Others shouted their names.
Shouts that drew closer, then faded, only to come closer again. They were up on the platform now, some of them, looking down.
The boys flattened themselves as best they could, burrowing down alongside washing machine and freezer into what was dank and festering.
"It stinks," one boy whispered.
"Shut up!" hissed the other.
"It does, it stinks."
"Shut the fuck up!"
A rat, curious, showed itself in the space between them then sprang sideways, its feet taking purchase for a moment on one boy's shoulder, before scuttling from sight.
The shouting seemed to have stopped. Cautiously raising their heads, they could see the backs of people strung along the platform above them, waiting for the next train. The heads and shoulders of others, in silhouette, were visible inside the small covered shelter. No boys, save for a solitary primary school kid astride the low wall.
"Come on," one urged. "They've gone."
"No, wait."
"It stinks here!"
"You said."
"Well, I'm not stoppin'. You comin' or what?"
The second boy had pushed his body so far down beside the freezer that it was almost resting on top of him, and in his effort to free himself, it leaned even farther against him, so that he had to ask for help. It took the pair of them to lever it back and send it rolling over, the door at the top swinging open.
"Fuck!" the first boy cried. "What the fuck is that?"
But they knew, they both knew and they ran, heedless, scrambling over the mounds of waste, scrambling and falling, losing their footing, so desperate to get away that once they'd vaulted the railings they ran, blind, regardless of one another, just running, until the first of them collided with an ambulance driver going off duty, still wearing his uniform, who seized the lad by the collar, and held him fast, and asked him what the hell he thought he was doing. The boy pointed back towards the railway, wide-eyed, and stumbled out the words, "A body. There's a body."
Andreea Florescu had been folded, concertina-like, into three, before her dead body had been jammed into the freezer, head pushed down hard between her knees. She was still wearing the same clothes she had on when she had left Alexander Bucur's flat sixteen days before. Her skin, where it was visible, had taken on the aspect of greenish marble; the veins in the backs of her hands and at the side of her neck stood out like dark twists of thickish wire. Blood had congealed in a black treacly film across her chest and along her thighs, sealing those parts of her together.
The smell was close to overpowering.
The area was cordoned off and ladders brought in to give easier access to the site, boards being laid across the surface of the waste, creating a single route for the crime scene manager and his team and for the Home Office pathologist to make his initial examination. Photographs were taken, measurements noted, detailed sketches drawn.
Scores of people, travellers and nontravellers both, stood on the railway platform above, gazing down.
The two boys were taken to the local police station, their parents contacted, social workers summoned. Chris Butcher, one of the more experienced detectives in Homicide and Serious Crime Command, was designated Senior Investigating Officer, and an Incident Room was established at the Francis Road police station.
It was from there that one of the officers thought to phone Karen Shields. "That woman you were enquiring about, I think maybe we've found her."
Alexander Bucur was summoned for the purposes of identification.
It was nine o'clock that night before Karen got to talk to Butcher, a detective she knew by more than reputation, having worked with him on a previous investigation. Decisive, thorough, given to occasional flashes of temper, twice divorced and somehow, with the help of grandparents and a succession of European au pairs, bringing up two teenage daughters in Tufnell Park.
"Karen," he said, the vestiges of a Scottish accent that came out more strongly after a drink or three now barely noticeable, "apologies for not getting back to you sooner."
"No problem."
"What exactly's your interest here?"
Succinctly as she could, she told him.
"Maybe you, me, and what's-his-name up in Yorkshire."
"Guest."
"Aye, Guest. Maybe the three of us should get together, see what there is, if anything, by way of common ground."
Karen agreed. "One thing, the victim, Andreea, how did she die?"
"Her throat was cut," Butcher said. "Practically from ear to ear."
Resnick was sitting in semidarkness when Karen called, listening to some recordings Thelonious Monk had made for Prestige Records in the fifties, his piano accompanied by bass and drums; Monk as ever going his own way, sounding, Resnick thought, like a cantankerous old man who, every now and then, surprised himself and those around him with flashes of good humour.
Would he mind, Karen had asked, if she popped round? She wouldn't disturb him for long.
He would not.
Earlier in the day, he read again the few cards and letters he'd had from members of Lynn's family, stilted most of them, tripping over themselves not to give offence, to find the right words. Taking a pad, he had begun to draft replies but time and again he had been overcome and, finally, he had pushed pad and pen aside; another task left for another day.
He had promised Lynn's mother that he would go through her things, some bits and pieces of jewellery Lynn had had since a teenager, a watch her father had given her for her twenty-first birthday, a box she kept crammed with old photographs: Lynn as a chubby thirteen-year-old in school uniform, smiling self-consciously at the camera; Lynn, a little younger, on the bike she'd been given when she started secondary school; younger still, with her parents on holiday in Cornwall-one especially he remembered her showing him with pride, a girl of no more than eight or nine, hair in pigtails, triumphantly holding up a pair of crabs she had caught off the quay, one in each hand.
Some of these her mother wanted; others he would keep.
Karen Shields was at the door, a bottle of whisky wrapped in white tissue in her hand.
"I didn't know what you liked," she said, pulling away the tissue and holding up the bottle.
Resnick found a smile. "That's fine."
Johnnie Walker Black Labeclass="underline" not Springbank, but good enough. He found a pair of glasses and she followed him through into the front room. Monk was still playing: "Bemsha Swing."
Karen listened for a few moments, head cocked towards the speakers. "Who's this?"
He told her.
"Not exactly restful."
"No. I can turn it off if you want."
"No, leave it. It's good." She grinned. "At least, I think it is." She cast her eye along the lines of albums and CDs. "Always been into jazz?"
"Pretty much. One of the things that keeps me sane. Least, it used to."
"Lynn was another."
"Oh, yes."
"You must be finding it hard."
"No, not really."
"Lying bastard."
Resnick sniffed and smiled and poured two good measures of Scotch.
"My grandfather, you know," Karen said, "he was a bit of a jazz musician. Calypso, too. Trumpet, that's what he played. Trumpet and piano. When he came over to England from Jamaica, it was to join this band, King Tim's Calypso Boys. It didn't work out too well; I don't know why. He did go on one tour, I know, to New Zealand, with a band called the Sepia Aces." Karen shook her head and gave a wry smile. "The All-Black Sepia Aces-that's how they were advertised. But after that, I think he more or less gave it up, the trumpet. He worked as a carpenter-a joiner, that was his trade. I only ever remember hearing him play a few times."
She caught Resnick with a look.
"Andreea Florescu, they found her body."