Let the Dead Speak

by Jane Casey

  ‘She’s in no condition to speak to anyone. I don’t think she can.’ Norris’s shoulders sagged. ‘She hasn’t said anything at all since she came back.’

  ‘I could sit with her,’ Eleanor murmured. ‘She wouldn’t be on her own.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, despising myself for begging. ‘For Chloe’s sake. Bethany wouldn’t want her to be in danger.’

  Norris looked at me, unseeing, for a long moment. Then he nodded.

  ‘I’ll go and tell her you’re here.’ Eleanor stopped, one foot on the bottom step of the stairs. ‘She’s in bed so I think we would prefer a female officer to speak to her.’

  ‘Of course,’ Derwent said. He sounded polite but the muscle flickering in his jaw told a different story. ‘I’ll wait while DS Kerrigan speaks to her.’

  ‘I think that’s best.’ Eleanor carried on upstairs. Norris moved back to allow us inside the house, his face stony.

  ‘If you upset her—’

  ‘That’s the last thing I want to do.’

  He snorted. ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Sounds as if she’s already upset,’ Derwent commented. ‘Given that she was crying.’

  ‘She’s exhausted. We’re all exhausted.’ Norris shook his head. ‘This whole thing has been a nightmare. What happened to Kate – of course we had to let Chloe stay with us. But if I’d known how hard it would be – and Bethany going missing … I mean, she has to be our priority. I’m sure you can understand that.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said shortly. I understand that you’re trying to protect your daughter and you don’t give a shit about Kate’s daughter. So much for Christian charity.

  ‘Can we take the clothes she was wearing?’ I asked.

  Norris’s eyes flickered. ‘I think Eleanor’s washed them. In fact, I know she has.’

  It was a blow but I dredged up a smile. ‘Never mind. It’s surprising what survives a trip through the washing machine.’

  ‘I’ll get evidence bags from the car and let everyone know Bethany’s been located.’ Derwent headed out of the door and I could tell Norris was itching to shut it behind him.

  ‘Detective? You can come up,’ Eleanor called.

  I went past Oliver Norris fast enough to feel a breeze, just in case he changed his mind. Eleanor was standing in the doorway of her daughter’s bedroom.

  ‘Don’t take too long. She needs to rest.’

  Bethany was curled up in bed, a small shape under the covers. I edged around the bed until I could see her face, her eyes tight shut, her expression pure misery. The curtains were drawn in the room and I could barely see her. I tweaked one back a few inches and she winced.

  ‘Sorry, Bethany. Only it’s a bit dark in here.’

  She looked thin, her face flushed and feverish. Without glasses, her eyes looked vulnerable, defenceless. Her lips were chapped but a full glass of water stood on the bedside table.

  ‘Has she been checked over by a doctor?’ I asked, crouching so I could feel her forehead. It was hot and she flinched away from my touch.

  Eleanor shook her head. ‘She was fine. She didn’t need a doctor. She needed rest.’

  ‘Bethany, I need to ask you if you know where Chloe is.’

  Her whole body shuddered and she screwed her eyes tight shut.

  ‘Where did you last see her?’

  No answer.

  ‘She could be in trouble, Bethany. In danger, even. We need to find her urgently.’

  ‘And what are you doing about it?’ Eleanor’s voice was too loud in the gloom. ‘Apart from bothering my daughter, I mean.’

  ‘There’ve been appeals on social media and the local news. She’s going to be featured on national news bulletins today.’ I checked my watch. ‘It’ll be on the one o’clock news.’

  ‘But it’s two days since she disappeared.’

  ‘Vulnerable people go missing all the time.’ I stood up. ‘We were balancing Chloe’s need for privacy with her safety. Especially given her current situation. There’s going to be a lot of media interest in her disappearance. That’s why we really need to know why she left and where she was planning to go.’

  ‘If Bethany doesn’t know she can’t tell you.’

  ‘I appreciate that. Anything she knows might help.’ I crouched again. ‘Bethany, where did you go? Where were you hiding?’

  No answer.

  ‘Were you together?’

  She gave the tiniest of nods.

  ‘All the time?’

  Another nod.

  ‘So when did you leave her? Or did she leave you? Did someone help you to hide? Did you argue?’

  Tears were sliding out from under her eyelids.

  ‘Bethany, please.’

  ‘That’s enough,’ Eleanor said, leaning over her daughter as if she needed to shield her from me.

  ‘But I need to—’

  ‘No. I’m sorry. You need to leave right now.’

  ‘Bethany, you know you can talk to me. You’re not in trouble and neither is Chloe. We need to make sure Chloe is somewhere safe.’

  Bethany buried her face under the covers and gave a low wail that made the hairs stand up on my arms.

  ‘Go now. Please. Go,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘I’ll come back soon, Bethany,’ I said. And hopefully I can speak to you without your mother intervening. I didn’t know if she’d been afraid to talk in front of Eleanor but I had to assume it was part of the problem.

  The hall downstairs seemed full of people but there were only three; it was just that they were all large men. Oliver Norris, Derwent, Morgan Norris. The latter looked up as I came down the stairs and grinned.

  ‘Well, if it isn’t Juliet Bravo.’

  ‘That was her call sign, not her name,’ I said.

  ‘The thing I like about you is your passion for accuracy.’ Morgan gave the word passion full value, lingering over it, and I felt a chill ghost over my skin. I don’t know how I looked, but it made Derwent move between me and Morgan, crowding him. Morgan held his ground until the last possible minute, then fell back. ‘All right. It’s all right.’

  ‘I apologise for my brother,’ Oliver said from behind me.

  ‘There’s no need.’ I wanted to get out of the house: it was stifling, the air fraught with tension. ‘If Bethany wants to talk to me, I’ll make myself available. Any time.’

  ‘Even in the middle of the night?’ Morgan asked, then raised his hands as Derwent twisted to glower at him. ‘God, can’t a man ask a simple question?’

  ‘Not if it’s you.’

  ‘You don’t like me, do you? I can tell.’

  I’d often thought it would be easier to work with Derwent if he wore a lead, so I could drag him out of trouble. I was starting to think a muzzle might not be such a bad idea either. I cleared my throat.

  ‘I think we’re finished here.’

  It was by no means immediate but eventually Derwent tore himself away and followed me out of the house. He waited until the door closed behind us before he took hold of my arm just above the elbow, pulling me close to him so he could murmur in my ear.

  ‘I don’t want you going back there on your own. Not for any reason.’

  ‘He wouldn’t do anything.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ Derwent looked back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t like him. And I don’t like his brother. If you’re going to that house, you’re going to take me along.’

  ‘Even if it’s the middle of the night?’ I asked, imitating the way Morgan had spoken.

  ‘Especially then.’ A shake of my arm. ‘Promise me.’

  I promised. I had to. I knew Derwent well enough to know he’d never have let go of my arm until I did.

  We stopped on the way back to the office so I could get petrol. I bought coffee for Derwent while I was paying. It wasn’t so much a peace offering as avoiding a bigger, worse argument about leaving him out.

  He wasn’t waiting in the car. I suppressed a sigh and looked around, eventually spotting him. He was pacing
up and down near the car wash, on his phone, deep in conversation. I moved the car so it wasn’t blocking the pump any more and leaned back in my seat, thinking about Kate Emery and Morgan Norris and how much I’d like to arrest him for killing her if I could find one speck of evidence against him.

  I was sipping coffee when a dark figure appeared on the periphery of my vision and my heart jumped into my throat. I glowered up at Derwent, who yanked open my door and leaned one arm on it. He braced the other on the roof of the car, looming over me. Personal space was not a concept he respected.

  ‘You gave me a fright,’ I snapped. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘They think they’ve found Chloe.’

  The relief made me feel weak. ‘That’s brilliant. Two for two.’ Then I saw the expression on his face. ‘Not brilliant?’

  ‘They need us to go out to Surrey.’ It seemed to take him a long time to say the next bit. I wouldn’t have minded if he’d never said it. I knew what was coming and I didn’t want to hear it. ‘They’ve found a body.’

  24

  Surrey was a big county but we were in luck, if you wanted to call it that: the body was just beyond the M25. I parked behind a black mortuary van on a country lane that felt as remote from London as the moon. The sun shone, the birds sang in the trees, the weather was picnic-perfect.

  Silently, I stood by the boot of the car changing into wellingtons. It was soft going at the crime scene, I’d heard. Glancing along the line of vehicles I saw Una Burt’s car and the pathologist’s BMW. The gang’s all here …

  ‘Ready?’ Derwent asked.

  I nodded and started down the lane. He kept pace with me, shortening his stride to match mine, a solid presence at my elbow though he knew better than to try to talk. I could hear a plane humming towards us, louder and louder. Heathrow Airport was nearby, I reminded myself. We weren’t so far from civilisation as all that.

  A uniformed officer checked our credentials and made a note of our attendance at the scene on her clipboard. She directed us through a scrubby bit of woodland.

  ‘It’s about five minutes from here. You’ll see them when you get out the other side of the trees.’

  The woodland was criss-crossed with desire lines, suggestions of paths rather than established routes, overgrown with grass and weeds. The sunlight shone through the leaves, breaking through in tiny patches here and there that spangled the ground. It was like being underwater, cool and green and hushed. It should have been a pleasant place to walk.

  ‘Who found her? Was it a dog walker?’

  ‘I didn’t ask,’ Derwent said.

  We were a long way past joking about it.

  The officer had been right: it was easy to see where we needed to go once we emerged from the treeline. We cut across a small grassy field to where Una Burt stood, a little way away from the others. As I got closer I could see the field’s boundary was composed of low bushes with an occasional tree, the spaces between filled with white clouds of meadowsweet and thick stands of nettles. On the other side of that a shallow stream dragged itself sluggishly over rounded stones. The water level was low, the banks choked with greenery. The white suits were ankle-deep in the water or crawling around on the banks, measuring and sampling. Too late. Too late.

  I forced the words down and made myself greet the chief inspector. ‘Boss.’

  ‘Where is she?’ That was Derwent, getting straight to the point.

  Burt pointed wordlessly, and I saw: lying on the grass face up, her head tilted back and away from us, her hair wet and tangled like weeds. Chloe, but not Chloe any more now that the life had left her. She was naked, her body pale against the grass. There was a streak of mud on one thigh but aside from that I couldn’t see a mark on her. Her legs were together, her arms by her sides.

  ‘Did someone pull her out of the stream?’ Derwent asked.

  ‘The guy who found her. He dragged her out of the water, then realised she was dead and there was no point in doing CPR. He had chest pains afterwards. We had to call an ambulance for him.’

  ‘Is he local?’

  ‘He owns the land. Nothing strange about him being here.’

  ‘Why here?’ I said, looking around. ‘It’s a walk from the road and it’s in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘It’s not as remote as all that,’ Burt said. Another plane was approaching. She pointed up. ‘Flight path.’

  The three of us tilted our heads back, watching as the plane went over. The landing gear was down, the great engines roaring. Hundreds of people would be on board, oblivious to what lay beneath them, untouched by it.

  ‘I suppose most people wouldn’t choose this area for their country walk,’ I said, when the sound had died away.

  ‘We’ll be looking for Kate Emery’s body around here too – I’ve got a cadaver dog coming along later.’

  ‘It’s definitely Chloe, I suppose,’ Derwent said. ‘We’re sure about that.’

  ‘It’s her,’ I said, certain.

  Burt nodded. ‘No doubt about it, though we’ll need her father to do the formal ID.’

  It hit me with physical force so I struggled to breathe, not to sob: Not a phone call, Mr Emery; it’ll be a personal visit from grave-faced officers, bringing you the worst news of all, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

  Una Burt was looking at me, doubt in her eyes. ‘Are you all right?’

  I nodded, somehow. To my eternal relief her phone rang and she turned away to answer it. Derwent’s hand was on my arm, squeezing slightly too hard.

  ‘Pull yourself together,’ he murmured so only I could hear it.

  It wasn’t the done thing, to be emotional at a crime scene. Not unless it was a child. You could care about children. It was all right to cry about their innocent broken bodies. It was strange if you didn’t, in fact – a sign you’d burned out, that it was time to change jobs and do something other than homicide investigation. But it wasn’t all right to cry about young women who had struggled to find their way, who had been victims since the day they were born. I bent over, pain lancing through my stomach.

  ‘The fuck is wrong with you, Kerrigan.’ He stepped back, though, pulling me with him, standing in front of me so I was shielded from the other officers while I tried to control my breathing. I didn’t know whether I was going to cry or be sick for a few seconds. I didn’t know which would be worse.

  ‘I’m OK,’ I said at last, not looking at him.

  ‘Do we need to up your medication or something?’

  I shook my head. ‘I thought we’d find her.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Obviously.’ His voice was cold. ‘It’s not your job to mourn for her, Kerrigan. It’s your job to get the fucker who put her here.’

  Another plane passed over, scoring the sky. It was shatteringly loud. I used it as an excuse to walk away. You couldn’t expect Derwent to understand an emotional connection with a victim; I didn’t know why I had thought he would.

  The pathologist was finishing, writing some notes. I waited at Dr Early’s elbow until she looked up and her narrow face softened to a smile.

  ‘I didn’t know this was one of your cases, Maeve. It’s a long way off your usual patch.’

  ‘It’s connected to another case.’ I couldn’t make myself smile back, and the pathologist’s grin faded. ‘I know you won’t have any firm answers yet, but can you tell me when she died?’

  ‘Not with any degree of accuracy.’ Dr Early flipped back through her notes. ‘There’s no sign of decomp yet, so I don’t think she’s been here for long, but she could have been kept somewhere. There’s considerable post-mortem lividity on her back and legs. If I had to guess, I’d say she was in a confined space for some time after her death, curled up with her knees to her chest.’

  ‘A confined space. Like a car boot?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘So she didn’t die here.’

  ‘I can’t tell you that yet for sure, but I w
ould say not.’

  ‘How did she die?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that either but between us, my money is on drowning.’

  ‘Drowning?’ I shivered. ‘Could it have been an accident?’

  ‘She has bruising on her arms and shoulders. I would say not an accident. She was held down.’

  ‘Could one person have done it?’

  ‘Not if all the bruising was inflicted at the same time.’ Dr Early frowned at the body. ‘She didn’t fight much. It looks as if she was easy to subdue. I’ve taken scrapings from under her fingernails but I’d be surprised to get anything from them.’

  ‘The water won’t help.’ Derwent, who was watching my face.

  ‘That’s right,’ Dr Early said. ‘Being in the water will have washed a lot of evidence away. But she had quite long nails and none of them are broken. I’d have expected her to snap one or two if she was fighting for her life.’

  ‘Maybe she went along with it,’ I said. ‘She was biddable. She’d been brought up to do what she was told.’

  ‘I’m wondering about her level of intoxication. Fighting is instinctive when you’re threatened. Mainly people don’t fight back because they can’t. I’ve sampled the fluid in her eyeball to see if she was drugged or drunk.’

  Derwent winced. ‘Jesus. You couldn’t just take some blood?’

  ‘The vitreous humour is more stable.’ Dr Early gave him a savage smile.

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ I asked.

  ‘I haven’t observed any damage. I’ve taken swabs, of course.’ Dr Early glanced back at where Chloe lay. ‘I’ll know more after the post-mortem. I’ll do that tomorrow. Come along if you like.’

  I absolutely did not want to see Chloe Emery’s body peeled apart, no matter how scientific and professional the process might be.

  ‘We’ll be there,’ Derwent said, and I caught the emphasis. Don’t think you’re going to skip out on this one, Kerrigan.

  ‘They’re going to move the body now.’ Dr Early glanced at me. ‘Do you want to get a closer look before they take her away?’

  I felt I had to. I felt I owed it to her, and to her mother, and her father who was waiting for a phone call that would never come.

  I stepped carefully on the mats the forensic team had laid down so my boots didn’t tear up the soft mud, and looked down at Chloe, at her face. Mainly the dead bodies I saw belonged to strangers, people I’d never seen moving and talking and smiling. People whose lives had ended before I ever knew they existed. I never got used to seeing the utter absence that was death. The spirit that had made Chloe what she was had departed. It was why I couldn’t reject the religion that ran through the tapestry of my childhood like a gold thread, even if it was fashionable to forget it, even if I didn’t always agree with the specifics. There was a comfort and a certainty to it, a calm acceptance that life went on after the body faltered and fell. I stood by Chloe Emery’s body and I prayed for her soul.