The Burning by Jane Casey Read Free Book Online Page B

rest of the journey.
    Unencumbered by the media, we got to Stadhampton Grove long before the boss arrived, and flashed warrant cards at the uniform on the cordon.
    ‘At least we have a secure scene this time. That’s something,’ Rob remarked.
    I nodded, pulling in to park behind a police car. ‘I wouldn’t like a repeat of the Charity Beddoes one.’
    That had been a fuck-up of epic proportions. It was the fourth murder, the body dumped in Mostyn Gardens, between Kennington and Brixton. The responding officers had seen the hallmarks of the Burning Man straightaway. Unfortunately, one of them had a nice sideline in tipping off a tabloid journalist, who had turned up with a video camera before the forensic team got there. Scotland Yard had to move very quickly indeed to prevent footage of the body and crime scene from being broadcast on the twenty-four-hour news channels; it was on the Internet if you looked for it, though we did try to get it taken down wherever it appeared. The forensic evidence was hopelessly compromised. A woman had died and we’d learned nothing that helped in the hunt for our killer. All because some plod had been partial to making a bit of extra cash.
    It was easy enough to spot where we needed to be; the forensic team were already there, moving screens and lights into position around a patch of blackened grass on some waste ground about a hundred yards from where we’d parked. A tall, lanky figure in a boiler suit was stepping delicately around the area that they’d marked off, his attention focused on the ground where the body presumably lay.
    Rob was looking in the same place as me. ‘Glen’s here already.’
    ‘So I see. Godley will be pleased.’
    Glen Hanshaw was the pathologist who had examined all four of the other victims. He was also one of the superintendent’s best friends. They were around the same age and had worked together for ever, including long hours on most of the cases that had made Godley’s reputation in the first place. We had standing orders to summon Dr Hanshaw to every crime scene. He’d been in Cyprus for one of Godley’s murders a couple of years ago and had come back on the next available flight, abandoning a family holiday with what appeared to be relief. I would not have been Mrs Hanshaw for any money, not least because I found the balding, beaky pathologist unsettling. He had a habit of looking past you while you were talking to him, as if whatever you were saying was so predictable and dull that he had already got to the end of the conversation in his own mind, long before you had stammered out your final question. I didn’t like being made to feel thick, and Dr Hanshaw managed it every time. Presumably Superintendent Godley was more intellectually secure than me.
    Dr Hanshaw’s concentration was total, and he didn’t look up as Rob and I walked towards him, following Kev Cox’s instruction to keep to the common approach path the SOCOs had marked out through the lank winter grass. They’d put down a plastic platform where we could stand, the lead investigator had told us, and I stepped onto it carefully, feeling it flex under Rob’s weight as he joined me.
    There was no point in saying hello to Dr Hanshaw. We might as well not have been there. His assistant, Ali, was standing nearby, scribbling notes as he spoke.
    ‘The body is lying face up in a shallow depression and shows signs of violence ante-mortem and post-mortem. It appears to be a female, but an estimate of her age will have to wait for the PM.’ He crouched. ‘Limbs drawn up and in towards the torso, but I’d suggest she was laid out flat originally; that’ll be muscle-contraction from the heat. Look at the pugilistic pose, the claw-shaped hands. Classic characteristics of exposure to high temperatures.’
    The woman’s skin was blackened and split, disfigured with patches of red and white where the lower layers of the skin had been exposed. The fire had burned her but not from head