1
When your tenant in the top flat is a police officer you come closer to crime than on the library bookshelves, librarian Viviane Gordon thought as she heard DI. Jon Kent racing down the stairs to the waiting police car outside. Was it a homicide? It was an early call out on a sunny July morning. She stirred the sugar into her black coffee and checked the time. Seven fifty am. She smiled. It was almost like the old times when Bill would have gone along with him.
In the police car, Kent addressed the stocky sandy-haired man seated in the front seat next to the uniformed driver. ‘Give me a quick rundown, Turner. Has anyone identified the girl yet? Is she a local?’
‘It’s possible, guv. A schoolboy, Jimmy Barty, came across her when he took a short cut along the cliff top this morning. He took a quick look and scooted down town into the police station. He’s pretty shook up about it. The poor kid. He thinks she could be a girl from his school, Angela Carey.’
‘Okay. Fill me in as we go.’
‘The police surgeon’s up there now with the Scene of Crime officers and the Forensics are on their way.’
‘Where is it exactly? You say it’s on the cliffs past the East hill. I’ve not been up there yet.’
‘It’s near Lovers Leap, guv. A shade too near the cliff edge. Not considered an especially safe place to visit in the dark on your own. That doesn’t put ‘em off though.’
‘Lovers Leap, eh? Was she meeting a boyfriend?’
‘Who can say? She’s only a kid. Fifteen or thereabouts. Looks much older though.’
Ten minutes later, Kent left the car and accompanied by Turner walked over the cliff top to where the blue and white police ribbons, ruffled by the salty sea breezes like streamers, efficiently divided off the Scene of Crime from the public right of way. He looked down at the girl’s naked body, half hidden by the thick yellow flowering gorse and the sea pinks in the tufted grass near Lovers Leap; a place well used by courting couples. What wouldn’t he give for a cigarette just then as he met Turner’s troubled eyes. This was somebody’s daughter who lay there like a discarded Barbie doll.
‘God almighty.’
He blew his nose on a handkerchief, popped a strip of chewing gum into his mouth and bent over her, hands in his trouser pockets, to look closer at the bruise marks now visible on the slender white neck. He caught a hint of perfume as he did so, perhaps it was from the wild flowers; he couldn’t be certain.
She had a silky mass of curling silvery blonde hair like a shining aura round her head and her full bloodshot blue eyes stared vacantly up at the sun. A busy buzz of noisy bluebottles was paying close attention to the slack swollen tongue in her open mouth and a torn left ear lobe caked with blood. A shiny green beetle crawled slowly up over one bare dimpled knee...
Her clothes lay in a pathetically neat pile beside her. Kent put on disposable gloves slowly, leant over again and picked up her small plump hands and examined the nails on both carefully. She was hardly more than a child, he thought stretching his thin face into a long grimace. He uttered a four letter word quietly under his breath and said; ‘If she tried to defend herself at all the bastard’s left her nails as clean as a whistle.’
Police doctor, Felix Poole, stood back from his work and peeled off disposable gloves carefully before saying; ‘Looks like he certainly left nothing to chance. It’s a nasty business, Inspector.’
Kent nodded. ‘So what time can you give us? Any idea?’
Poole scratched his chin thought for a moment and shrugged. ‘About eleven p.m. last night or thereabouts. Hard to say. It was a very warm night. Death caused by strangulation at a rough guess. It wouldn’t have taken much pressure on her neck to kill her. There are those bruises on her neck. Coming out nicely. And under her body. She was moved after death to where she is now. She’s fair skinned, bruised easily.’
‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Biro poised. Turner flipped a page over in his notebook and chewed on the peppermint sweet in his dry mouth vigorously.
‘Could have been. You’ll have to wait for the post-mortem.’
‘How old would you say she is? Fifteen - sixteen? Hard to tell these days.’
‘Fifteen, I’d say, sir. She’s a local schoolgirl. Her father’s a town councillor and the local Funeral director, Joseph Carey.’ The young police constable standing behind the tall detective volunteered this information with an uncertain grin on his freckled face.
‘Thanks, Townsend.’ Kent glanced at his watch. ‘Nine-ten. Have the parents called the station yet to say she’s missing?’