The Missing Read Online Free PDF

God’s sake,’ Anson said in disgust. ‘That’s a crime scene , Mattie. I don’t want to have to explain a dirty great puddle of vomit in the middle of it, thanks.’
    McAvoy walked away a couple of paces, not answering. After a moment or two he turned to start back up the slope, carefully not looking in the direction of Jenny’s body. ‘It’s a young girl. You can call it in,’ he said, scrambling over the top, eyes trained on the ground. Shamefaced was not the word for how he looked. I could understand why; I doubted that Anson would be quick to forget his display of weakness. But to my surprise, the older policeman didn’t comment beyond sending McAvoy to wait by their car, to guide the other police to the scene.
    ‘I’m not walking back all that way. Hop to it, son.’
    The expression on Anson’s face was kindly as he watched McAvoy hurry off. ‘Give him time, he’ll get used to that sort of thing,’ he said, almost to himself. ‘He’s a good lad.’
    ‘I don’t blame him for being upset.’
    Anson looked at me without warmth. ‘You’ll have to wait, I’m afraid. CID will want to talk to you. They’d have my guts for garters if I let you swan off.’
    I shrugged, then went back to sit down where I had waited before, settling against the familiar tree trunk in as comfortable position as I could, which was pretty far from being comfortable. I didn’t feel like making conversation with Anson and after a moment or two he moved away, turning his back to me, hands jammed in his pockets. He was whistling quietly under his breath, the same tune over and over. It took me a second to think of the words that fitted it.
    ‘If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise …’
    It was a nice touch.
    PC McAvoy did his job well. Within the hour they were there, lots of them: police in uniform, men and women in disposable white paper suits with hoods, officers in blue overalls, one or two in casual clothes or suits. Most of them arrived carrying equipment: bags, boxes, canvas screens, arc lights, a stretcher complete with body bag, a generator that coughed into life and pumped a brackish mechanical smell into the air. Some paused beside me to ask questions: how had I spotted the body? What had I touched? Had I seen anyone else while I was out running? Had I noticed anything out of the ordinary? I answered almost without thinking; I told them where I had walked and stood and what I had touched, and my shivers turned to shudders of fatigue. Anson and McAvoy had disappeared, sent back to their regular duties, replaced by people whose job it was to investigate murder, who were now combing the woodland area. What a strange job they did, I couldn’t help thinking. They were calmly professional, as organised and methodical as if they were in an office, shuffling paper. No one looked hurried or upset or anything but focused on the job they had to do. McAvoy was the only one who had reacted to the horror of what lay in the little clearing and I was grateful for it. I would almost have doubted the strength of my own feeling otherwise. Then again, they didn’t know Jenny. I had seen her alive, vital, laughing at a joke in the back row of my class, earnestly holding her arm in the air when she had a question. I would see the gap in the ranks of her classmates, the absent face in the school photograph. They would see a file, a sheaf of photographs, evidence in bags. To them, she was a job – nothing more.
    Someone had found a rough blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders. I gripped the edges of it now, holding it so tightly that my knuckles shone white. It had a strangely musty smell but I didn’t care; it was warm. I watched the police moving around, their faces ghostly in the harsh grey-white light cast by the arc lights, which were now mounted on stands all around the clearing. It felt odd to be looking down on the people below, all knowing the part they had to play, moving to a rhythm I