body looked nimble and strong.
At the western edge of the village, near the Bridge, was a coffee bar where Sally and her friends hung out. The coffee was weak, the Coke warm and the Greek owner surly, but the place boasted
two video games, an up-to-date jukebox and an ancient pinball machine. Of course, Sally would rather have expertly applied a little make-up and passed for eighteen in one of the pubs –
especially the Hare and Hounds on disco night – but in such a small community everyone seemed to know a little about everyone else’s business, and she was worried in case word got back
to her father. She had been in pubs in Eastvale with Kevin, though even that was risky with the school so close by, and in Leeds and York, which were safer, and nobody had ever questioned her about
her age.
The door rattled as she pushed it open and entered to the familiar bleeping of massacred aliens. Kathy Chalmers and Hazel Kirk were engrossed in the game, while Anne Downes looked on coolly. She
was a bookish girl, plain and bespectacled, but she wanted to be liked; and if that meant hanging around with video-game players, then so be it. The others teased her a bit, but never maliciously,
and she was blessed with a sharp, natural wit that helped her hold her own.
The other two were more like Sally, if not as pretty. They chewed gum, applied make-up (unlike Sally, they did this badly) and generally fussed about their hair and clothes. Kathy had even got
away with a henna treatment. Her parents had been furious, but there was nothing much they could do after the fact. It was Hazel, the sultry, black-haired one, who spoke first.
‘Look who’s here,’ she announced. ‘And where have you been all weekend?’ The glint in her eye implied that she knew very well where Sally had been and who she had
been with. Under normal circumstances Sally would have played along, hinting at pleasures she believed Hazel had only read about in books, but this time she ignored the innuendo and got herself a
Coke from the unsmiling Greek. The espresso machine was hissing like an old steam engine and the aliens were still bleeping in their death throes. Sally leaned against the column opposite Anne and
waited impatiently for a silence into which she could drop her news.
When the game was over, Kathy reached for another coin, a manoeuvre that necessitated arching her back and stretching out her long legs so that she could thrust her hand deep enough into the
pocket of her skintight Calvin Kleins. As she did this, Sally noticed the Greek ogling from behind his coffee machine. Choosing her moment for best dramatic effect, she finally spoke: ‘Guess
what. There’s been a murder. Here in the village. They dug up a body under Crow Scar. I’ve just come from there. I’ve seen it.’
Anne’s pale eyes widened behind her thick lenses. ‘A murder! Is that what those men are doing up there?’
‘They’re conducting a search of the scene,’ Sally announced, hoping she’d got the phrasing right. ‘The scene of the crime. And the forensic team was there too,
taking blood samples and tissue. And the police photographer and the Home Office pathologist. All of them.’
Kathy slid back into her seat, forgetting the game. ‘A murder? In Helmthorpe?’ She gasped in disbelief. ‘Who was it?’
Here Sally had to admit lack of information, which she disguised neatly by assuming that Kathy meant ‘Who was the murderer?’ ‘They don’t know yet, you fool,’ she
replied scornfully. ‘It’s only just happened.’ Then she hurried on, keen not to lose their attention to further fleets of aliens. ‘I saw the superintendent close up. Quite a
dish, actually. Not at all what you’d expect. And I could see the body. Well, some of it. It was buried by the wall up in Tavistock’s field. Somebody had scraped away some of the loose
soil and then covered it with stones. There was a hand and a leg sticking out.’
Hazel Kirk tossed back a glossy