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John Harvey

Good Bait

1

The face looked back up at her from beneath the ice. Dead eyes, unblinking, their focus defused as if through bottled glass. Off to one side, a small covey of ducks, uncomprehending, shuffled this way and that. In places, Karen Shields thought, the skin would have stuck fast: the forehead, the bridge of the nose, the chin. Little doubt the substance that had pooled close alongside the head, then frozen, was blood. That wanker, she thought, the artist — what was his name? — a small fortune for slicing animals in half and shoving them on display, pickled in formaldehyde.

Officers in protective clothing were cordoning off the path that ran down between the ponds with tape, no urgency now, time theirs to take. A brace of early runners stymied in their tracks, hats and gloves, jogged up and down, looking on; Karen could see their breath bobbing in the air.

When the call had come through she’d fumbled uneasily awake, mobile falling between her fingers and down on to the bed.

‘Hey!’ A shout as she leaned her elbow against something soft in the shape alongside. ‘Hey! Go easy, yeah? Chill. ’

She had almost forgotten he was there.

She spoke briefly into the phone then listened, the man beside her moving grudgingly to give her room, whatever was tattooed between shoulder blade and neck starting to fade into the natural darkness of his skin. She wondered if she would pick him out again in a crowded bar. If she would want to.

‘Twenty minutes,’ she said into the phone. ‘Thirty, tops. ’ No way she was leaving without a shower.

‘What’s all the fuss?’ the man asked.

Scooping up his shirt and trousers from near the end of the bed, she tossed them at his head. ‘Dressed, okay?’

She arrived as the Crime Scene manager and his team were assembling: no agreement as yet on the best way to free the body from the ice. Someone from the Coroner’s Office would decide.

Where the ground rose up beyond the pond’s edge, threads of trees were laced against the sky. Christmas in four days. No, three. Presents bought for her family in Jamaica but still not sent. Come spend it with us, her sister had said, Lynette, the one in Southend with the twins. You don’t want to spend Christmas on your own.

‘Ma’am. ’ Without his helmet, the young PC barely topped her shoulder. ‘The Chief Super, he wants a word. ’

Karen looked up.

Burcher was standing on the broad slope of path that led on to the Heath, beyond the point where the route for entry and exit to the scene was marked. Overcoat unbuttoned, green wellingtons protecting the trousers of his suit, pale yellow gloves. Detective Chief Superintendent Anthony Burcher, previously with Covert Intelligence and now head of Homicide and Serious Crime Command. Twenty-four Homicide teams under his control, one of them hers.

‘What the hell’s he doing here?’ Karen asked.

No reply.

Burcher stood with one glove removed, as if he might want to shake her hand. Waiting for her to come to him.

‘All under control?’

‘Sir. ’

‘No idea yet, of course, who …?’

Karen shook her head.