Snapshot

57

Ellen Destry stared gloomily at the body, which lay face down in a reedy drainage channel. Female, judging by the skirt, tights, smallish trainers, hair-tie and ankle bracelet. She guessed that the face, which lay in water, would be too decomposed to allow immediate identification, but she recognised the Waterloo Secondary College uniform, and the hair was blonde, so this was probably Scobie Sutton’s missing teenager, Natalie Cobb. Scobie Sutton had tied her boyfriend, Andy Asche, to the stolen gear found in the Toyota, so it was reasonable to suppose that she’d been along for the ride. If so, she must have been thrown out when the Toyota overturned, then dragged herself or stumbled for some distance before collapsing into the drainage channel, which was partly obscured by long grass and nearby apple trees.

Ellen swallowed, feeling a stab of pity and guilt. Would Natalie have been found if she’d ordered a grid-pattern search? Was she dead already, or had she lain in the grass for a while, before falling into the channel? Ellen looked across at Pam, who was securing the scene with tape. I accepted her word that there had been only one occupant. Always check, she admonished herself. Always check.

Then she was running: the Bushrats were entering the reserve. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped, ‘you’ll have to cut down pittosporum elsewhere this morning.’

There were eight of them, wearing old clothes and kindly smiles. ‘We won’t get in your way,’ they said politely.

‘I’m afraid you will,’ Ellen said. ‘I’m securing the reserve as a secondary crime-scene.’

She saw understanding dawn on their faces, and then they were moving off obediently, one woman touching her arm and murmuring, ‘You poor thing, I hope you keep dry and warm.’

Ellen returned to the body. Pam joined her, and together they waited for the crime-scene techs, Scobie Sutton, and the ambulance that would take the body away. No need to call Challis, not unless Dr Berg ruled it a suspicious death. But, suspicious or accidental, what if the girl’s death was unrelated to the crashed Toyota? What if she’d been murdered and dumped here at a later date? Or had come here to party and died of an overdose or something? Ellen turned to Pam and said, ‘Let’s have a scout around for empty bottles and cans, joints, any kind of drug paraphernalia,’ she said.

‘Sarge,’ said Pam, moving off, and then stopping. ‘Do you think she was in the van?’

‘Did you see a passenger?’

‘No. Tinted windows.’

They searched for several minutes, then returned to the body. ‘Maybe she wasn’t wearing her seatbelt,’ Ellen said. She swallowed, thinking of Heather Cobb’s grief and feeling suddenly vulnerable and helpless. The last time she’d seen her own daughter there had been a blazing row, Larrayne furious with her for leaving Alan. She badly wanted to fish out her mobile and call Larrayne, to see if she was safely tucked up in bed on this Sunday morning, but knew she wouldn’t get any thanks for it if she did.

‘Sarge,’ Pam said, breaking into her misery, ‘look at her hands.’

The right hand was outstretched and touching the bank of the drain. Two fingers were missing. The left lay in the water, the skin partly detached, like a glove. Ellen grimaced: she knew that the ‘glove’ could be removed by the pathologist, distended and then fingerprinted, but she was hoping that the dead girl’s teeth would provide all the identification they needed.

‘You don’t have to stay here, you know,’ she told Pam.

The wind blew, laced with misty rain. They both shivered. ‘I’d like to stay,’ Pam said. ‘Keep you company and watch and learn.’

‘Appreciated,’ Ellen murmured. She cleared her throat. ‘By the way, I’m glad the inquiry cleared you.’

An awkward moment. She knew exactly what a prick her husband had been. ‘By attacking you,’ she wanted to say, ‘Alan was attacking me. By taking broader swipes-at Challis, CIU, and the conduct of plainclothed police-he was attacking me.’

But she didn’t say any of this and they talked desultorily of other things. Thirty minutes later, several vehicles arrived: Scobie Sutton, a crime-scene photographer, a video operator, an exhibits officer, the pathologist and several uniformed police. Ellen stationed a couple of the uniforms on the road to wave on the gawkers, and directed another half dozen to search the orchard and along the fence line, then rejoined Scobie and Pam, who were watching the pathologist and her assistant work on the body, which had been pulled from the water and now lay on its back in the grassy verge. The face was pulpy; Ellen looked away.

‘Doc,’ she managed to say, ‘I don’t want to influence you, but this could be related to an incident that happened here about three weeks ago.’

Freya Berg glanced up at her quizzically.

Ellen pointed. ‘A van crashed through the fence and rolled, coming to rest just over there.’

‘About three weeks ago? I’ll bear it in mind.’

They moved away while the pathologist worked. ‘I should have searched the area more thoroughly, Scobe,’ Ellen said.

‘I should have done a lot of things in my time,’ he said gloomily.

She was pretty sure he’d come from church: he’d thrown an old gardening jacket on over a good shirt and trousers. Even more morose than usual, it was clear that he was taking the sacking of his wife pretty hard. ‘I think it’s Natalie Cobb,’ she said.

‘I’d say so,’ he said.

‘And you found her boyfriend’s prints on the stolen gear?’

Scobie nodded gloomily. ‘He’s done a runner, but I tracked him as far as Queensland.’

‘A big state.’

‘Yep.’

‘Do you think he knew she was dead?’

Scobie shrugged. ‘It’s possible. When I questioned him, he didn’t seem to know she was missing, but he might have put two and two together and come looking for her.’

Ellen glanced around at the deceptive folds in the land, the grass, weeds and clumps of old, unpruned apple trees. ‘An awful place to die.’

Scobie nodded in his mournful way.

Dr Berg glanced up at them. ‘Preliminary findings?’

‘Sure,’ Ellen said.

‘I found a student ID card in the name of Natalie Cobb, Waterloo Secondary College. Now, immersion in water does terrible things to the skin over time, but her clothing did protect her to some extent, and there are marks on her abdomen suggestive of seatbelt bruising. I also found the usual signs of exposure and putrefaction on the exposed areas, her face and hands. Her right hand appears to have been gnawed by animals. All in all, I’d say that she’s been in the water for at least two weeks. A body immersed in water decomposes at half the rate of a body left in the open-depending on temperatures, insect and animal activity and dampness, of course. But I’ll know more after the autopsy.’

‘But can you say for certain that her death was related to the accident?’

Dr Berg shrugged her expressive shoulders, humour in her dark eyes. ‘Sorry, Ellen. Her presence here, and manner of death, might be quite unrelated to it.’

‘More complications,’ Scobie muttered.

‘I’ll know more in the lab,’ the pathologist continued. ‘There appears to be some head trauma, and I might find internal injuries, and these might have killed her. Or she drowned.’

Ellen saw a twist of anguish in Scobie Sutton. All of his emotions were there on the surface. He felt things too keenly, too quickly. He imagined everyone’s heartache. For a moment then, Ellen sympathised, seeing her own daughter sprawled dead in the muddy grass. ‘Pam,’ she said, ‘you’re wet through. Go on home. It’s all under control here.’

The younger woman looked relieved. ‘If you’re sure, Sarge.’

‘I’m sure.’

Ellen watched her walk away, then called after her: ‘When you saw the driver legging it into the reserve, was he carrying anything?’

‘Not that I could see,’ Pam called back, slipping through the fence to her car.

Ellen brooded. She’d still have to search the reserve. The driver- this Andrew Asche-could easily have dropped something in the reserve when he fled, something that would tie him to the Toyota, to Natalie, to the burglaries.

And what if there had been two passengers, and another lay dead in the reserve?

Calling for Scobie and a couple of constables to accompany her, Ellen made for the railing fence and climbed through it into the reserve. An hour later, restless and frustrated, she found herself in a small clearing. She crossed it, bending occasionally to pull up pittosporum saplings in sympathy with Pam Murphy and the Bushrats. Her hands and back ached; a misty rain had blown across the reserve.

Pittosporum everywhere. Poor Bushrats. Ellen straightened the kinks in her back, then leaned over again to jerk a sapling from the rich soil. And some confluence of circumstances then-the light, the angle of her bent head, the sense that the surrounding soil and grass had been altered in some way, and, finally, knowledge and instinct-told her that she was looking at a shallow grave.