the bones. Slowly sinking. Thinking. What had bothered her about the bones when she’d studied them through the binoculars bothered her even more now. She looked back to the gaping archway of the tunnel, staring at her like a one-eyed monster. Dormant. But dangerous. Her eyes returned to the skeleton. It wasn’t what Jessie expected a river to regurgitate. Bodies pulled from the Thames were the worst kind. Like leaves left in water, the skin formed a translucent film over flooded veins. Bloated with river water, corpses would burst at the touch, emptying their contents like a fisherman’s catch. There was something about the whiteness of this ribcage, rising out of the brown-black mud like a giant clam, that made her think the river had not claimed this body. Human hands had put it there. Nature was never that neat.
The forensic team arrived eventually. With no sense of urgency, they ambled along the sliver of countryside towards her, laughing and joking, in a pack. Shift workers all. Bodies had a habit of turning up at odd times; theirs was not a nine-to-five existence. They looked confused when they saw the bag of bones they’d been called out for.
‘I want everything picked up inside the area. Film it, photograph it, then bag it up. I’ve called the River Police. Low tide is in fifty minutes, then the tide will be racing back in. Take mud samples, water samples and get the temperature of the water and air.’
They looked at her the same way as DC Fry had. What? For this?
She felt unsure in front of these men. They knew more about the nature of death than she ever would. She tried to keep the nerves out of her voice. ‘The head, hands and feet are missing. Keep an eye out,’ she said.
‘They’d have fallen off during decomposition. The head is probably in Calais by now.’
‘Exactly,’ said Jessie. ‘So why isn’t the rest of this poor soul in Calais too? The tide is too strong. This skeleton should be completely broken up, not sitting neatly in the mud like that.’
‘What are you thinking?’ said one of them, softening immediately.
‘I don’t know yet. But bones don’t emerge clean and white from years of being buried in the mud, without a billion micro-organisms making them their home. Just because it’s a skeleton, doesn’t mean it’s old news.’
She left them standing in the mud.
‘This is a wind-up,’ said one.
‘Sounds like she knows what she’s talking about,’ said another.
‘Trust me,’ said the first. ‘I heard it from a mate at her AMIT. She’s being taken down a peg or two.’
DC Fry looked up into the sky. ‘Bloody Nora, you got the flying squad out!’
Jessie didn’t look up.
‘They are filming the foreshore and surrounding area. On my orders.’ Was she mad? She should never have risen to the bait. Jones would go ballistic.
‘Ma’am, that isn’t our lot up there, that’s the press.’ PC Ahmet pointed as he walked, his long frame almost reaching the sky.
‘What?’ She looked up. A helicopter hovered above. She could feel the telephoto lens aimed at them.
‘Like sharks, they have a great nose for blood,’ said the sombre PC.
‘Get that skeleton covered,’ she screamed at the scenes of crime officers. ‘Now! Jesus Christ, how do they know so quickly?’ she said. ‘The body was only reported to me an hour ago.’
‘Their technology is more advanced and they are permanently tuned in to police scramblers.’
This young constable continued to surprise her.
‘Right,’ said Jessie, trawling her memory for correct procedure. ‘Fry, get on to Heathrow, get an exclusion order and get that thing out of here.’
‘On what grounds?’
‘On the grounds that its propellers are disturbing a murder scene!’
‘With all due respect, ma’am, you don’t know that it is a murder scene –’
‘And you don’t know that it isn’t.’ She faced Fry full on and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Unless there is something you aren’t telling me?’
He shook his head. She smelled a rat, but there was nothing she could do about it now.
Jessie watched the helicopter withdraw to the limits of the exclusion order. The tide was rising, and she’d been denied a Home Office pathologist. News was out about the circus she was whipping up on the banks of the Thames. Mark was probably somewhere watching her hang herself and Jones was nowhere to be found.
‘Ma’am, the pathologist has arrived,’ said DC Fry. Her reluctant shadow.
A smart, auburn-haired woman held out her hand. She looked almost too delicate for the job, but her handshake was firm and her boots were caked in mud from previous grisly expeditions. ‘Sally Grimes,’ said the pathologist.
Jessie turned back to DC Fry. ‘I want those rowers filling out PDFs.’
Fry looked horrified at the amount of paperwork Jessie was accruing, but kept his mouth shut. The two women walked out to the skeleton. The water level was rising. ‘PDFs?’ queried Sally Grimes.
‘Personal description forms,’ Jessie said, ducking under the tarpaulin. ‘They describe themselves on it for the Holmes database back at the station.’
‘I know what they are. I was wondering why you were using them.’
‘Because I haven’t got a clue who this person is, or why they ended up here, and I’ve got to start somewhere.’
‘Bodies from the river are usually just picked up and matched to missing persons.’
Jessie studied the pale-skinned woman. ‘I was told you weren’t an investigative pathologist?’
‘I’m not. Yet. So what do you think you’ve got here?’
‘No idea, to be honest. I suspect I’ve been set up with a dud call by my fellow DI, who thinks I need bringing down several pegs. I thought I’d get him back by going by the book, give them the classroom detective they are waiting for.’
The police helicopter made another pass, its shadow gliding over the milky-white tarpaulin. It was getting hot under the plastic.
‘With bells on,’ said Sally.
Jessie shrugged. She wouldn’t admit she was wrong to call out the police helicopter. Not yet.
‘So they sent me and not a Home Office pathologist, because they don’t think you have anything,’ said Sally.
‘Like I said, I’ve been set up. Thing is, while I’ve been here, something about this skeleton has been bugging me.’
Sally smiled conspiratorially at Jessie. ‘Well, let’s see if we can find something to wipe the smile off your fellow DIs’ faces. What’s been bugging you?’
‘The smell.’
‘It is aromatic, I agree.’
‘I don’t mean the river smell. There’s something else. I only noticed it when the tarpaulin went up. It isn’t organic. In fact, it’s almost like bleach.’
Sally got down on her knees in the mud and smelled the bones. Jessie made a mental note to buy the woman a drink. The pathologist repeated the action at two more locations on the skeleton, nodded quietly to herself, and stood up. From her bag she took a swab and ran it along the exposed clavicle, then another down the fibula.
‘I’m not touching this until I’ve sent these to the lab.’
‘What is it?’
‘This corpse is too clean and too intact