Body of a Girl Read Online Free PDF Page B

left foot.”
    Mercer inspected the flotsam and jetsam. He said, “That red plastic handbag. That was an odd thing to dump.”
    â€œOdder still,” said Rye. “It wasn’t empty. I put the stuff out of it over there.”
    â€œIf a girl left her handbag behind you’d think she’d take the trouble to come back and look for it. It wouldn’t be hard to spot that colour. Where was it?”
    â€œIn the opening of an old water-rat burrow,” said Prothero. “It might have dropped there, or it might have been dropped somewhere else, floated downstream and been washed into it.”
    Mercer was trying to separate the contents, which had rusted together into a lump. There were two or three coins, a small bunch of keys, what might have been a lipstick container, and what was clearly a powder compact. Mercer got out a pen-knife and, after a bit of fiddling, succeeded in opening it.
    The air-tight lid had preserved the contents surprisingly well.
    â€œSun-tan dusting powder,” said Rye, who was a married man.
    â€œThere’s a shopman’s mark scratched inside the lid,” said Mercer. “Bit of luck if it was bought locally. We should be able to identify it.”
    â€œWe might,” said Rye, “but what I was thinking was, if this girl came from London or somewhere down for the day for a picnic, and it wasn’t till she got home she found she’d lost her bag she might let it go but if it belonged to a local girl, when she found she’d lost it, why didn’t she go back and look for it?”
    â€œPerhaps she wasn’t in any position to go back and look for anything.”
    â€œAh,” said Rye. “You mean it might belong to the girl we found?”
    â€œIt’s possible, isn’t it. The murderer strips her, and takes the clothes away with him. But he doesn’t notice the bag. It’s slipped down into this hole.”
    â€œCould be,” said Rye. “Try it round the jewellers and fancy goods shops, Len. You can leave the rest of the junk for now.”
    Mercer said, “I suppose I ought to be getting down to the island to see how they’re getting on.” He made no immediate attempt to move, but sat on the edge of the table watching Rye trying to disentangle a sodden lump of newspaper which had apparently been used to wrap up the remains of a meal. He said, “Is it right there used to be three garages in the High Street?”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œWhat happened to the other two?”
    â€œOne of them was shut some time ago. A couple of years before I came here. Run by a man called Mike Murray. He was a naughty boy.”
    â€œHow naughty?”
    â€œThey found a hot car in his yard and another one in his garage. He couldn’t think how they got there.”
    Mercer laughed. “What about the other?”
    â€œThat was what you might call an entanglement with the law too. The other sort of law. They took on a repair job, on the brakes of a doctor’s car, and did it so bloody badly that the brakes failed and the car hit a woman with a pram. Didn’t actually kill either of them but hurt them both pretty badly.”
    â€œClaim for damages?”
    â€œThat’s right. Particularly when it came out that the job had been done by a temporary mechanic, probably unqualified, who’d scarpered.”
    â€œAnd that was the end of the garage.”
    â€œThat’s right. Like all those little places there wasn’t much in the way of capital behind them. The costs and damages finished them. To say nothing of the fact that no one was going to be very happy entrusting their car repairs to a place which made such a mess of them.”
    When Mercer made no comment, Rye said, “So what’s it all about? Are you thinking of starting a garage yourself? I’d say there was room for another one.”
    Mercer smiled. It was a curious secretive smile which