Free A Man of Sorrows by James Craig Page B

identification of the body.’
    Carlyle asked Roche, ‘How did we identify her?’
    Roche pointed to the girl’s feet. ‘She has a tattoo on her left ankle, a snake. It’s an Indian King Cobra, according to her mum. Paula was very proud of it, apparently.’
    Carlyle couldn’t see anything but nodded anyway.
    ‘Time of death was around ten hours ago,’ said the pathologist in a monotone fashion as he ticked off the key points in his head. ‘I’d say she died sometime before midnight last night. She was shot somewhere else,’ he gestured across the empty ground, ‘maybe at another location on this site, before being dumped here.’ Pushing himself to his feet, he stuck his handkerchief in his pocket and brushed the dirt off his trousers. ‘I’ll let you have a preliminary report by the end of the day.’
    ‘Thanks.’ Head down, the inspector began marching back towards his waiting car.
    Strains of Arcade Fire’s ‘Black Mirror’ came from inside the police BMW. Sitting behind the wheel, the driver finished munching on an apple and tossed the core out of the window. Listening to his stomach rumble, Carlyle leaned against the bonnet and watched Roche finish her conversation with one of the technicians and begin to walk towards him. Off to his left, he saw an ambulance trundle over the uneven ground, heading for the little group clustered around the body. Pulling out his mobile, he called Helen. It went to voicemail immediately and he ended the call without leaving a message.
    ‘They’re taking her to the West Middlesex,’ Roche said, stopping a couple of feet in front of him.
    ‘Fair enough.’ Carlyle had no intention of going there himself. He hated hospitals and he doubly hated morgues; he was quite happy to wait for Stone to email him a report. He jerked a thumb over Roche’s left shoulder. ‘What did the tech guys have to say?’
    ‘Like Stone said, they presume someone drove in and dumped Paula’s body after she’d been killed. But there are lots of different vehicle tracks, so that probably won’t give us much.’
    Carlyle looked around unhappily. ‘No CCTV, of course?’
    ‘No,’ Roche told him. ‘Since the money ran out, there’s effectively been next to no site security. Anyone could have got in.’
    ‘Witnesses?’ Carlyle could hardly be bothered to ask the question.
    ‘Nothing, so far.’ Roche gave the impression that she could hardly be bothered to give the answer. ‘The local uniforms are going door to door, but there isn’t much residential round here; it’s mainly small workshops and a few offices.’
    Carlyle pushed himself off the car and signalled to the driver that they were ready to go. ‘Let’s get back to Charing Cross and start picking out some suspects.’

TWELVE
    After three hours of going through the forensic reports and the CCTV footage of the St James’s Diamonds raid, Carlyle was losing the will to live. Picking his mobile off the desk, he looked at the screen morosely. For once, it wasn’t telling him that he had missed any calls. Why hadn’t Helen tried to return his call? Most likely she was having a tough day at work too. Chief Operating Officer of a medical charity called Avalon, she was responsible for a growing team of several people in thirty countries, which meant that there was a crisis somewhere. Sighing, he looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost 7 p.m. and he knew that he should be heading home.
    ‘Dugdale’s on the TV.’ Roche appeared from behind him with a remote in her hand, unmuting the monitor that hung from the ceiling above them.
    ‘Again?’ Carlyle frowned. He looked at the Commander, sitting next to his PR flunky, in front of a large Met logo, with the legend Working together for a safer London spelled out in foot-high letters, as he prepared to make a statement to the assembled journalists. Dugdale seemed tired, washed-out, like a man who was just going through the motions until someone unlocked his pension pot and put