‘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.