Porter smacked the door hard as he went into the station, through the public area and towards another door on the other side.
He’d been to Ruby’s home to break the news, a younger officer with him, Louise, to soften the effect of the hard-bitten old cop.
Louise trotted to keep up. ‘Everything all right, sir? You’ve been quiet.’
‘Just showing my human side.’
‘Young Ruby? I know, it was awful, but I’d have thought you’d be used to it.’
‘The day it doesn’t affect me is the day I’ve been in the job too long. It’ll pass.’
It was just a front. He’d seen a lot of death during his time in the police, but it was mostly accidental or neglect, or the occasional suicide. Car crashes. People falling from the cliffs. Old people discovered when the letters started to pile up on the other side of the door. Murders were rare in Brampton. It wasn’t that kind of town. It was a tough place, violent in its own way, but that was just Saturday-night pub brawls. Brampton had always been a place where people felt safe walking the streets or leaving their doors open.
Or letting their children play at annual fairs.
Most deaths he’d visited had been about feeling squeamish. The grey wetness of brains spilling out of a gleaming white skull, cracked open after a car crash, thrown through the windscreen and smashed against a tree. The nauseating smell of a body left in a warm flat for a few days, like a mix of dirty toilet and rotting meat. The way their shit rolled out of their mouths when they were moved, their muscles no longer working, the bloating of the body pushing their bowel contents to whichever was the easiest route. That was all about keeping his dinner down.
This had been different, because the emotion hit much deeper than a churning stomach. That could be made good again by a joke amongst colleagues, laughing at the new cop throwing up on the pavement, or something life-affirming, like junk food or a walk along the beach. A dead child was a whole other evil. It hit harder and took something away from him each time, and not all of it was ever put back.
People came out with the usual trite comments about hugging their own a little tighter, as if the depths of sorrow could be somehow restricted to parents. You didn’t need to have children to feel grief at all the hope snuffed out, a life that would never get lived, and everyone was looking to him to catch the killer. And to make sure it never happened again.
William’s death had been bad, battered and twisted, and then dragged out from behind the old concrete pillbox and ending up on the metal table of the mortuary, in the cellar in the old hospital. There was talk of a new one, some modern place on the edge of the town, but until then the old building was still being used, with its high ceilings and clanking radiators, long corridors painted yellow that echoed with shouts and cries and the squeaking wheels of trolleys.
Ruby’s body was worse, because she had started to lose some of her humanity. Decomposition had begun, left in the ground for nine days, her skin green and bloated. She was no longer the perfect little girl that her parents had dreamed of being found. Instead, her body had started to devour itself, the bacteria eating through the cells with nothing to stop it, breaking down her organs, turning everything into liquids and gases.
The soil had slowed it down, but not enough. The grave had been too shallow, the soil too loose. Air had got in, water too.
The visit to her parents had been as hard as he’d expected, although the slow drag of his feet along the garden path had given away the news before they’d knocked on the door. As Ruby’s mother, Angela, opened the door, Louise tilted her head and gave a smile filled with regret, sharing her pain as Angela gripped the door jamb and the colour disappeared from her cheeks.
It was four words from Louise, softly spoken, that took away any last hope. ‘Can we come inside?’
Angela’s eyes had rolled and she sank to her knees, Louise rushing to catch her.
Porter carried on through to the public waiting area. He loved his job. He hated his job.
They’d been able to keep the discovery secret for the moment, no local radio station willing to risk broadcasting anything, but he didn’t know how long it would last. He knew he could cajole and bully the local journalists, but the nationals wouldn’t care about upsetting a small‑town copper like him.
As they went through the secure door and towards the offices at the back, all commandeered for an Incident Room, everyone looked round. Twelve officers. Four of them were detectives, two brought in from the bigger town further along the coast, but the rest were constables drafted in from the uniformed section, those who could be trusted to write legible statements and keep good notes.
As Porter shook his head but said nothing, everyone nodded their understanding and went back to their piles of paperwork, all glad they hadn’t been given the job of telling the family.
He went to his desk, where slips of papers had been piled, all with messages to call people back. One was from the force’s media officer. He knew what that would be about. Wanting to know when they could broadcast the news and whether he was ready for a press conference.
There was one man who seemed apart from everyone else.
He was standing by the radiator, his helmet under his arm as if he were on parade. Young, early twenties, no signs of stubble, his cheeks flushed.
As Porter carried on flicking through the messages, he walked over and said, ‘Sir, can I have a word?’
Porter looked up. ‘I’m all yours.’
The young constable looked round the room, as if nervous about spilling whatever evidential morsel was troubling him. Everyone was pretending to read their paperwork, but Porter could tell they were waiting to see whether the young constable was about to make a fool of himself.
Porter wasn’t in the mood for the sport. He needed information, and if the constable had some, Porter wanted it more than he wanted the collective amusement.
‘Follow me,’ he said, and then to Louise. ‘You too.’
They walked along a narrow corridor, past frosted-glass doors to a room at the end that Porter used for his office, although he spent more time in the Incident Room, wanting to hear whatever was going on with the investigation rather than relying on what was filtered up to him.
Once in the room, the constable said, ‘I heard Ruby has been found along the old road.’
Porter’s eyes narrowed. The old road was the local name for the country track that led to where Ruby had been found. ‘Go on.’
The constable swallowed before he spoke. ‘I stopped someone, sir, coming along the old road on the night Ruby went missing.’
Porter tried to keep his rising temper in check. ‘Tell me.’
‘You asked us to keep a look out for suspicious vehicles, and to stop people on the way out of town. I’d stationed myself near the end of the old road, thinking that if someone wanted to leave town they might take the old road rather than one of the main roads. I saw him. I hadn’t been there long, perhaps ten minutes or so, when I stopped him. He was going too quick. That’s what drew my attention.’
‘How quick?’
‘I can’t say exactly, but he was in a rush. His headlights were bouncing. I flicked on the blues and he pulled over.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He just apologised, said the road was quiet so he was enjoying the night. I looked in his car, but I don’t remember anything in it. He was on his own and I let him go on, but I heard about the body being found and it came back to me. I remember thinking back then how skittish he was, nervous, not really listening to me, but I couldn’t lock him up because of that.’
Porter stepped closer to him. ‘Why am I finding out now?’
‘We were monitoring people leaving town. He was coming back in, not leaving.’
The constable was staring ahead, trying not to focus on the flush in Porter’s cheeks.
‘Can you remember the car?’
‘A white Mondeo.’
Porter kicked the nearest desk, making the young officer flinch. ‘That’s him! It makes him local, too, because he’d taken her away and was coming back into town. We need to know everything. Description. Details of the car. Can you remember what he looked like?’
‘I can do better than that, sir. I gave him a producer. I checked the book. He brought in his insurance and licence two days later.’ He handed over a scrap of paper he’d been holding in his hand. ‘His name is Rodney Walker.’
Porter took it from him and read it, before his smile started to spread.
He turned to Louise – ‘Come on, we’ve got something’ – and headed for the door.