35

In the end, there was no great fanfare when the news came. There never is. It began with a walker, one of the more adventurous types, the kind who likes to take the road less travelled, which was why he used a treacherous, eroded, long-neglected footpath directly overlooking the sea. He didn’t seem to mind that he was inches from the edge or that the drop here was almost as high as Cullernose Point, the Northumbrian landmark near Craster he had passed a short time ago on his walk. It was a sunny morning, and the North Sea was calm for once, which was probably why he noticed her bobbing against the rocks, a bundle of wet rags going gently back and forth, trapped in a tiny inlet below him. He might have easily walked by without realizing it was a body, as she lay face down in the water, but one of her arms was outstretched and a milk-white hand was floating on the surface.

He didn’t say anything because there was no one to hear him. Instead, he stood on the edge of the cliff, peering down intently to make sure he hadn’t imagined it, that she wasn’t some stag-do sex doll or shop-window mannequin which had been dropped over the edge for a joke. Then he would look foolish for wasting the authorities’ time. But the hand looked authentic and so did the hair that floated out around her head, resting on the surface of the water like seaweed.

This was real. He turned abruptly and started to jog back down the path to get help.

A call was taken and then another, inquiries were made and, eventually, the right people for the job were located and despatched in a rubber boat; the body was retrieved and pulled on board then taken for examination.

An hour later Lucas Black picked up the ringing phone on his desk and took the call. He had been expecting it, but still.

Maybe she picked up on it from the expression on his face, but Beth quickly ended the call she was on. Black realized she was watching him. He asked all the relevant questions, wrote down details of time, location and the condition of the body, enquired about the post-mortem and finished by asking whether there was any doubt about the identity of the victim, bearing in mind there was trauma to the head and the body had been found in the sea. He was told the clothes matched, but it was the jewellery that was the clincher. No matter how mangled a face and body might become when subjected to brutal treatment then dumped in the sea, rings, necklaces and earrings remain largely undamaged. The local police had been able to check Black’s detailed description of the missing seventeen-year-old and confirmed that their body was wearing a gold necklace with a cross, two plain stud earrings and a ring that matched hers exactly.

Black didn’t need to wait for formal identification on this one.

It was Alice.

He thanked the caller, replaced the receiver, looked up into Beth’s grim face. ‘They’ve found her.’

‘I knew it was going to end this way,’ said Beth helplessly, ‘but I still had this hope at the back of my mind.’

‘Like she was just going to turn up somehow?’ asked Black.

‘Yes. I know it was stupid.’

‘I had it, too,’ he confessed.

‘I think we were all hoping for the best,’ said Beth. ‘I feel like I know her now.’

‘That’s it,’ agreed Black. ‘It’s the journal, seeing her own words written down like that.’

‘And the fact that she was so bloody young, with her whole life ahead of her.’

‘Which always makes it worse. That, and not having all the answers.’

‘Not yet, we don’t,’ said Beth, and there was a new determination in her tone.

Black obviously felt the same way. ‘I want to get this bastard, whoever it is.’

‘I can’t imagine anyone being so cold-hearted.’ She shook her head.

‘I’ll need to go and see the family,’ he said.

Even though it was the last place she wanted to be, Beth said, ‘I’ll come with you. Her poor brother. He’ll be devastated.’

‘They all will,’ said Black, though they were both wondering how Ronnie Teale would really feel about Alice’s death.

She always knew this would be the worst part of the job, but nothing could have prepared Beth for the moment when Black broke the news of their daughter’s death to the Teales. Abigail Teale let out a loud wail of despair, while her husband gripped her by the shoulders, squeezing her tightly, as if he could physically restrain her grief somehow, all the while saying, ‘No, no, it can’t be right, it can’t be her.’

Daniel Teale bent double in his chair and buried his face in his hands, as if he didn’t want anyone to see his grief, or perhaps he was blotting out the news, along with the rest of the world, while he wept for his sister, and Ronnie just kept on talking: ‘No, no, no.’ He was shaking his head, as if they had got this all completely wrong somehow. ‘This isn’t right,’ he told them. ‘That’s not …’ And for a moment Beth actually thought he was going to say what I wanted, but instead he just carried on denying the reality of the situation: ‘No, you’ve made a mistake. She’s all right. I know it.’ Was this simply denial, or something more sinister? Beth was tempted to ask him what he meant by it, but this wasn’t the time for an interrogation. Ronnie Teale always seemed to be on the verge of an explosion of rage or frustration but, today at least, it was justified. The hard questions could come later but, for now, both Beth and Black would leave the family to grieve.

The hour she spent at the Teales’ home was the longest of Beth’s life. She got home physically and mentally exhausted, drank an entire bottle of wine in less than two hours and still couldn’t sleep.

The next day, other detectives and police officers started to show up, all of them reassigned from other ongoing investigations now that Alice Teale had been confirmed dead and the case officially designated a murder investigation. Beth counted twelve new detectives in the major-incident room, and she couldn’t get near Black until he had finished briefing them all. Tasks were discussed and assigned and the extra manpower was backed up even further by the presence of additional uniformed officers who had been found from somewhere and sent to Collemby to assist with the legwork, which included going over old leads and conducting house-to-house inquiries all over the town.

DCI Everleigh oversaw everything from HQ, but everyone looked to Black to provide real guidance. He may have only been a DS, but he was the most senior man on the ground and had been there from the beginning of the investigation, so his word counted more than his rank. Confirmation of the girl’s death brought a deluge of new leads from the public, who kept the phones ringing almost non-stop. All these potential leads had to be analysed and followed up. Beth already knew the vast majority would lead nowhere. It would mean long days of busy, often noisy activity, chasing leads until they hit dead ends then starting all over again.

When Black received the results of the post-mortem he called everyone together.

‘There was blunt-force trauma to the head and face,’ he told the assembled group, ‘as well as multiple fractures, which you would expect if she was thrown from a height into the sea. There are rocks everywhere along that section of coastline,’ he explained, ‘but it wasn’t the blunt force that killed her.’

‘Then how did she die?’ asked Beth.

‘Alice was strangled,’ he said. ‘The pathologist doesn’t want to go out on a limb on this one.’ Then he added: ‘They never do. He does think it’s likely that some of the injuries to the face, head and body occurred before her death, while others are likely to have been caused by the rocks. In a way, we’ve been lucky, because strangulation cases don’t always show outward signs, but this guy was thorough. He spotted characteristic abrasions on the skin around the neck, and petechiae.’ Before she could ask him what that was, he explained: ‘That’s a tell-tale series of small red spots that appear on the skin, and they were still visible.’

‘Even after she had been in the water, perhaps for several days?’ asked DC Rodgers.

‘The pathologist reckons she must have landed on the rocks then been pushed on to a ledge by the sea before she was spotted in the shallows of the sheltered cove, so the body was in a much better condition than it would have been if it had been dumped way out.’ Black didn’t need to add that this had minimized the damage caused by sea creatures.

‘He thinks she might have been badly injured but still alive. Then, before she went into the water, someone finished her off.’

‘Why would you beat someone severely around the head then strangle them?’ asked Beth. ‘Why not finish the job with whatever you were striking them with?’

‘We don’t know,’ Black admitted.

‘Where exactly was the body?’ asked one of the new detectives.

‘In a tiny inlet, close to Cullernose Point, not far from Craster.’

‘Craster?’ queried Beth.

‘Do you know it?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been there,’ said Beth, ‘and so has Alice. She went there with the rambling club.’

‘Simon Nash’s rambling club?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘How do you know that?’

‘He told me.’

‘Then why would he mention it?’ asked Lucas, ‘if he was guilty of dropping her body from a cliff near there? You immediately thought of him.’

‘Perhaps that was someone’s intention – to put Simon Nash in the frame by dumping Alice’s body there.’

They worked long and late, putting in the hours until they were both tired but still reluctant to give up and go home. That was when Black remembered something. ‘Shit,’ he said. ‘It’s the diner’s opening night.’ He checked his watch. ‘We’ll be late, but we can still make it. Are you coming?’

‘Do you want to go?’ asked Beth.

‘They’re my friends,’ he said, ‘so, yes, but you don’t have to.’

Beth thought of Gemma then, and her eager invitation, as well as her paranoia that no one would show up for the launch of her dream. ‘I’d just forgotten about it,’ she admitted, ‘same as you, but yes, I can be there.’

‘Great,’ he said. ‘To be honest, right now, I feel like I need a bloody drink.’

Beth had to admit that, despite her reservations about spending more time with Black than was strictly necessary, she really needed one, too.