Core of Evil by Nigel McCrery Read Free Book Online

handbag anywhere around the body, but the search might turn it up somewhere in the long grass. I’ll keep in touch with the CSIs and the pathologist, but you can cover the other direction. Once we’ve got an approximate age and a likely range of dates for the death, I want you to check through the missing persons records and pull out anything that fits. With luck, we can narrow it down. And then, when we know how she died, we can start pulling everything together.’
    ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ Emma muttered. ‘Look, sir, I’d like to make a move, if you don’t mind. I’ve beenhere since about three a.m., and I could do with a shower and a change of clothes.’
    ‘Okay,’ Lapslie conceded, ‘you crack on. I’ll hang around and wait for the pathologist to turn up. He should have been here by now.’
    ‘“She”, sir. Apparently the local pathologist is a Doctor Jane Catherall. I’ve called her twice, but no response. CSI claim she’s always turning up late to crime scenes.’
    ‘I’ll get the number off them and try again. You can go. Check in with me later.’
    Emma nodded gratefully, and walked off. Lapslie watched her go, the material across the seat of her designer trousers pulling diagonally in one direction and then the other as she walked. Women in the police force had a rough time of it: most of the time they were forced to come across as more laddish than the lads, protective coloration in the tight-knit boys’ club of the police. Emma was no exception, but Lapslie suspected that underneath was a schoolgirl vulnerability. Perhaps he ought to reach out: make sure she understood that he was not taking her at face value. And he probably owed her an explanation of his time away from the police; a period that had so abruptly come to an end with her call.
    He found himself following Emma before he had even made a conscious decision to move. Perhaps now was a good time to start building bridges.
    She reached her Mondeo a few seconds before hedid. As he approached, formulating the words of praise in his mind, he could hear her talking. He assumed for a moment that she was making a call on her mobile, but then she moved to one side and he realised that she was speaking to someone sitting in the passenger seat of the car, someone who was rubbing their eyes as if they’d just woken up.
    ‘I can have you back in—’ she was saying, and then she saw Lapslie. The skin around her eyes tightened, and her gaze flickered from side to side as if she was automatically looking for a way out.
    ‘Sir – was there something else?’ she asked, sliding sideways to block Lapslie’s view of her passenger.
    Lapslie stepped sideways, but Emma’s companion had turned his head away so that all Lapslie could see through the open passenger window was an ear with a small gold earring and a tousled mane of hair.
    ‘Can I have a word?’ Lapslie snapped, all the praise he had been about to deliver sliding out of his mind like rain off a windowpane.
    Emma stepped away from the car, walking around Lapslie so he had no choice but to turn away from the car.
    ‘You brought someone with you tonight,’ he said, stating rather than asking.
    ‘Sir.’ Not giving anything away.
    ‘This is a crime scene. We’re professionals, doing a job. You don’t just bring spectators along. What’s going on?’
    ‘Difficult to explain, sir.’ Her gaze slipped away from him. ‘Although not as difficult as explaining it to his wife,’ she muttered. ‘I’m sorry, sir. It won’t happen again.’
    ‘Emma—’ He used her first name, trying to break through the barriers she had thrown up. ‘Talk to me. Tell me what’s going on.’
    She sighed, and looked away. ‘I was … with a friend when the call came in about the body. The extra body. We were in a hotel. His car was back in a car park near the club where we met. I wanted him to take a cab, but he wanted to … well, to come along with me. I honestly thought there wouldn’t be much