Challis - 03 - Snapshot (37 page)

Ellen swallowed, feeling a stab of
pity and guilt. Would Natalie have been found if shed ordered a grid-pattern search?
Was she dead already, or had she lain in the grass for a while, before falling
into the channel? Ellen looked across at Pam, who was securing the scene with
tape. I accepted her word that there had been only one occupant. Always check, she
admonished herself. Always check.

Then she was running: the Bushrats
were entering the reserve. Sorry, she gasped, youll have to cut down
pittosporum elsewhere this morning.

There were eight of them, wearing
old clothes and kindly smiles. We wont get in your way, they said politely.

Im afraid you will, Ellen said. Im
securing the reserve as a secondary crime-scene.

She saw understanding dawn on their
faces, and then they were moving off obediently, one woman touching her arm and
murmuring, You poor thing, I hope you keep dry and warm.

Ellen returned to the body. Pam
joined her, and together they waited for the crime-scene techs, Scobie Sutton,
and the ambulance that would take the body away. No need to call Challis, not
unless Dr Berg ruled it a suspicious death. But, suspicious or accidental, what
if the girls death was unrelated to the crashed Toyota? What if shed been
murdered and dumped here at a later date? Or had come here to party and died of
an overdose or something? Ellen turned to Pam and said, Lets have a scout
around for empty bottles and cans, joints, any kind of drug paraphernalia, she
said.

Sarge, said Pam, moving off, and
then stopping. Do you think she was in the van?

Did you see a passenger?

No. Tinted windows.

They searched for several minutes,
then returned to the body. Maybe she wasnt wearing her seatbelt, Ellen said.
She swallowed, thinking of Heather Cobbs grief and feeling suddenly vulnerable
and helpless. The last time shed seen her own daughter there had been a
blazing row, Larrayne furious with her for leaving Alan. She badly wanted to
fish out her mobile and call Larrayne, to see if she was safely tucked up in
bed on this Sunday morning, but knew she wouldnt get any thanks for it if she
did.

Sarge, Pam said, breaking into her
misery, look at her hands.

The right hand was outstretched and
touching the bank of the drain. Two fingers were missing. The left lay in the
water, the skin partly detached, like a glove. Ellen grimaced: she knew that
the glove could be removed by the pathologist, distended and then
fingerprinted, but she was hoping that the dead girls teeth would provide all
the identification they needed.

You dont have to stay here, you
know, she told Pam.

The wind blew, laced with misty
rain. They both shivered. Id like to stay, Pam said. Keep you company and
watch and learn.

Appreciated, Ellen murmured. She
cleared her throat. By the way, Im glad the inquiry cleared you.

An awkward moment. She knew exactly
what a prick her husband had been. By attacking you, she wanted to say, Alan
was attacking me. By taking broader swipesat Challis, CIU, and the conduct of
plainclothed policehe was attacking me.

But she didnt say any of this and
they talked desultorily of other things. Thirty minutes later, several vehicles
arrived: Scobie Sutton, a crime-scene photographer, a video operator, an
exhibits officer, the pathologist and several uniformed police. Ellen stationed
a couple of the uniforms on the road to wave on the gawkers, and directed
another half dozen to search the orchard and along the fence line, then
rejoined Scobie and Pam, who were watching the pathologist and her assistant
work on the body, which had been pulled from the water and now lay on its back
in the grassy verge. The face was pulpy; Ellen looked away.

Doc, she managed to say, I dont
want to influence you, but this could be related to an incident that happened
here about three weeks ago.

Freya Berg glanced up at her
quizzically.

Ellen pointed. A van crashed
through the fence and rolled, coming to rest just over there.

About three weeks ago? Ill bear it
in mind.

They moved away while the
pathologist worked. I should have searched the area more thoroughly, Scobe,
Ellen said.

I should have done a lot of things
in my time, he said gloomily.

She was pretty sure hed come from
church: hed thrown an old gardening jacket on over a good shirt and trousers.
Even more morose than usual, it was clear that he was taking the sacking of his
wife pretty hard. I think its Natalie Cobb, she said.

Id say so, he said.

And you found her boyfriends
prints on the stolen gear?

Scobie nodded gloomily. Hes done a
runner, but I tracked him as far as Queensland.

A big state.

Yep.

Do you think he knew she was dead?

Scobie shrugged. Its possible.
When I questioned him, he didnt seem to know she was missing, but he might
have put two and two together and come looking for her.

Ellen glanced around at the
deceptive folds in the land, the grass, weeds and clumps of old, unpruned apple
trees. An awful place to die.

Scobie nodded in his mournful way.

Dr Berg glanced up at them. Preliminary
findings?

Sure, Ellen said.

I found a student ID card in the
name of Natalie Cobb, Waterloo Secondary College. Now, immersion in water does
terrible things to the skin over time, but her clothing did protect her to some
extent, and there are marks on her abdomen suggestive of seatbelt bruising. I
also found the usual signs of exposure and putrefaction on the exposed areas,
her face and hands. Her right hand appears to have been gnawed by animals. All
in all, Id say that shes been in the water for at least two weeks. A body
immersed in water decomposes at half the rate of a body left in the opendepending
on temperatures, insect and animal activity and dampness, of course. But Ill
know more after the autopsy.

But can you say for certain that
her death was related to the accident?

Dr Berg shrugged her expressive
shoulders, humour in her dark eyes. Sorry, Ellen. Her presence here, and
manner of death, might be quite unrelated to it.

More complications, Scobie
muttered.

Ill know more in the lab, the
pathologist continued. There appears to be some head trauma, and I might find
internal injuries, and these might have killed her. Or she drowned.

Ellen saw a twist of anguish in
Scobie Sutton. All of his emotions were there on the surface. He felt things
too keenly, too quickly. He imagined everyones heartache. For a moment then,
Ellen sympathised, seeing her own daughter sprawled dead in the muddy grass. Pam,
she said, youre wet through. Go on home. Its all under control here.

The younger woman looked relieved. If
youre sure, Sarge.

Im sure.

Ellen watched her walk away, then
called after her: When you saw the driver legging it into the reserve, was he
carrying anything?

Not that I could see, Pam called
back, slipping through the fence to her car.

Ellen brooded. Shed still have to
search the reserve. The driver this Andrew Aschecould easily have dropped
something in the reserve when he fled, something that would tie him to the
Toyota, to Natalie, to the burglaries.

And what if there had been two
passengers, and another lay dead in the reserve?

Calling for Scobie and a couple of
constables to accompany her, Ellen made for the railing fence and climbed
through it into the reserve. An hour later, restless and frustrated, she found
herself in a small clearing. She crossed it, bending occasionally to pull up
pittosporum saplings in sympathy with Pam Murphy and the Bushrats. Her hands
and back ached; a misty rain had blown across the reserve.

Pittosporum everywhere. Poor
Bushrats. Ellen straightened the kinks in her back, then leaned over again to
jerk a sapling from the rich soil. And some confluence of circumstances
thenthe light, the angle of her bent head, the sense that the surrounding soil
and grass had been altered in some way, and, finally, knowledge and
instincttold her that she was looking at a shallow grave.

* * * *

58

Challis
found vehicles up and down the fenceline at Myers Reserve: photographer, video
operator, exhibits officer, crime-scene technicians and the forensic
pathologist. A couple of uniforms stood by the access track, one to sign in
those authorised to attend, the other to keep onlookers away. Several uniformed
police officers were searching the adjacent paddock in a grid pattern,
supervised by Ellen Destry. Challis pulled on rubber boots and slogged through
wet grass to join her.

Over here, she said.

She took him into the reserve, the
ground soft under their feet. Bracken brushed their thighs and soon Challiss
trousers were hopelessly sodden. What made you think it was a grave?

Ellen grinned, oddly pleased with
herself. The ground looked different. A regular shape, rectangular, a faint
depression of the surface, and the grass and weeds were somehow more vigorous.

Challis grunted. They came to a
clearing and an inflatable forensic tent, under which Freya Berg was brushing
leaf mould and damp soil away from a body. A crime-scene technician was sifting
the nearby soil for objects that might have fallen from the body or whoever had
buried it.

So, Freya, Challis said, two for
the price of one.

Wait until you get my invoice,
Freya said. I was halfway back to the city, dreaming of a long hot shower, and
your good sergeant calls me and says Guess what?

What have we got? he asked in his CSI
Miami voice.

She grinned, speaking as she worked.
Youngish male, fully clothed, hard to say how long hes been here.

Approximately?

She sighed. Theres no adipocere,
so were not talking months.

Challis swallowed involuntarily. He
knew all about adipocere, the crumbly, waxy substance that appears over large
areas of the skin as body fats convert to long-chain fatty acids. Hed once
touched the stuff: never again.

There are complicating factors,
Freya went on. Contact with the soil, the type of soil, its moisture
contentall these affect the rate of putrefaction.

As Challis and Ellen watched, Freya
and the forensic technician lifted the body onto a stretcher, and then the
technician peered into the grave. Theres a section of matted leaves here, not
fully broken down yet. He looked up, pointed silently at a stand of nearby
poplars, on the paddock side of the railing fence. Skeletal now, but only weeks
earlier theyd been losing their leaves.

Challis nodded. Now the technician
was digging down to consolidated soil, ready to begin the process of sifting
the loosened material. Challis touched Ellens forearm. Youve combed the area
around the grave?

Of course.

He neednt have asked. Thanks.

Ellen nodded.

The clothing hasnt rotted, Freya
said, no root growth through the rib cage or pelvis, nothing interesting in
fact, just a young man interred in a shallow gravesometime in the past month
or six weeks, would be my guess.

Youre not paid to guess, Doc,
Ellen said, attempting humour.

Until I get him into the lab, I am,
said Freya said. She was peering at the body, a vaguely human shape covered in
damp soil and leaf mould. I cant see any insect activity, so he was probably
buried soon after he died. And no signs that the foxes had got to him. They
would have, eventually.

How did he die?

Its possible he was shot in the
chest, Freya replied, glancing down at the body. Theres a hole in his upper
clothing and what appears to be blood. If so, theres no exit wound, but I cant
at this stage confirm that it was a gunshot or that it killed him.

She turned to Challis. Release the
body. Ill do the autopsy tomorrow. She glanced at Ellen. Who will attend for
the police?

I will, he said.

And the dead girl?

Scobie Sutton opened his mouth to
speak, but Challis stopped him. No sense in tying two of us up, Scobie.

Sutton nodded, relieved. I have to
inform her mother anyway, he said, trudging away from them to the collection
of private and official vehicles parked at the side of the road.

I havent searched his pockets for
ID, Freya said, as she backed away, peeling off her gloves.

Ill do that now, Ellen said.

She crouched over the body, feeling
the pockets, examining the hands and wrists for rings or a watch. Nothing,
she said eventually, but then stood, a strange excitement in her body. Except
for one thing.

Except for the missing finger,
Freya wryly.

Challis tingled. He felt alive
suddenly, and leaned over to look. The ring finger of the right hand. Foxes,
Doc?

Freya Berg shook her head. The
finger was torn off some time ago. Years rather than weeks or months.