A Shred of Evidence (8 page)

“Where did you see her, Mrs. Cochrane?” Her voice was gentle, despite the importance of the question, because Mrs. Cochrane was on the verge of becoming incoherent again.

“Down by the depot. I had come down the footpath from Ash Road. She was just standing there, by the depot,” she said.

“Did you speak to her?” Judy asked in the same even tones, not getting excited. Keeping things calm.

“I asked her what she was doing there. She just told me to mind my own business and walked up towards the adventure playground.”

“And you saw no one else hanging round the adventure playground?”

“No. But I didn’t go that way—I took the dog on to the grass down by the depot. He ran around for a bit, and then he went into the wood, and I had to go in after him …” Her eyes brimmed with tears. “I don’t understand,” she said. “I don’t understand. How could that have happened to her in such a short time? How could I not have heard anything, seen anything? Why didn’t I make sure she was—” She wiped the tears, and held herself under control.

“Why did you ask her what she was doing there?” asked Judy.

There was just a moment’s hesitation before Mrs. Cochrane answered. “She’s very young to be here at this time of night,” she said.

“Was she distressed? Frightened?”

“No. She was just—rude, I suppose,” said Mrs. Cochrane.

“How do you know her?” asked Tom.

“I work at the school. I’ve seen her there.”

“Do you teach there?” Judy asked.

“No—I work in the office.”

Tom realized who she was. “Are you Colin Cochrane’s wife?” he asked.

She nodded.

“He teaches sport at the school, doesn’t he?”

“Part time,” she said.

“Is he at home now?” asked Judy. “He might be able to tell us her name.”

“He will be,” said Mrs. Cochrane. “He was due back at ten. He might know her …” She didn’t finish the sentence, still fighting tears. “I … I just took the … the dog on to the grass,” she said again. “I let him go, and he ran into the wood. I went in after him—how could she have died in that short time? How?”

“How long were you in there?” asked Tom.

“Just—” Tears threatened again.

“Take your time, Mrs. Cochrane,” said Judy. “There’s no hurry.”

She took a moment to compose herself. “He played about in there for … I don’t know, five, ten minutes. Then we came out and I threw things for him to chase for a little while. Another ten minutes or so. Then I put his lead back on, and we walked back past the playground. He was straining to go and look at something, so I just followed him, and he went into that awful pipe, and—”

“Do you know what time it was when you saw the girl alive?” asked Judy.

“About five to ten.”

“Would you mind showing us where you saw her?”

They walked down the service road to the cordoned-off depot, with the dog, tail wagging, walking beside them, his nose to the ground. Tom kept an eye on him; his own keen sense of smell had detected a scent he couldn’t place, and which he hadn’t discussed with anyone; a bloodhound’s sense of smell might actually lead them to something, and Sherlock was following some scent of his own.

They arrived at the police line which had been slung across the road where it widened out into the courtyard.

“Just there,” said Mrs. Cochrane, pointing towards the wall opposite the depot, steep, brick-lined banking up to the road above. The depot building was faintly lit by the road, but the wall was in deep shadow.

The dog confirmed Tom’s belief in him, straining at the leash to go beyond the barrier.

“Do you mind?” asked Tom, taking the dog’s lead. “I think he’s on to something.”

He ducked under the ribbon, and followed the dog towards the door of the depot, both of them sniffing. Tom’s smell wasn’t there, but Sherlock’s obviously was. He shone his torch down into the darkness. “Over here, guv!” he shouted.

The shoes sat neatly in the doorway, rather as though they had been put out for cleaning. Tom thanked God he had had the foresight to cordon off the depot, and got a glance of gratitude from Judy when she came running over in answer to his shout.

“Get one of the scene-of-crime people down here,” said Judy quietly. “Tell them we’ll need lights down here as well, and then I think you should take Mrs. Cochrane home. See if her husband can help with identification.”

Tom took Mrs. Cochrane home. He still hadn’t entirely abandoned the idea of joyriders, even if she had seen the girl alive. Mrs. Cochrane had been told to mind her own business; that suggested that the girl had had some business she wanted to keep private, and whoever she had been with could have been waiting up at the adventure playground. He tried again as they walked up her path.

“What time did you leave the house, Mrs. Cochrane?” he asked.

“Quarter to ten,” she said.

“Did you hear anything odd as you were walking down to the Green?” he asked. “A car—noisy braking, that sort of thing? Kids making a bit of a racket?”

“No,” she said, fumbling with her door key. “Nothing.”

Colin Cochrane, looking just like he did in the ad he had
made for deodorant, came to the top of the stairs clad only in a bathrobe.

“Erica?” he said, startled. “I thought you were in bed.”

Tom looked up at the handsome Mr. Cochrane, his dark hair wet from the shower. He had been due home at ten, Mrs. Cochrane had said. He could have seen something, if he had driven along Ash Road recently. But he’d have to explain to the man what he was doing there before he started asking him questions.

“DS Finch, Stansfield CID,” he said.

Cochrane’s eyes widened when he really looked at his wife, the trickle of blood on her leg, her torn tights, her grass-stained clothes. “What is it?” he said. “What the hell’s happened?”

Mrs. Cochrane didn’t enlighten him; she just walked into the sitting room with the dog.

“Your wife’s had a rather unpleasant experience, Mr. Cochrane,” Tom said.

“What?” He came downstairs. “Is she hurt? Has some bastard—?”

That was it. The smell. The smell he had noticed when he had bent over the body. It was deodorant, the stuff Cochrane advertised. The stuff he was wearing now. That was it. That was why it had been wrong. It was a man’s deodorant, and that girl had smelt of it.

“No, no, nothing like that,” said Tom. “But I’m afraid your dog found a body, sir.”

Cochrane stared at him, then went into the sitting room. “Erica? Are you all right?” he said.

Tom followed him in, watching with interest as Cochrane tried to put his arm round his wife, who moved away in a neat, obviously much practised, manoeuvre.

“Where were you, anyway?” Cochrane was asking her.

“Just on the Green,” she said.

“But … but why?”

“I had forgotten to take Sherry out,” she said.

“But the Green! At this time of night?”

“It was an hour ago! It was only ten o’clock.”

“But it’s very dark down there—why did you go there, for God’s sake? Why not across the road in the light?”

“Because I thought you’d be there!”

Tom had thought that there was more to this than Mrs. Cochrane had been letting on. Something about that tiny pause before she had replied to Judy’s question.

Erica Cochrane’s face turned pink as she waited for the inevitable question.

“You were expecting to meet your husband at the Green, were you, Mrs. Cochrane?” he asked.

“Well … he’s usually there,” she said.

“And were you there, Mr. Cochrane?” asked Finch.

“Obviously not,” he said testily.

“Why did Mrs. Cochrane think you would be?” Tom persisted. He had smelt that deodorant, and now things were getting interesting.

“I do a training run. I usually finish by crossing the Green.”

“From the Byford Road area?”

“Yes. I come back along Byford Road, then down into Woodthorpe Close and across the Green from there.”

Tom nodded. “And did you do that tonight?” he asked.

“No. Tonight I went along Byford Road until I got to Beech Street, and went down that way.”

“Why?”

“I had to pick up my car from school,” Cochrane said.

“Sorry—I still don’t see why you didn’t cross the Green,” said Tom stolidly. “I mean, Beech Street takes you further away from the school, doesn’t it?”

“Does it?” said Cochrane testily.

“I think you know it does, sir,” said Tom. “The school’s got an annex on Byford Road, hasn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And the kids come across the Green when they have to get from there to the main school, or vice versa, because it’s the quickest route—Larch Avenue is practically across from the Green. So why didn’t you? Especially if that’s your usual route?”

“I just changed my mind! Is that against the law?”

“No,” said Tom. “It was a schoolgirl, by the way,” he added, watching Cochrane closely as he spoke, “who was killed.”

He needn’t have bothered; close scrutiny was hardly necessary, as Cochrane went pale and sat down with a bump on the arm of his wife’s chair. “Oh, no,” he said. “No.”

Tom stepped closer to him. “Does that mean something to you, Mr. Cochrane?” he asked.

Cochrane looked up, his eyes barely focused. “For God’s sake!” he said. “Doesn’t it mean anything to you? A
schoolgirl
? I thought Sherry had found a wino, or … I don’t know! Not a schoolgirl, for God’s sake! What had happened to her?”

“She had been murdered, Mr. Cochrane.”

Cochrane closed his eyes.

“Your wife knows her by sight, but not her name. We thought you might be able to identify her.”

Cochrane shook his head. “I doubt it,” he said. “I only teach the boys.”

Tom nodded. Erica Cochrane had hardly said a word since she had got in. Tom had had to tell Cochrane what she had found, what had happened to her. Erica and Colin were not exactly the best of friends, Tom thought. Not right now, at any rate.

“You could do with a drink,” Cochrane said, finally attending to his wife.

She shook her head.

“Tea, then. A cup of tea. Will you have one, Sergeant Finch?”

“Thanks,” said Tom.

“Maybe you wouldn’t mind giving me a hand,” Cochrane said.

“Sure.” Tom followed him down the corridor into the kitchen, interested to know what couldn’t be discussed in Mrs. Cochrane’s presence.

“You said this girl had been murdered?” said Cochrane, as he filled the kettle and switched it on.

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“There’s not much doubt,” said Tom.

“Do you know when it happened?”

“From what your wife says, it has to have been between five to ten and ten-fifteen or so,” Tom answered. “You see, she saw her alive about twenty minutes before your dog found her body on the adventure playground.”

“The adventure …?” Cochrane’s voice trailed away as he turned haunted eyes to Tom’s, and shook his head slowly, disbelievingly. But if he had been going to say anything else, he’d changed his mind.

“Mr. Cochrane,” said Tom as Cochrane looked away again, “do you know something about this?”

“No,” said Cochrane, his voice barely audible.

“Do you know who this girl might be?”

“No.”

The washing machine was going, Tom realized. He looked at it as the spin cycle slowed down, and could make out something blue and yellow, and … something else. A trainer. Two, presumably.

He pointed to the machine. “Is that what you were wearing when you were out running?” he asked.

Cochrane turned and looked at the machine, as though it might suddenly have something different going round in it. “Yes,” he said. “A tracksuit and trainers.”

Tom smiled. “You do your own laundry?” he said.

“Sometimes,” said Cochrane, striving to sound normal but failing. “You don’t want to leave sweaty running things and shoes lying around, do you?”

Tom never had sweaty running things and shoes, he was glad to say. If he did have, he expected that he would leave them lying around, like he did most things, much to Liz’s annoyance.

But he was looking at a man who had not only done his washing himself, he had done it the moment he came in. And then he’d gone and showered. A man who always crossed the Green, according to his wife, except for tonight, according to him. A man whose relations with his wife were not at their sweetest. A man who taught at the school that the dead girl
went to, a man with a TV commentator’s contract, an advertising contract, a squeaky clean image and a great deal to lose.

A man whose deodorant Tom had smelt on that girl.

Freddie was finishing off his
in situ
examination, his tall frame bent over inside the pipe, the light from outside casting a huge, disturbing shadow inside. He was dictating his findings on to a tape, and his voice echoed in the pipe, the words indistinct, the sound eerie in the quiet night.

He had arrived dressed in dinner jacket and bow-tie, plucked away from the dessert. It was lucky they had got him before he’d got to the brandy, he had said cheerfully to Judy. A forensic pathologist’s lot was not a happy one, he had added. His demeanour had belied this sentiment; Freddie always seemed to be at his happiest when poking about in dead bodies.

Judy looked round the area. Houses ran right up to the edge of the Green, and no one had heard those joyriders of Tom’s, no one had heard the girl call for help, no one had seen anything remotely out of the ordinary, according to the door-to-door enquiries. No joyriders, then, thought Judy. The noise of a car being put through its paces would have reached the houses.

Someone was trying to get hold of the head of Oakland School, so far without success. The girl was called Nat by her classmates, and she possibly lived on the Malworth Road; that was all they had to go on even if they found the head, so identification would still be far from certain, unless he knew the girl. Freddie had found her knickers in the pocket of her skirt, so at least they were accounted for, too, now. There was a purse in the other pocket; the money was still in it. These items, along with the shoes, had gone to the lab.

Freddie emerged, and nodded to the body. “She can go to the morgue now,” he said.

Judy looked at the girl in the glaring arc-light, half in, half out of the pipe, her legs sprawling. A soft, full skirt bunched up at her waist, and a matching shirt, open to expose small breasts. She wore make-up and jewellery; it made her look older.