Final Cut Read Free Page A

round the detective inspector’s taller figure. She was already kitted up, only her face visible, her eight-month pregnancy hardly noticeable in the shapeless white suit. She took one look in the skip then swiftly raised her mask. Even for someone with her experience it wasn’t an easy sight or smell.
    ‘Jesus, how did that happen?’
    ‘You tell me,’ said Bill.
    He gave Chrissy a leg-up. As she landed, flakes of drier ash rose to float around them like black snow.
    ‘Who found him?’
    ‘A fireman spotted something when he finished hosing. The guy who mans the site, Steve Fallon, took a closer look,’ Bill said.
    ‘Bet this caused a bit of a shock?’
    ‘Fallon says he’s found everything in these skips, including a newborn baby, but nothing as bad as this.’
    ‘He should try doing our job,’ Chrissy said grimly. ‘Do we know who he is?’
    ‘Possibly a soldier.’
    ‘Gone AWOL?’
    He wouldn’t be the first to decide going on the run was better than going back to Iraq or Afghanistan.
    Chrissy regarded the headless corpse with sympathy. ‘So the poor bastard fried here instead of in a tank. Who’s scene of crime officer – McNab?’ Chrissy’s tone softened. DS Michael McNab, once her sworn enemy, had recently been partially forgiven.
    ‘A kid went missing from a road accident. McNab’s at the scene,’ said Bill.
    ‘Please God, no missing kids. Not in the run-up to Christmas,’ Chrissy echoed Rhona’s thoughts.
    Three hours later they were still ensconced in their well-lit skip. Chrissy had the worst job. Scraping the remains of someone’s skull and brains from the inside walls was not for the faint hearted. Rhona concentrated on what was left of the body and its immediate surroundings. The smell of burnt flesh hadn’t lessened although she had succeeded in temporarily blotting it out. That didn’t mean the memory wouldn’t come surging back when she least expected it. Rhona wondered whether that had been the trouble with the dead soldier. Too many memories, too awful to handle.
    The wind was dying down, but the sleet had become heavy rain that beat on the metal roof and turned the skip into an echo chamber. The normal routine was to methodically grid the site then transfer everything to the lab section by section. It was laborious, painstaking work. Two SOCOs were already lifting the material near the open end while Rhona and Chrissy worked close to the body. The biggest headache for forensics was being pressured to allow the removal of the body too quickly. The ideal of twenty-four hours in situ was rarely achievable. The other headaches were where to find a toilet and how to get something to eat. For Chrissy in her present state, both were frequent necessities. It didn’t take long for one of them to manifest itself.
    ‘I’m starving.’
    ‘How can you think of food in here?’
    ‘I’m eating for two, remember?’
    Chrissy stuck her head outside and shouted for the nearest yellow jacket. A policeman approached. The closer he got to the smell, the paler he became.
    ‘Any chance of a chippie? We’ve been in here for hours.’
    ‘You’ve got to be joking.’
    ‘I never joke about food,’ Chrissy said firmly. ‘I’ll have a double smoked sausage supper. What about you?’ she asked Rhona.
    ‘I’ll wait until I get home.’
    ‘ We definitely can’t wait that long.’
    Chrissy sent him on his way with a tenner fished from below her forensic suit.
    ‘OK, now I need the loo.’ She set off towards the Portakabin.
    Twenty minutes later the smoked sausage arrived. The strong smell of vinegar reminded Rhona just how hungry she was.
    ‘Come on, take a break,’ Chrissy suggested. ‘Steve says he’ll brew us some tea.’
    ‘Steve?’
    ‘My pal in the Portakabin.’
    Rhona headed for the toilet first, glad to take off her mask and gloves and wash her hands and face. When she entered the cabin, Chrissy was already transferring a portion of her supper on to a plate.
    ‘I knew you