to a halt near the church. Two police cars were parked nearby.

      The porch had been tacked on to the south-west corner of the church. The police had screened off the entrance. On the left of the porch was a row of iron railings which ended in a matching gate.

      Sergeant Carlow switched off the engine. He looked over his shoulder at Maxham, sitting in the back of the car with Sally. Maxham nodded. Carlow extracted his long body from the car and walked towards the screened-off porch. His hips were unusually wide for a man’s, Sally registered automatically, and as he walked his bottom swayed like a woman’s.

      Maxham folded his hands in his lap. ‘Just going to see what’s what.’

      For a few seconds, silence spread through the car. In the front passenger seat Yvonne stared fixedly through the windscreen. The inspector rubbed his fingers on his thigh. Carlow reappeared. He looked paler than ever.

      Maxham turned his head towards Sally. ‘You sure you’re up to it? Still time to change your mind.’

      ‘I’m quite sure.’

      ‘We can wait till your husband –’

      ‘No.’ My baby. ‘Can we get it over with?’

      Maxham nodded. The three of them got out of the car. It was suddenly cold: the wind funnelled through the cul-de-sac and escaped into the dull, grey sky. Sally forced herself to look away from the porch. She noticed that the gap between the railings and the church had silted up with a thick mulch of empty lager cans and fast-food wrappings, and that the gate at the north-west corner guarded the entrance to a narrow alleyway between the north side of the church and the adjacent building.

      According to a notice on the wall, the Anglicans now shared St Michael’s with a Russian Orthodox congregation and a Methodist one. Otherwise it would probably have been made redundant long ago. Perhaps that would have been better than this unloved half-life.

      Half a life, half a person?

      Sally found herself staring at the porch. From what she could see above the screens, it was about six feet wide and nine feet deep; it was covered with a pitched roof of cracked pantiles streaked with lichen and moss.

      Maxham put a hand under Sally’s elbow. They walked towards the screen. Yvonne and Sergeant Carlow fell in behind. A one-legged pigeon with frayed feathers hopped across their path. An amputee. To those in fear, creation was nothing but a mass of portents. Sally pulled away from Maxham and thrust her hands deep into the pockets of her long navy-blue coat. They rounded the corner of the screen.

      The light dazzled her. For a moment she stopped to blink and stare. Two floodlights gave the interior of the porch a hallucinogenic clarity. The outer gates were open. On either side were benches, with notice boards above. It should have been sheltered in there, but the notices fluttered and rustled in the wind. A photographer was shooting away seemingly at random, the shutter falling in a stammering rhythm like irregular rifle fire.

      The little space was crowded. Beside the photographer, another scene-of-the-crime officer was dictating into a hand-held machine. A third was measuring the dimensions of the porch. A fourth man, with a bag next to him, was kneeling in the far left-hand corner. Sally glimpsed shiny black plastic.

      ‘This is Dr Ferguson,’ Maxham said. ‘Mrs Appleyard.’

      The kneeling man half-turned and nodded, acknowledging the introduction.

      Sally swallowed. ‘Where –?’

      ‘Here, Mrs Appleyard.’ The doctor rose to his feet in one supple movement. He was younger than Sally, fresh-faced, with a healthy tan and a Liverpool accent. His eyes slid to Maxham, then back to Sally. ‘Are you sure you want to see this?’

      ‘Yes.’ With an effort she kept her voice low, concealing the scream inside her head.

      Ferguson nodded. ‘Over here.’

      He gestured not as Sally had expected towards the black plastic on the floor behind him, but to a plastic sheet on the bench on the left. Two L-shaped ridges showed underneath in relief, each about twenty inches long. Automatically Sally looked up, unable to keep her eyes on the two ridges. She examined the notice immediately above, noted with furious concentration the yellowing paper, the nearly illegible typed letters and the circular rust stains left by vanished drawing pins.

      She was aware that Maxham and Yvonne had moved a step nearer and were now standing directly behind her. The other police officers had stopped what they had been doing. The doctor was watching her, too. All of them were in position, she realized, ready to catch her when she fainted. Ironically, the thought braced her.

      ‘You’re ready?’

      Ferguson drew back the plastic sheet. Beneath was a transparent plastic bag with a neatly written tag. The bag contained a pair of small, white, woollen tights with ribbing on the legs. For an instant they looked as if they had been stuffed with kapok like cuddly toys. The tights were lying in a reddish-brown puddle of blood. Sally compressed her lips and swallowed. She thought of meat from a supermarket defrosting on its plastic tray. Blood need only be blood: nothing

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