Free The Chemistry of Death by Simon Beckett Page B

her. She tried to rear back from the cloying, chemical stink, fighting with all the strength in her legs and arms. It wasn't enough. And now even that was ebbing. Her struggles grew weak as the morning swam away from her, light bleeding to black.
No!
She tried to resist, but she was already sinking further into darkness, like a pebble dropped into a well.
    Was there a last sense of disbelief before consciousness winked out? Possibly, though it wouldn't have lasted long.
    Not long at all.
     
     
    For the rest of the village, the day broke as any other. Perhaps a little more breathless, excited by the continued presence of the police and speculation about the identity of the dead woman. It was a soap opera come to life, Manham's very own melodrama. Someone had died, yes, but for most people it was still a tragedy at arm's length, and therefore not really a tragedy at all. The unspoken assumption was that it was some stranger. If it had been one of the village's own, wouldn't it have been known? Wouldn't the victim have been missed, the perpetrator recognized? No, far more likely that it was an outsider, some human flotsam from a town or city who had climbed into the wrong car, only to wash up here. And so it was regarded almost as an entertainment, a rare treat that could be savoured without shock or grief.
    Not even the fact that the police were asking about Sally Palmer was enough to change that. Everyone knew she was a writer, often travelled to London. Her face was too fresh in people's minds to associate with what had been found on the marsh. So Manham was unable to take any of it seriously, slow to accept the fact that, far from being an onlooker, its role was far more central.
    That would change before the day was out.
    It changed for me at eleven o'clock that morning, with the phone call from Mackenzie. I'd slept badly, gone into the surgery early to try and shake the vestiges of another night's ghosts from my mind. When the phone on my desk rang and Janice told me who was on the line I felt a renewed tension in my gut.
    'Put him through.'
    The hiatus of connection seemed endless, yet not long enough.
    'We've got a fingerprint match,' Mackenzie said as soon as he came on. 'It's Sally Palmer.'
    'Are you sure?' Stupid question, I thought.
    'No doubt about it. The prints match samples from her house. And we've got hers on record as well. She was arrested during a protest when she was a student.'
    She hadn't struck me as the militant type, but then I hadn't really got to know her. And never would now.
    Mackenzie hadn't finished. 'Now we've got a firm ID we can get things moving. But I thought you might be interested to know we still haven't found anyone who can remember seeing her after the pub barbecue.'
    He waited, as if I should find some significance in that. It took me a moment to drag my thoughts back. 'You mean the maths don't add up,' I said.
    'Not if she's only been dead for nine or ten days. It's looking likely now that she went missing almost a fortnight ago. That leaves several days unaccounted for.'
    'That was only an estimate,' I told him. 'I could be wrong. What does the pathologist say?'
    'He's still looking into it,' he said, dryly. 'But so far he isn't disagreeing.'
    I wasn't surprised. I'd once come across a murder victim who'd been stored in a freezer for several weeks before the killer finally dumped the body, but usually the physical processes of decay worked to an ordered timetable. It might vary depending on the environment, be slowed down or speeded up by temperature and humidity. But once they were taken into account then the process was readable. And what I'd seen at the marsh the day before -- I still hadn't made the emotional jump to connecting it with the woman I'd known -- had been as irrefutable as the hands on a stopwatch. It was just a matter of understanding it.
    That was something few pathologists were comfortable with. There was a degree of overlap between forensic anthropology and