Extract 22 from Chapter 44
‘She’s a junkie.’
The term turned a spike in the detective; she was a drug user, there was no mistaking it, but she was a member of the same race of beings as they were. She was someone’s daughter. She’d meant something to someone: if not now, then once. We all had, once.
He lowered himself on his haunches and picked a wet leaf from the white flesh. The contusions continued down her arm in consistently spaced points. ‘Fingertips, she’s been battered about.’
‘Repeatedly, I’d say for some time. Look at the stomach distension, sir.’
‘She’s brass, I’ll bet money on that.’ Valentine rose and motioned to one of the uniforms. ‘We got her printed?’
‘Yes, sir. Going through now…’
‘Well, that’s something. With any luck we’ll have her on our books and get a name before too long.’
DS McAlister and DS Donnelly approached the crime scene. They were ducking under the blue and white tape as Valentine turned away from them to take a closer look at a silver chain around the girl’s neck.
‘What’s that, boss?’ said McCormack.
‘Don’t know… Some kind of pendant.’
As he knelt down again, Valentine removed a yellow pencil from the inside pocket of his sports coat. He pointed the pencil towards the girl’s neck and slotted the tip beneath the silver chain; as he rummaged for the pendant he saw a tangle of mulch around a silver clasp and then the item was sprung onto her chest.
‘A cross…’ he said. The detective almost felt like laughing.
‘Where was her God?’
‘It’s just a cheapie,’ said McCormack.
Valentine stood up and rolled his eyes to the heavens. ‘Maybe He might have been pissed at her for that?’ He shook his head. ‘I mean, there’s some things worth splashing out on.’
DS McCormack seemed unsure how to interpret the detective’s words. She held herself still as the wind took stray tendrils of hair in front of her face. Valentine turned away and walked towards the blue tape.
‘A bloody cross.’
He didn’t know why he had got so worked up by the sight of the small silver cross. It just seemed so out of place to him, so ridiculously trite. She was a young girl who hadn’t had a chance from the day she was born, a prostitute who pumped her veins full of poison to numb the pain of being alive: what use did she have for God? What kind of a god could even she imagine had fashioned this hell on Earth for her? How long had she suffered?
He knew her story all too well because it was the story of every young girl like her. Pain in childhood, and pain in bigger portions the older she got. There was no escape, no saviour for her. As he reached the edge of the clearing, he felt his throat freezing with an involuntary welling of unwanted emotion.
The detective looked at the tyre prints; they were clear and fresh, and the vehicle seemed to have spun a little in the wet mud. ‘Looks like they were in a hurry to get away.’
‘Might have been the running party… Maybe saw them coming.’
Valentine turned back towards the crime scene. The SOCOs had started to unfurl a white tent, and a noise like wind in a sail sent a wood pigeon scrabbling from the branches of a nearby tree.
The detective pointed to what looked like a steep gash in the ground. ‘What’s that, there?’
The uniform straightened his back and tipped up his head. ‘That’s like some kind of hole, sir… We think it’s fresh too.’
Another interpretation made more sense. ‘A grave, you mean.’
‘Could be, sir.’
The DI was tired of the lopsided conversation; he had seen enough to know he didn’t need to see any more. He turned for the car with his face set in a granite sneer. ‘Tell the others I’m going back to the station.’
‘Don’t you want to wait for the fiscal, sir?’
He didn’t think the question deserved an answer. Was the fiscal going to deliver some insight? Was the fiscal going to tell him how to do his job, how to solve another murder?
As he reached the road, Valentine unlocked the car and kept his head low, facing off a fierce wind, until he had reached the vehicle. He got inside just as the rain was starting up again and sat with his hands in his lap, his knees locked at right angles to the floor.
As he stared out of the car’s window to the row of grim council houses he saw the stacks of chimneys stalking the grey horizon like weary sentries who wished to be anywhere but here.
An old man stood in front of his home, leaning on a dilapidated garden gate with folded arms and furrowed brows. Valentine stared at the man for a moment, made an unfathomable connection with his dark eyes and felt them share a mute understanding of a world that had long ago ceased to make any sense to them both.