The engineers had managed, however, to keep East Ferry Road passable, and beyond a hoarding on his right the land rose steeply to the plateau of Mudchute Park. Kincaid bypassed the first entrance to the park, a steep, arched tunnel across from the Millwall Dock, and soon came to the entrance of the ASDA supermarket.
As he turned into the car park he saw the pandas, blue lights flashing, clustered in front of the ASDA service station. Gemma’s battered Escort stood a little to one side; a pair of uniformed constables held back a gathering crowd of interested onlookers.
Pulling up between Gemma’s car and a red Vauxhall, Kincaid got out and headed for the knot of people gathered at the rear of the car park. The bodies shifted and he had a glimpse of Gemma’s copper hair and green shirt as she turned to meet him.
“Guv.” Gemma greeted him with a brief nod. “This is DI Janice Coppin. She’s the senior officer here.”
Kincaid held out his hand to the woman in the navy suit, who gripped it as briefly as courtesy allowed. The expression on her blunt face imparted no more welcome than her handshake, and even her stiff blonde hair seemed to radiate displeasure.
“What have we got, Inspector?” Kincaid asked easily, but he remembered his chief’s comment about the newly promoted DI not being considered up to the job, and thought it wouldn’t surprise him if Coppin felt hostile towards Scotland Yard for invading her patch.
“Up there.” DI Coppin stepped aside so that he had a clear view of the entrance to the Mudchute, tucked away in the heavy shrubbery that lined the perimeter of the car park. “A woman’s body, exposed by the side of the path. We were waiting for you,” she continued. “The pathologist’s finished, but we couldn’t move the body until you had viewed it in situ.”
Kincaid had no intention of apologizing to her for his tardiness. He said merely, “Let’s have a look, then,” and started towards the park entrance.
The litter strewn over the car park tarmac spilled onto the ground, clustering thickly along the paved path that climbed towards the plateau and the entrance to the park. The rubbish made a mockery of the pastoral, wooden arbor built over the park’s swinging gate, and would prove a headache, he knew, for the team collecting evidence.
The wooded slope was gentle, but by the time Kincaid had pushed carefully through the gate bars, he’d begun to sweat. The path forked before him, and even after the rains of the past few weeks, its surface was trampled hard enough to resist an impression from his rubber-soled shoes. Ahead and to the right it climbed towards a dividing hedge and beyond that the high open spaces of the park; to his left it wound along the edge of the steep bank, and a dozen yards along it he saw a cluster of white-overalled crime scene technicians.
Kincaid slipped on an overall and started towards them. Out of long habit, he put his hands behind his back as he followed the line of the blue and white crime scene tape. It removed the unconscious temptation to touch.
The technicians parted at the end to let him through, and he saw her then, half in the hedge’s shadow.
“She was a looker, all right,” said Willy Tucker, the photographer, at his elbow.
She lay on her back, between the edge of the path and the hedge that separated this alley of park from the higher ground. His first impression was that her clothes had been straightened.
The short skirt hugged her thighs too neatly. The long, black linen jacket was still held together by its pewter buttons, though one cream satin bra strap showed where the jacket had slipped a little from her shoulder. She wore no blouse.
Glancing at Tucker, Kincaid said, “Her tights—they weren’t disturbed?”
“Not that we could see without moving her.”
The tights were sheer, the merest whisper of black against her pale skin, and both legs had laddered. One foot was bare, the other encased in a black shoe with a high, chunky heel.
Kincaid squatted, still keeping his distance, and at last looked at her face. It was a smooth oval, the skin unlined even in the strong light. The nose was straight, the lips well-defined. As the patch of shade retreated, sunlight sparked from the cloud of her red-gold hair. So alive did it look that if not for the slight congestion of her face and the hovering flies, one might have thought she had simply lain down for a rest.
An earthy, spicy smell rose from the crushed vegetation beneath his feet and her body, making him think of lovers entwined in a hillside bower. “Have you found her other shoe?” he asked.
The photographer shook his head. “Not so far. The uniformed lads have started a radial search.”
All dressed up and nowhere to go, Kincaid thought as he stared down at her still body. He stood, resisting the urge to smooth the fine wayward hair from her cheek. “Maybe she left it at the ball.”
GEMMA WATCHED KINCAID MAKE HIS WAY back down the cordoned path, his face shuttered as always in such circumstances. “Have we got ourselves a nutter, then, guv?” she asked when he reached them. You didn’t say “serial killer,” not when there was the remotest possibility of being overheard by the long ears of the press, but it was always the first thing you thought with a young woman murdered like this.
Glancing back at the crime scene technicians crouched like strange white insects near the corpse, Kincaid shook his head. “I think her killer knew her. It looks as though someone arranged her clothing, and if she was sexually assaulted it’s not obvious. We’ll know more after the postmortem.”
“I’ll arrange for the mortuary van now,” said DI Coppin. “If that’s all right with you, sir,” she added with unconcealed hostility.
Kincaid’s eyebrow lifted a fraction, but, once again, he didn’t rise to the challenge. “Go ahead, Inspector. The sooner the better, in this heat. It’s a good thing the temperature dropped last night.”
Coppin made an awkward descent, hampered by the narrow skirt of her wool suit. Gemma watched her until she’d cleared the swinging gate and vanished from sight, then turned to Kincaid. “Listen, guv—”
Before she could continue, Kincaid motioned her into a small patch of shade, away from the uniformed officers. “It’s too bloody hot to stand about in the sun,” he said, pulling a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blotting his forehead with it.
A curving, split-rail fence separated the grassy area bordering the path from the sloping ground that marked the park’s edge, and from where Gemma stood it drew her eye towards the entrance. The flat, trellised top of the wooden gate gave it the look of a Japanese shrine; beyond the thick screen of trees, the gleaming buildings of Canary Wharf rose incongruously against the pastoral view.
The comfortingly familiar smell of bacon and eggs cooking in the ASDA’s cafe reached them on a faint puff of breeze and Gemma’s stomach rumbled loudly in response. Too nervous to eat before her piano lesson, she’d meant to treat herself to a late breakfast afterwards. But she should have known better, as her mobile phone had rung before she and Wendy Sheinart had finished their half hour’s conversation.
“About the DI, guv,” she said, glancing at the uniformed officers to make sure they were out of hearing. “Her chief inspector’s off at his son’s wedding this weekend, and it seems he called us in without informing her. She feels it should have been her case, and I can’t say I blame her. Maybe if you could go a bit easy on her—”
“Sets a bad precedent,” Kincaid said, grinning, then sobered. “It’s a tough break for her, but if she’s going to be an effective officer, she’ll have to learn to cope.”
Gemma’s own experience was proof enough of that, but she felt sympathetic nonetheless. “Still, I’d not like to be in her shoes.”
“My guess is they pinch,” he said under his breath, for Coppin had finished with the radio and begun the climb back up the hill from the gate.