The Missing Read Online Free PDF Page B

couldn’t quite hear. I was very tired and I wanted more than anything to go home.
    A female police officer in plain clothes detached herself from a group of people that had gathered near to the spot where Jenny’s body still lay. She climbed up the slope, heading straight for me.
    ‘DC Valerie Wade,’ she said, holding out a hand. ‘Call me Valerie.’
    ‘I’m Sarah.’ I worked an arm free from the heavy blanket to shake hands.
    She smiled at me, blue eyes shining in the cold glare from the lights. She was round faced and slightly plump, with light brown hair. I thought she was older than me, but not much.
    ‘I suppose it all looks very confusing.’
    ‘Everyone looks so busy,’ I said lamely.
    ‘I can tell you what they’re doing, if you like. You see those people in the white suits – they’re the SOCOs. Scene of crime officers, that means. They find the clues – like on TV, you know, CSI .’ She was speaking in a slightly singsong voice, as if explaining their role to a child. ‘And that man over there, crouching down near –’
    She stopped short, and I turned, surprised at the look on her face until I realised that she was trying to avoid any reference to Jenny’s body. As if I could forget it was there.
    ‘That man, crouching down, he’s the pathologist. And those two behind him are detectives, like me.’
    She was pointing at two men who weren’t in uniform either, one in his fifties, the other thirty-ish. The older man had hair that shaded from iron-grey to white. He stooped as he watched the pathologist at work, his shoulders rounded, his hands buried in the pockets of his wrinkled suit trousers. He seemed hollowed out by exhaustion and the look on his face was grim. He was the single still point in the flurry of activity around the crime scene. The younger detective was tall, broad-shouldered, on the thin side, with light brown hair. Energy ran through him like an electric current.
    ‘The one with grey hair is Chief Inspector Vickers,’ callme-Valerie said reverently. ‘And the other is Detective Sergeant Blake.’ The change in tone between the first part of the sentence and the second was comic; she’d dropped the reverence in favour of slightly clipped disapproval, and when I glanced at her I noticed that colour had risen in her cheeks. That old story, I diagnosed: she liked him, he didn’t know she existed, and even saying his name ruffled her feathers. Poor Valerie.
    The pathologist looked up and gestured to a couple of the policemen who were standing nearby. They picked up the canvas screens that had been left to one side and lifted them carefully into position, hiding the next part from my view. I turned away, trying not to think about what might be happening down in the hollow. Jenny, I reminded myself, was long gone. What was left behind couldn’t feel what was happening to her, couldn’t care about any indignity. But I cared on her behalf.
    I would have given anything at all to turn back the previous hours, to choose a different route through the woods. And yet … I knew very well that it could be worse to live in hope. Finding Jenny’s body meant that her parents would at least know something of what had happened to their daughter. At least they would be certain that she was beyond pain, beyond fear.
    I cleared my throat. ‘Valerie, do you think I could head off soon? It’s just that I’ve been here for quite a while and I’d like to get home.’
    Valerie looked alarmed. ‘Oh no, we’d like you to wait until the chief inspector gets a chance to speak to you. We like to talk to whoever finds a body as soon as we possibly can. And even more so this time, because you know the victim.’ She leaned forward. ‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind finding out a bit about her, and about the parents. I’m going to be the family liaison officer. It’s always good to know what I’m going to be dealing with beforehand, if at all possible.’
    She would be good at that, I thought