Chapter One Lena normally opened up Blooming Miracles at 9.00 a.m., but this particular Tuesday, she was in at 6.30 a.m. to prepare the order for a big corporate event. Nobody about this early. Just her and her flowers. The shop was a girlhood dream, now realised thanks to the divorce settlement Lena had achieved over the vociferous but ultimately futile objections of her sociopathic ex-husband. Spring had come late to Middlehampton this year, and the cherry trees on Five Cups Lane still bore their blossom. As she stripped leaves from the long-stemmed roses, she glanced out of the shop window, enjoying the way the sun crested the rooflines of the houses opposite the shop. The shop was in what everyone called the Old Town. Part of a quiet little neighbourhood away from the traffic and the noise of the town centre. Lots of lovely little two-up-two-down terraced houses with front doors opening on to the street, and a few businesses steadily making their way, like fish swimming upstream against a strong but manageable current. A cafe, an Italian restaurant, a Turkish barber, a convenience store, a vintage clothes ‘emporium’ and Lena’s florist’s shop. She put the finishing touches to another arrangement and decided she’d earned a break. She made herself a coffee and took it outside, 2standing beneath the sturdy metal canopy above the shopfront. She lit a cigarette, frowning at a fallen gerbera on the pavement, crushed beneath someone’s heel. There were plenty more in the shop, but she hated to see even one dead before its time.
The coffee was too hot, but the cigarette was perfect. She drew the smoke deep into her lungs and let it out with a sigh. She allowed herself a few more minutes, but those roses wouldn’t prepare themselves, would they? She smiled and turned to go back inside. The body hit the pavement right in front of her with a flat, wet crunch. Lena screamed and dropped her coffee mug, which shattered on the pavement. She was rooted to the spot, hyperventilating. The dead girl – poor little thing couldn’t have been out of her teens – lay right by the front door, arms splayed, legs at angles Lena just knew meant they were broken. The girl’s face was scratched and bloody, her long blonde hair every which way. Lena dragged her phone out of her jeans pocket and with a shaking finger summoned help. ‘Emergency. Which service do you require?’ She gasped out her location, the ‘nature of her emergency’, and her name. Lena ended the call, even though the lady on the other end asked her to stay on the line. And with her back to the plate-glass window, through which she could see a dozen smooth-stemmed roses lying ready on her table – must remember to take off the guard petals, people think they’re mouldy – she slid down until her bottom bumped on to the pavement. ‘Don’t worry, lovely,’ she said to the dead girl. ‘Help’s on its way.’
Chapter Two Inside the cordon, crackly blue nylon booties over her shoes, DS Kat Ballantyne stared down at the dead girl. The poor thing couldn’t be more than twenty. Her nose had been pushed to one side, her lips were split and bloody. No make-up, smooth skin already beginning to lose its lustre and mottle in the building heat of the unseasonably warm spring day. Beneath the scrapes and cuts, she had the well-scrubbed look of a girl who took care of herself. She wore a baby-blue corduroy jacket with a sheepskin lining over a thick crocheted tank top, a white vest, and the baggy jeans girls favoured these days. Her outfit as a whole suggested a student. Young female workers in Middlehampton went for trousers or skirts from H&M or Primark. Wore more make-up, too. And would probably have taken the eyebrow ring out for work. One sneaker. The other foot was bare. Toenails painted bright green. Kat looked around. Where was the other shoe? Her bagman, DC Tom Gray, sighed. ‘Tell me what you see, Tomski,’ she said. ‘Female. White. Young. Eighteen? A year or two older?’ ‘How about the injuries?’ ‘Multiple broken bones. I mean, badly broken. Abrasions, lacerations and contusions to face and hands. Broken nose.’ 4 ‘Foul play?’ ‘I’m not seeing much blood. Certainly no spatter. No obvious penetration wounds. Not stabbed, shot or bludgeoned. Looks like she was hit by a car . . . or a truck.’ He turned, looked up and down the road. ‘A hit-and-run? The collision threw her up on to the awning?’ Kat nodded. Not because she agreed with the fast-track DC. Because she was thinking. She tugged on her earlobes, a habit she’d developed in school when trying to unscramble a difficult problem. Why was the dead girl so warmly dressed? The jacket could have been a fashion statement, but Kat reckoned she’d put it on because she knew she’d be cold. She must have come out the previous night. ‘Five Cups Lane’s hardly a main route through town, though, is it, Tomski? Have you ever come down here at night?’ ‘Nope.’ ‘I have. It’s dead. None of the businesses would need a delivery from a truck. And look.’ She pointed at a wasp-waist in the road twenty yards further up, where the kerbs converged to slow down cars. ‘Traffic-calming. How could you get up enough speed to throw a body ten feet into the air?’ ‘OK, so you don’t like my theory,’ Tom said huffily. ‘What’s yours?’ There it was again. Always just below the surface these days, and occasionally breaking through – the irritated tone Tom used whenever anyone contradicted him. When he’d arrived in the Major Crimes Unit, he’d had a sharp mind – and still did – and an even-keel approach to investigation. But since recovering from a coma after they’d been bushwhacked by a murder suspect, he’d undergone a decided personality shift, acquiring a short fuse and a temper to match. Kat was determined to bring him back to the right side of the fence. That meant keeping him close by for now, even if he did bridle 5at being on such a short rein. Ignoring his short-tempered response, Kat looked up. Looming above the florist’s was a multistorey car park. ‘She came from up there.’ He sighed. ‘That would be the second suicide since I arrived in Middlehampton. Last year, a girl threw herself off a bridge.’ ‘Who said anything about suicide?’ He frowned. ‘Well, you did.’ ‘I said she might have come from up there. I didn’t say she jumped from up there. She could have been mucking around with friends and fell. Or someone could have pushed her. Might not even have meant to kill her, you know, just kids messing about.’ ‘Yeah, Kat, but the most likely explanation is she went up there and jumped, don’t you think? Look, she even wrapped up warm so she wouldn’t mistake shivering from cold for fear.’ Kat had a fourteen-year-old son at home. Riley could transform from well-mannered boy who’d offer to lay the table, share details of his dates with girlfriend Millie, and hug his mum spontaneously, to a roaring bull of a boy whose door-slams were the stuff of legend in the Ballantyne household. So she was quite able to deal with the impatience of an ambitious DC who felt his career had somehow been put on hold. ‘I think the most likely explanation for how this girl ended up looking the way she does is she fell from a great height on to something hard.’ She paused, looking at the steel canopy. ‘As to why she fell, I’m keeping an open mind. You should, too.’ ‘You’re the boss.’ ‘That I am, Tomski.’ She looked around. A CSI with a digital camera was standing by the white forensics van parked a little way down the street, just beyond the cordon. She went over. ‘Have you finished taking photos?’ The CSI nodded. ‘All done.’ 6 Kat went back and knelt beside the body. An ID would make life simpler. She pulled on nitrile gloves and lifted the girl’s jacket aside. It had an inside pocket fastened with a press stud. She un-popped it and gently felt inside. Her fingers closed on a thin, firm rectangle. She extracted it: a slender credit-card wallet in bubblegum-pink nylon, scuffed and emblazoned with a band sticker. She pulled out a white plastic card – struck gold. The girl’s student ID. ‘Her name is Rosie Duggan. Date of birth, 19th June 2007. Just eighteen, poor love. Can you track down next of kin?’ ‘Of course. But we’ll do the death-knock together, boss, yes?’ ‘Don’t worry, Tomski. I’m not letting you out of my sight.’ But as Tom made a note, Kat felt a disorientating sense of vertigo and had to reach out a hand to steady herself on the shop’s plate-glass window. Rosie was eighteen, the same age Kat’s best friend, Liv, had been when she’d vanished – apparently the victim of a serial killer. Decades later, it turned out that Liv’s disappearance had been of her own making, and now Kat was the only other person who knew the full story. But Rosie Duggan’s time on this earth was over for good. There would be no resurrection for her. Kat’s mentor DS – and now DI – Molly Steadman had once told an inexperienced DC Kathryn Ballantyne that their job was to rule homicide out, not in. On acquiring her own bagman, she’d told him the same thing. So, what had happened to Rosie Duggan? Could she find evidence of foul play? She inhaled deeply, dragging sweet-scented spring air deep into her lungs, and stepped away from the window. She squatted beside the body again. If someone had attacked Rosie, coming at her brandishing a knife, there’d likely be defensive wounds on her hands or forearms. 7 Kat inspected the girl’s left hand. The heel was scraped, but the palm and fingers were devoid of even a shallow cut, let alone the deep incisions murder victims often sustained when fighting to ward off a knife attack. She looked at the right hand. The fingers were curled lightly against the palm as if holding something special. Nails painted green to match her toes. One was missing. Torn off at the quick, exposing angry red flesh beneath. Kat winced. The others were clogged with fragments of what looked like wood. Paint flecks, too. A bright blue. A missing shoe. A missing nail. The shoe could have flown off on impact, although she’d leave it to the search team to find where it had landed. Could it be up there – she craned her neck – on the top storey of the car park? But it took a lot of force to rip a nail out at the bed. Had Rosie tried to fight off an assailant? Lost her nail when it snagged on their clothing? No, because that didn’t account for the splinters and the blue paint. A bat? A length of wood torn from a pallet? The bell labelled ‘homicide’ was ringing loudly. The clanging became deafening when she couldn’t find Rosie’s phone. ...
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