40

Saturday 26 July 2014

Sarah was lucky. Dr Stichill had been able to return the previous day. The site of the car park was small and level. By late afternoon the team had identified a clear anomaly in the ground. They began excavations the following morning and Tania was quickly found. She was wrapped in a carpet, lying on her back, her clothing still not completely decomposed. It had not been the roots of trees that had held her but the hardcore of the car park. She was remarkably well preserved. Her jacket and short woollen skirt were still there to hint at the young person she had once been.

Hidden inside the scene tent, Joanne Robinson, the crime scene examiner, carefully cut the jacket pockets down the seams and peeled them away. In the top inside pocket was a torn fragment of thin paper, the print decayed. She removed it with tweezers and examined it. ‘It’s a piece of paper, certainly, and the light weight of it suggests it could have been taken from a phone directory. I won’t be able to give you more than that.’

Sarah said, ‘What about the carpet? Can you clean that up? Get me anything on it?’

‘We can try. We can probably identify the fabric. We might recover some pattern.’

‘Can you make that a priority, please?’

Sarah rang Fedden and arranged to arrest Stephenson. Just as she was about to hang up, Fedden detained her.

‘Look, you’re not to worry about this, but I’ve just spoken with the surgeon. Lizzie’s not out of the woods yet. They’re going to have to operate, first thing tomorrow.’

‘On a Sunday?’

‘I wrote it down, hang on . . . yes, a haemopneumothorax. Ever heard of that? No, me neither. Anyway, there’s been a lot of blood going into the drain from her chest and they’ve decided they can’t leave it. She’s running a temperature and they reckon there’s a bleed that’s not healing. But he says they’re not too worried.’