Free No Place to Die by Clare Donoghue Page B

so heavy. The lab was rushing the blood sample through to get confirmation that it belonged to Maggie. Not that Jane needed it.
    The temperature gauge in her car had read twenty-one degrees, but standing in her driveway it felt a lot warmer than that. She had an hour before she had to be back in the office. Dave had called to say he could do the post-mortem at five o’clock, and Phil Bathgate, the squad’s resident forensic psychologist, would be ‘popping in’ to see her at six-thirty. It was a pity the two appointments didn’t overlap, because if it came down to a choice between Maggie Hungerford’s post-mortem and seeing Phil, she would pick the post-mortem. Phil gave her the creeps. The only saving grace was that she didn’t have to deal with him very often. His kind of expertise wasn’t necessary on the kind of cases she handled. If she was ever promoted to inspector, then – like Lockyer – she would no doubt get to know Phil a whole lot better. The thought made her shudder. She had seen him in action on the Stevens case. He had reacted to Lewisham’s first serial killer like a kid who had been given a new bike.
    She pushed her fringe out of her eyes and walked up to her front door, sliding her key into the lock. As she opened the door, the coolness of the hallway wafted over her. She smiled, closed her eyes and allowed herself to enjoy the moment. She loved this house. She loved coming home. When she was in her twenties, living in a tiny flat on Lee High Road, she relished feeling at the centre of it all. She would never have imagined that, ten years later, she would be living in a 1960s dormer-bungalow-style house in Belmont Hill with a seven-year-old son. She pushed the door closed, dropped her bag on the floor and walked through to the kitchen. Her mother should be home with Peter soon. He would be dying to get out in their garden. She remembered the first time she had watched him running his chubby little hands over the grass, the sun shining on his face. He had been two and a half. She walked back into the hallway and up the stairs into her bedroom.
    The mortuary suite would be cold, and she knew from experience that the odours released during the post-mortem tended to stick to your clothes. She opened her wardrobe, took out a pair of charcoal trousers, an old green T-shirt and a light sweater. As she changed she realized this particular ensemble had become her PM outfit. She could wash it all together, it dried quickly and she never wore it socially. She laughed out loud as she sat down on the edge of her bed. ‘Socially’ implied a social life, and she hadn’t had one of those for a while. She heard a key slide into the lock downstairs. She buttoned her trousers and walked out of her room. As she rounded the corner to go down the stairs she caught sight of Peter’s head disappearing down the hallway. Her mother smiled up at her.
    ‘I tell you, that boy just about wears me out. We weren’t at the park for more than ten minutes before he was dragging me out again, wanting to come home.’
    ‘Hi, Mum,’ she said, walking down the stairs. She kissed her mother on the cheek and reached up to smooth away the flyaway hairs that had come unstuck on the walk home. Celia Bennett believed in hairspray. ‘How’s he doing today?’
    ‘He’s good – super. A touch hyper, but then the sun’s shining,’ her mother said, shrugging out of a lightweight jacket and hanging it on the banister. ‘Do you have time for a cuppa?’ she asked.
    ‘Yes,’ Jane said. ‘I’ve got half an hour before I need to be getting back.’ She received a cool look as her mother flicked on the kettle.
    ‘Oh well,’ her mother said, flicking on the kettle, ‘I suppose it can’t be helped.’
    Jane walked over to the window and looked out. Peter was already in position, sitting at the top of the garden, his face upturned to the sun, his hands outstretched on either side of him, stroking the grass. He looked like a little