This Thing of Darkness Read Online Free PDF

Further data on any additional transport and storage, right down to a location code for the position in the storeroom, so we can find the damn thing if we have to. More data each time a SOCO wants to take a second look at something or Dunthinking gets it into his head that he should show an interest in his own inquiry.
    I don’t object to any of this in principle. If we want to send someone to prison, it’s not unreasonable to require that our forensics evidence be bullet-proof. That doesn’t just mean we have to do the science correctly. It also means that we have to be able to prove that the evidence was collected where we said, when we said, and has been kept properly stored and free from interference ever since. If I ever face a serious charge, I’d want those guarantees for myself.
    So the principle, I’m fine with. It’s the practice that has me losing my mind.
    I work for an hour. Then dive into the documents library and find a photo of the victim, Kirsty Emmett, that I like. One of her at the hospital. A close-up.
    Someone has already cleaned her up. Removed mud and blood and grime. Made a basic attempt to comb the dirt and moss and dead leaves from her hair. But for all that, Emmett’s face has the shocked eyes, the empty gaze of real crime. This is what we’re investigating, I think. Those eyes. What happened to make them that way.
    I use the photo as my new screensaver. Order the image from the print room, in the largest size they do.
    I wonder if anyone thought to collect the soiled tissues from the hospital waste system? Those things should be basic, but nurses don’t think about evidence. Coppers sometimes forget about hospitals. I check the system. And no: no record of the material being collected.
    That’s not helpful, but nor is anything else. The victim was struck hard enough that she lost consciousness, she thinks, at points during her ordeal and her recollection is uncertain and scrambled. Her blindfold, crude as it was, meant she did not get a good view of her attacker and she evinces little confidence in the e-fit image she was coaxed to assemble. Her one confidently offered piece of testimony is that the van which deposited her was ‘a large white van, not all that clean, with some markings.’ Since that description fits half the vans in Cardiff – including almost the entire police fleet – it’s not much to work with.
    Nevertheless, I continue to do what is now my job.
    Collecting data.
    Checking data.
    Entering data.
    Any error, even a small one, could wreck this case.
    Two hours in and I call the lab. Ask for half a dozen casts of the security guard’s head wound. The lab had taken a master impression of the injury as part of the inquest process and I’m promised the casts by the end of the week.
    Continue to work.
    Location codes.
    Reference numbers.
    Check boxes.
    Signing logs.
    Three hours in and I have my first thought about self-harm. Wonder whether I could use the stapler to pin my hand to the desk. If I’d feel it, if I did.
    Bad thoughts, dark thoughts.
    I go outside for a cigarette. I used not to smoke much, not tobacco at any rate, but I started smoking more last year and the habit lingers.
    Jon Breakell, a DC and an occasional smoker too, is sheltering in the same insufficient doorway. He’s had the wit to put on an outdoors jacket before leaving the office. I’m in a skirt and white shirt only. Sensible enough kit for data entry. Not good for a chilly outdoor smoke.
    ‘Aren’t you cold?’ he asks, giving me a light.
    ‘Jon, if a senior officer orders you to arrest someone, doesn’t that imply an order to investigate first?’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘Are you free this afternoon? I mean, I need someone to accompany me to an interview. Jackson asked me to do it, but he didn’t say who with.’
    Jon shrugs. He quite likes me, or likes me enough. He’s also chilled enough not to demand to know too much about Jackson’s specific instructions. ‘Sure,