HIGH ABOVE THEM, A LARK ASCENDED,
HARDING CAREFULLY DROVE THE RILEY INTO THE SMALL LAY-BY, close to where the right of way footpath up to Wilder Scout began. Rawlings let out an exaggerated breath and theatrically wiped his brow. ‘Well, you got us here, Sarge, not sure quite how, but we’re here. The boss reckons the bastard has brought the girl here?’
‘Yeah, Bolehill Copse. His instincts are pretty good most times.’ Just like the Adelaide Milburn case, he thought, but kept that to himself; no point in raising another needle of tension between them, it was already tense enough.
Mary McDonell had still not said a word.
The path led through a flanking hedgerow of hawthorns, the track rutted and uneven from the passage of tractors to and from the farms further up the heights. They came to a stile, Rawlings climbed over first and then turned back to assist Mary McDonell. The morning was warming up as the three officers carried on up the footpath. An open field to their right held a pair of chestnut horses grazing in contentment; there was a buzz and hum of insects, the smell of grass, a riot of hedgerow wildflowers, buttercups, dandelions, daisies, comfrey, bindweeds, a tall stand of rosebay willowherbs, and, appropriately, white blossomed yarrow.
‘Going to be a hot one, I reckon,’ Rawlings said, loosening his tie. ‘Should’ve left our jackets in the car.’
‘Aye, maybe, too late now though.’
High above them, a lark ascended.
Now they kept a sharp lookout on both sides of the path as the darkening shade of the copse drew closer. The footpath was now contained by dry stone walling some three to four feet in height, crumbling in places, with the millstone grit stones strewn about the base of the wall. Both men would briefly stop and peer over the wall to check whether the girl was behind, Harding on the right side, Rawlings on the left. Mary McDonell ploughed solidly ahead, her breathing growing heavier as the path steepened. Trees now interspersed at intervals along the walls, ash and sycamore, a majestic oak, and thin-leafed elm.
The dark-murkled copse was there, the shadows deep and heavy, and the sudden drop in temperature as they moved into the shade sent a chill down Harding’s back, and not, he thought, from the cooler air. The wall was broken in several places where people had climbed over to gain access to the copse, and Mary McDonell stolidly climbed up over one of the most reduced sections, panting audibly from the effort. Harding and Rawlings quickly joined her in the outer fringes of Bolehill Copse.
Immediately on the other side of the wall, there was a well-trodden patch of earth from which led five winding paths, spreading out like the fingers and thumb of an outspread left hand.
‘Which way, Sherlock?’ Rawlings asked, the good mood engendered by the ‘fucking brakes’ joke long since evaporated in the clammy heat.
‘Right, er, Mary, it is Mary, isn’t it?’ She nodded placidly. ‘You take the lower path, that one there,’ pointing to the trail that would be the thumb, ‘I’ll take the next one, Harry the middle one. If we find nothing, we’ll make our way back and take the last two paths. Keep your eyes open. Make sure we look well to the sides, to any thick clumps of bushes, bracken, whatever that could hide a little girl. Any signs of forced passage through grass or bracken; follow them up. Mary, you got your whistle?’ Again she nodded, ‘You find anything, you summon us with it. Harry, you just shout.’
They set off on their separate paths. Harding picked up a piece of wood, a fallen bough, and broke it into a manageable length to poke into dense undergrowth as he searched.
The morning was hot, and like Rawlings, wished he had left his jacket in the car. He loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt.
The path was uneven, with protruding stones and snaking tree roots ready to trip the unwary so that he had to watch how he planted his feet as well as scrutinise the tangled growths of nettle beds, bracken, and ferns.
A cloud of midges descended on him, attracted by the sweat that trickled down his forehead and the back of his neck, and he swatted ineffectively at them, batting them away from his face but to no avail. There was a steady hum of insects, of bird calls, and rustling in the treetops as a cooling breeze riffled through.
Marcus turned aside down a narrow side path to an open area where a tight stand of brackens and grasses had been trodden down to form a small circle, probably where couples came to have sex, he thought, as he spotted a used condom dangling from a bracken stem, but there was no sign of the little girl, and he made his way back to the main pathway.
He carried on down until the path narrowed and wound through a thicket of young trees, tangled creepers, and grasses. He prodded his stick into the thickest clumps of undergrowth and was about to carry on when he heard the whistle shrilly cutting through the copse.
Mary must have found something, maybe her voice, he thought unkindly, and hurried back up the trail. The path had not seemed too steep when he had been walking downwards, but as he hurried back up again, he realised it was a lot steeper than he thought, and by the time he reached the head of the path, he was panting heavily, gasping in his breath and stood, bent over, hands on his knees whilst he recovered his breath.
Sweating heavily, he set off down the path that Mary McDonell had taken. It was narrower than the previous one and snaked around thick-trunked trees like a slalom run. He hurried on down as the whistle shrilled again. He stumbled on a tree root, tried to recover his balance, his arms windmilling to try and stop himself from falling but could not, and crashed heavily to the ground, his knee driving into a protruding rock, and he yelled out in agony, rolling over to clutch his knee. ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ he gasped. His trouser leg was ripped, and blood began to seep through from where the rock had torn into the soft flesh of the outside of his knee and lower thigh.
Groggily, he got to his feet and supported himself against a tree trunk, feeling the rough bark rasping under his hand before he hobbled on down the path, hopping from tree trunk to tree trunk.
Wincing with pain, Marcus turned another corner in the twisting, densely foliaged path, and saw Mary McDonell. She saw him coming and waved urgently at him, and, ignoring the pain, he broke into a shambling run, bent over still holding his wounded leg.
‘What, what, what have you found?’ he managed to gasp out as he reached her. Mary had a look of deep shock, her knuckles pressed so hard into her mouth that her teeth had cut her lip; a thin smear of blood could be seen slowly rolling down her chin like a scarlet tear.
Mutely, she pointed off to the right and then clapped the knuckles back up to her mouth, wiping the blood unnoticed across her cheek.
His heart hammering and stomach knotted up with fearful tension, he pushed aside a low curtain of branches and high bracken and entered a small glade, about 10 or 12 feet in diameter.
Like a broken doll, the body of a little girl lay there. She lay on her back, her tiny arms and legs apart. Her pink teddy bear-patterned nightgown was pushed up to her chest, and he could see that a trickle of blood had oozed out from the child’s vulva. Flies buzzed about her head where thick clots of gore had matted her hair, and other blood spills could be seen brightly in the grass around her.
That she was dead did not seem to be in doubt, but even so, he had to check, and treading as carefully as he could, he reached down to pick up one cold arm and felt her wrist for a pulse. Nothing. With a strangled sob, he gently laid the arm back onto the ground.
This was not the first dead body he had seen, but even so, he swallowed down hard to stop his gorge from rising. It seemed obvious that her abductor, her murderer, had brought her here, raped her with such savagery as to cause her vagina to bleed and had then bashed out her brains with a club or rock, although there was no sign of any such weapon.
Careful to disturb as little as possible, he slowly retraced his steps. Think, think, he told himself, what to do? But he was in such a state of shock and sorrow that he could not think straight. Mary McDonnell had slumped down against a tree, quietly sobbing into her hands and was of no use at all in that state. Not that I’m much better, Marcus told himself. He shook his head to clear his thoughts, and slowly his training came back into play.
Secure the crime scene and report the news of the discovery of Emily Black’s body to the DI. That assumed that the poor broken little girl was Emily Black, of course, but it was extremely unlikely that any other little girl was missing at the same time.
Just then, Harry Rawlings came running down the path, equally breathless and gasping, red in the face, too out of breath to speak.
‘We’ve found her,’ Marcus said. ‘Found her. Dead. In there,’ pointing. ‘Murdered! Raped and murdered.’
‘Shit. Shit, shit. Where?’
Marcus took Rawlings’s arm and led him into the murder glade, taking him only so far that he could see the dead child but no further.
Rawlings paled and turned, his stomach roiling and the effects of last night’s drinking, the unaccustomed exercise in the heat and humidity of the copse, and the shock of the doll-like body were too much, and he ran from the glade and vomited copiously, narrowly missing Mary McDonnell where she sat sobbing.
Wonderful, thought Harding, a vomiting DC and a crying WPC just when we have a murder on our hands. He had to get some control back into his colleagues before the situation deteriorated even further. Rawlings stood and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand as a string of snot dangled from his nose, glistening in a shaft of light slicing through the trees.
Marcus took another glance back to where the dead girl lay, as if willing her back to life. Finally, he took a deep breath and decided on the course of action. Clearly, Mary McDonnell was of no use under the present circumstances; Rawlings was not much better, but one of them had to stay and secure the scene.
‘Mary, you come with me. We’ll get back to the station and inform the DI. Harry, you stay and guard the site. I don’t need to tell you not to contaminate the site any further than we already have.’
Rawlings only nodded, merely wiping another string of vomit-drool from his mouth and then leaned back against a tree and closed his eyes.
Marcus took Mary’s arm and led her back to the car.