BCS4 TESS HENCHARD. South Mercia, April 2012

BCS4 TESS HENCHARD

South Mercia, April 2012

Dave’s hand is soft and warm against Tess’s cheek. With the tip of his finger, he traces the curve of her cheekbone, her eyelids, the smile lines around her mouth. Looking up, she can’t help but compare him to Alec; it’s not just the weight and the size of him but the way he is with her. He is present. Dave puts his thumb on her lower lip: Tess bites down and pulls him closer.

Afterwards, while the sweat cools on her skin, the guilt rushes in as it always does. Alec. Daisy. Dave’s wife, Dave’s kids. What frightens her the most is that the guilt lessens every time. It stopped feeling wrong a long time ago.

A lorry thunders past outside, sounding its horn, shaking the car and making them both jump. Dave hits his head on the car door; Tess stubs her toe on the handbrake and yelps.

‘That’s killed the moment, ’ he says.

Tess hitches down her skirt and clambers into the front seat. Now that it’s over, she sees it for the madness it was; two animals rutting in a parked car in a lay-by. Anyone could pull up behind them and look in – it could be one of their own colleagues. They’ve got squad cars all over the place, dropping off exhibits to the lab, picking up CCTV from every business in the district and searching, searching, searching for two lost girls.

‘We can’t go on like this, ’ she says.

‘We can’t go on like this, ’ agrees Dave, checking the rearview mirror as he tucks his shirt back into his trousers. ‘We’ll go back to the hotel next time. It’s too risky. I want to be able to take my time with you. ’ He rolls his neck and something goes click. ‘And I’m not sure my back can take it, either. ’

Tess gives a rueful little smile as Dave turns the key in the ignition and the clock on the dashboard blinks into life. Nine thirty and while their shift doesn’t start till ten, they’re going in early; they’ll need to hit the ground running. She feels the adrenalin build as she shifts into work mode. There have been times when they couldn’t wait to be together, but it’s an unspoken agreement that when they’re on duty, they’re on duty.

The car crawls through the dregs of rush-hour traffic. Tess rests her forehead against the window then pulls it back in case someone sees her in his car, or CCTV picks them up. Dave’s right; they’re stupid to take any risk. They’re in the middle of a double missing-persons case. If anyone catches them, that’s both their careers and reputations fucked, not to mention their marriages. This thing between them has got much deeper, much faster, than either of them expected. Over the side: that’s what they call it when a police officer sleeps with someone off-limits. Overboard would be a better word for it. Tess feels like she’s being pulled by a current she can’t control.

They ought to put this thing on hold until the case is solved. She knows that. But she knows staying away from him would do more harm than good. She wouldn’t expect anyone to understand, but this is a release. Her mind is brimming with theory and evidence and none of it’s going anywhere. The little sleep she’s been able to grab is no respite; she dreams about these people who have crash-landed into her life, all of them: little Pippa runs through her dreams, chased by her cousin Lisa. Tess is haunted by Cate’s face, tearstained and puffy, red wine clotting in the corners of her lips. Over and over Cate says, Please find my little girl. This case has got to them all, especially those of them with kids. Alec has been hit hard by the fact that Pippa is the same age as Daisy. And they’ve all got their way of dealing with it. Some coppers go for a run, or drink, to recalibrate their heads in the middle of a case. Tess goes to bed – or in this case, to the back seat of a Toyota RAV4 – with Dave.

Alec works sixteen-hour days, forgets to eat, and gets angry. She hasn’t seen him since they got the shout two days ago. He’s sleeping on the sofa in his office, if he’s sleeping at all. At least Tess got four hours in her own bed last night and a shower in her own bathroom. Daisy was staying with a friend; Tess and Alec rely a lot on the generosity of friends’ parents in the first few chaotic days of a case. The house was too quiet this morning. It’s strange; Alec can stay away for days and Tess feels nothing but relief, but Daisy sleeping somewhere else feels wrong.

Dave pulls into a side street two blocks from the police station. ‘This is you, ’ he says. They check their phones together: no developments. They don’t kiss goodbye but she feels the pull of him, stronger than ever, in parting.

South Mercia Police Force HQ is a huge, seventies-built red-brick building that’s been recycling the same stale air for forty years. Tess feels her eyes and skin dry out as she swipes through security. On the way to CID, the knots in her muscles tighten with every step. Her shoulders rise, her lower back starts to ache, and it’s not just in anticipation of the uncomfortable office chair.

She hasn’t seen Alec since last night. Tess hopes he’s not in the office. The chances are small; as Senior Investigating Officer, he likes to work the field as much as possible. They used to work so well together – professionally, at least, she’s never been more compatible with another officer, and that includes Dave – but at the moment she can’t concentrate if Alec’s even in the same building. Dave sits opposite her at work, and Alec’s got the corner office just behind them. Every time he walks past, she shrivels with guilt and with contempt for her husband. Guilt over the adultery, contempt that Alec can’t see it. If she and Dave so much as brushed past each other at a crime scene, he’d notice. That’s the problem in a nutshell: the tunnel vision that makes him a brilliant detective means he hasn’t seen Tess – really seen her – in years.

Tess stops by the toilets to check her hair. One of the DCs, clearly at the tail-end of an all-nighter, is brushing her teeth at the basin. CID smells of fresh coffee and stale takeaways. The phones are ringing off the hook and a small, bleary-eyed team are on headsets, trying to sift the genuine leads from the nutters and prankers. On another desk, more officers are making outgoing calls, frustration etched on their brows. Forget analysing evidence, they’ve barely gathered any yet. There’s a whiteboard with LEADS written across the top in Alec’s jagged handwriting. It is blank.

Next to the whiteboard, one of the DCs has rigged up a digital clock to count the hours since Pippa Gillespie and Lisa Newbery were discovered missing. Two days, twenty-one hours. In cases like this, hope drains like sand through an hourglass. Everyone knows that you find a missing kid immediately or not at all. But this one, it’s different. A missing kid and her teenage cousin? They keep referring to them as the missing girls but while one is on the threshold of puberty, the other is really a woman, physically mature and confident, by all accounts. It doesn’t fit any offender profile that Tess is familiar with. They’ve had the profiler in; even she’s struggling. They can’t come up with a theory that will shape their hunt for evidence.

‘Where’s Alec? ’ Tess asks Chrissie, a fellow DS who’s already got three empty mugs on her desk.

Chrissie creases her brow. As always, whenever Tess refers to her husband by his first name, it takes her colleague a few seconds to get who she means. But what else can she call him? She can’t call him Hardy and she’s damned if she’ll call him the boss or the guvnor.

Chrissie checks a memo on her screen. ‘He’s overseeing a fingertip search of the river Sandbrook. ’

‘The Sandbrook? ’ echoes Tess. It’s right on the edge of their patch, a slow-flowing river with great stretches straying miles from the nearest road and barely accessible on foot. ‘On what basis? ’

‘On the basis of it’s the only open space left on our ground that we haven’t covered, and there’s still no trace of either girl, ’ says Chrissie grimly, her eyes travelling to the clock.

Tess flinches at the reminder of how far behind they are, and boots up her computer, not wanting to waste another minute. When Dave comes in, she looks up with a cool hello, and doesn’t make eye contact, even as he takes the desk opposite hers. She puts in earplugs to dull the noise of the incident room and goes through the notes on the system. It’s mainly house-to-house from the Gillespies’ estate. There is precious little and it’s all repetitive. Lovely family, friends with the neighbours, they can’t believe this is happening on their own doorstep. A couple of remarks about Cate Gillespie’s drinking, but that’s about it. The parents were away at a wedding when the girls disappeared. As far as Tess can tell, Cate hasn’t sobered up since, and who can blame her?

Something sails over the top of Tess’s monitor and lands on her desk, making her jump. It’s a small diamond earring. Instinctively she puts her hands up to her ears and finds that her left earlobe is bare. Dave winks; Tess glares back at him. They’re on company time now, and she won’t take the piss. She realises, as his face falls, that this has the makings of their first argument. They are inching closer towards intimacy every day.

Tess looks up to see if Chrissie’s noticed, but she’s glued to her own monitor, examining CCTV from the petrol station on the edge of the Gillespies’ estate. It’s the closest camera to their house on Elm Drive. This is what happens when crime is committed on a grid of identikit new-builds. Those developments can sprawl for miles with no infrastructure or landmarks, nothing but houses and gardens in all directions. Unless a resident’s got their own security rigged up, it’s easy for someone who knows the neighbourhood to vanish into the warren of streets without leaving a trace.

Tess is giving Dave one more warning look when his phone rings. His face loses its colour as he listens; Tess pulls out her earplugs but the call is already over.

‘That was the boss, ’ says Dave, pushing his chair away from his desk, car keys in hand. ‘They’ve found the body of a young girl in the Sandbrook. ’

South Mercia University Hospital is across the dual carriageway from the police station, eight storeys of white concrete and foggy windows.

‘I knew it’d be murder, ’ says Dave, as they get into a lift marked STAFF ONLY. ‘I knew from the first shout, but it doesn’t stop you hoping, does it? ’

‘You always hope, ’ says Tess. ‘But I can’t remember hoping like this for a long time. ’ Dave reaches for her hand and circles his thumb on her palm.

‘You OK, babe? ’

His tenderness melts her, but she can only squeeze his fingers in reply. She can’t afford to soften now. The lift spits them out two floors underground and Tess and Dave walk through a dingy yellow corridor lit with flickering strip lights. It is maybe ten degrees colder here than in the station. This is not the way to the viewing room, where victims’ families see their loved ones still beneath a white sheet. This long walk is for the professionals, the dealers in death. There is nothing beautiful down here: a few laundry bags piled in a trolley, a mop and bucket and a yellow CLEANING IN PROGRESS sign. Tess tries very hard not to think about what gets mopped up down here.

‘I don’t understand why it’s just the one body, ’ she says. ‘Nothing about this case makes sense. ’

‘Just the one body so far, ’ Dave corrects her. There’s another fire door ahead; he lengthens his stride to open it for her. Tess isn’t used to these little chivalrous touches. She is astonished to find that she quite likes them.

‘Did Alec say if he was staying to continue the search? ’

‘He pretty much hung up. ’ Dave bites his lip. ‘I’m sure he knows, sometimes, the way he talks to me. ’

Tess shakes her head. ‘That’s how he talks to everyone. ’ But she shakes her shoulders, as though to recalibrate her body language, and by the time they get to the end of the corridor, there’s a big space between her and Dave. When – if – they go public, it must be a long, long time after this case has been put to bed.

A technician in mint scrubs is waiting behind a glass door; she punches a number into the keypad to let them in.

‘Five minutes, ’ says the technician. Her voice is steady but she looks like she’s been crying. ‘Dr Kendall’s just preparing her now. You can wait up here. ’ Tess and Dave follow the technician on tiptoe up a short flight of stairs. In the viewing gallery, there’s a row of seats, almost like in a cinema, and the blind is down on the panoramic window so it looks like a blank blue screen. There are a handful of flattened paper bags on the table.

Waiting for them is Sanjeev, a newish DC. He’s not long out of uniform so he won’t have worked a case like this before. Tess hasn’t spent much time with him, but she knows Alec really rates him. There’s a weird, stale, boggy smell and for a moment Tess retches, thinking it’s the dead-body-rotting smell she dreads so much. It takes her a few seconds to recognise the smell of stagnant river water, and that it’s coming from Sanj.

‘Sarge, ’ says Sanj to Tess. ‘How comes you’re not upstairs with the boss? ’

Tess doesn’t bother to hide her confusion. ‘What’s he doing upstairs? ’

‘Don’t panic, ’ says Sanj. Immediately Tess starts to panic. ‘It’s just a precaution. He got into difficulties in the water. ’

Tess is bewildered. ‘What was he even doing in the water? ’

‘He found her, ’ says Sanj, dipping his head. ‘Pippa’s body. He carried her out. You know what he’s like, he stalks off on his own, all impatient, no one can ever work fast enough for him. We didn’t even know he’d gone until he’d got her out. He reckons he went under a few times. He took in a lot of water and they’ve got to be careful about it being in his lungs, or Weil’s disease or something. ’ Sanj looks down at his feet; he flexes them, and his shoes squelch.

Tess is rooted to the spot, horrified at what Alec must have been through today. She is torn. Instinct urges her to go and check on him; after fourteen years of marriage, you can’t just turn off the concern like a tap. But he’ll be in good hands. He probably won’t even want her, he hates being fussed over. And with him indisposed, she’s the senior officer. She’s still debating with herself when the blinds go up and the theatre is revealed in all its spot-lit, chrome glory, and there, splayed on the slab is—

Tess’s vision blurs. There’s a whole team of people, but the pathologist and his team, in their scrubs, are reduced to green blobs. Tess can’t look at anything but Pippa Gillespie’s body.

It doesn’t look human.

It has been completely bloated by the water; her face is swollen and grey, her limbs pasty and distended. Water has matted her hair and dirt outlines her nails. Tess thinks of the picture they have on the board, that perfect little girl, playing tennis, golden skin, long brown hair, and it is all that she can do to stand. She’s seen bodies destroyed by water before, but never one this young. Tears try to push their way out of her eyes but Tess pushes back harder. She’ll cry later, in front of Dave, but she won’t fall apart in public.

She gives silent thanks that Pippa can be identified forensically. Her mother will never have to see her like this. She steps up to the microphone, forcing her voice to hold steady.

‘DS Tess Henchard, ’ she says. ‘Is there anything you can tell us just by looking at her? ’

Dr Kendall looks up to the gallery and nods hello.

‘Only that she’s been in the water for at least two days. ’ There’s a tenderness in his voice at odds with the gleaming surgical instruments in the tray behind him. ‘So that narrows down your time of death, I suppose. As for the cause … I’ll be frank with you, Sergeant. There’s no obvious wound. Water covers death’s tracks. It gets into the body through the orifices and starts decomposing from the inside as well as out. It affects the tox report. We will work quickly, and to the highest standard, but I can’t guarantee that we’ll find the cause of death. Let’s talk in the morning. ’

‘Christ. ’ She pushes the heels of her hands onto closed eyes, but the image of Pippa’s face is imprinted on the back of her eyelids. She looks to the door; she ought to check on Alec, for form’s sake as much as anything. Dave doesn’t need to be told what she’s thinking. ‘I’ve got this, ’ he says. ‘You go to him. ’ It is possibly the kindest thing anyone’s ever done for her. He places a hand on her arm, a light gesture but it’s not lost on Sanj. Tess notes his double take, then watches as the horror below wipes the suspicion from his mind, for now at least. She leaves Dave and Sanj to watch the post-mortem.

In the lift, her legs go. She has pulled herself to her feet by the time she gets to the front desk. The receptionist points her towards Accident and Emergency. Tess concentrates on putting one foot in front of the other, reading the signs, breathing through her mouth, and trying to close her mind’s eye to the sight of Pippa Gillespie’s body, but the image is imprinted on her for ever.

Her badge helps her to jump the queue – she can’t help thinking she gets more respect from the triage receptionist as a Detective Sergeant than she would as a wife – but it still takes her the best part of an hour to find out that Alec has discharged himself. She boils with rage – if he’s gone back to the scene with his health in tatters, she’ll kill him.

She asks to see the registrar who treated him; another half-hour wait.

She calls Daisy, who’s still at Molly’s. They’re lucky she’s popular. If she has dinner with a different friend every night, that can take them ten days into a case. After that, repeat requests usually get awkward. This time, though, everyone knows the case they’re working on. Friends are falling over themselves to have Daisy for the evening, offering sleepovers, weekend shifts, school pickups. ‘Whatever helps you find those girls’ is the phrase they hear again and again. Tess hopes the goodwill continues into the murder inquiry. Lately, she’s been wondering if the hospitality would extend to a single mother trying to juggle shifts around work and a new relationship.

‘It’ll be a little while yet, ’ says Tess. ‘Home in time to see you to bed, though. ’

‘Have you found her? ’ says Daisy. She has become fixated on Pippa Gillespie; she knows they’re the same age, and she can see what the case is already doing to her parents, three days in. Tess feels a pang for the innocent days when Daisy thought that all they did was direct traffic.

Tess and Alec naturally never tell Daisy anything before it’s released to the media. ‘Not yet, sweetie, ’ she says. ‘Be good for Molly’s mum. ’

Eventually, the registrar comes in, a young man smelling of coffee and sweat. There’s a comet of blood on his white coat.

‘Mr Hardy discharged himself against my recommendation, ’ he says. ‘I’m telling you because I’m concerned for his health. Physically, he was fine. I mean, the water doesn’t seem to have done any lasting damage. But he’s suffering from acute stress, and there are more tests we’d like to run. With anyone else I’d recommend that he take time off work, but … ’ He spreads his hands. Tess doesn’t know whether he’s implying that the case is more important than one man’s health, or whether he’s simply got the measure of Alec already and knows his advice would fall on deaf ears.

There’s a voicemail on her phone from Alec’s second in command, DS Beauman, wishing the boss well and telling him that they’ve got SOCO in now.

Alec hasn’t gone back to the crime scene.

So where is he?

Alec is not at home and he’s not answering his phone. Tess sees Daisy off to bed and opens a bottle of red. She searches Google maps on her iPad, scrolling up and down the length of the Sandbrook looking for patterns, clues, inspiration, until she feels dizzy. She calls the incident room; Sanj answers and immediately asks after Alec. So he’s not there. Dave’s working the scene at the Sandbrook; she texts him to see if Alec’s turned up, then again to see if they’ve found anything new. Both questions come back negative. She deletes the message thread out of habit even though this time there’s nothing incriminating.

She’s really starting to worry now. This disappearance is completely unprecedented. She pictures him collapsed behind the wheel somewhere en route to the Sandbrook, and she works herself up into a fury. For all his dedication to his job, he neglects what ought to be his number one priority: making sure he’s in good enough health to do it. There’s real fear under her concern, though, and she’s about to call the hospital when she hears his car on the driveway. It’s 10 p. m. As his key turns in the door, she’s waiting for him in the hall. The sight of him makes her stagger. He’s wearing a grey tracksuit, the police-station-issue kind they give to people whose clothes have been seized as evidence. The trousers are too short and his ankles are exposed, making him look ridiculous. His hair is plastered down.

She stopped touching Alec a while ago – it started to feel like betraying Dave – and he doesn’t seem to have noticed, or to miss it. She hesitates before going to hug him, and when she opens her arms, Alec folds his and shakes his head. Dave wouldn’t do this, is her reflex thought.

‘Where’ve you been? ’ she asks. It was supposed to come out concerned but it sounds interrogatory.

Alec pinches the bridge of his nose. He closes his eyes and lets them stay that way. ‘Driving. ’

It’s five hours since he discharged himself from hospital. The thought of him going round and round the ring road in these clothes tugs at the leftovers of her love.

‘Oh, Alec. What about your clothes? ’

He nods to a clear plastic bag on the doorstep. Inside, weeds are wrapped around clothes so muddied that Tess has to think back to what he was wearing when he left for work this morning. His new blue suit. They’ll have to throw it out. Even if they can get it clean, she knows he’ll never be able to wear it again.

When he pushes past her into the house, Tess can smell the soap from the police station showers on him.

‘D’you want to talk about it? ’ She pours Alec the last of the wine. He looks into its dark red surface like he’s seeing through it into something else.

‘I saw her in the mortuary, ’ says Tess. ‘It must have been awful for you. ’ Alec doesn’t even blink. Dave or no Dave, Tess recognises a man who needs human touch. She puts her hands on his shoulders. When they first got together, she used to massage his shoulder blades at the end of every day, feeling the knots unravel under her fingers. He used to say she had the magic touch, that no one else could relax him like she did. Now, he shrugs her off.

‘I’m going to check on Daisy. ’

Tess follows him upstairs and they stand at Daisy’s open bedroom door for a while. She is asleep under a garland of IKEA fairy lights, watched over by a peeling Taylor Swift poster. The tweenage sneer she wears all day has vanished. Her lips are an open rose; her brow is smooth. The difference between their perfect sleeping daughter and the deformed corpse of Pippa Gillespie hits Tess in the guts.

‘Is she breathing? ’ Alec says suddenly, an octave higher than his usual register. ‘I can’t see her moving. ’ Before Tess understands what’s happening, he’s kneeling at Daisy’s bedside. He used to do this when she was a baby, leap out of bed in the middle of the night to check she was still alive. Tess had completely forgotten about it until now.

‘She’s not moving! ’ He puts his hands on Daisy’s shoulders.

‘Alec, stop it! ’ Tess keeps her voice to a whisper even though his was a shout but it’s too late, he’s shaking her awake. Daisy’s body flops but her eyes snap wide.

‘Daddy, what are you doing? ’ she says, as Alec pulls her into a clumsy embrace and buries his face in her nightie. Tess doesn’t have enough hands as she tries to pull him off and calm Daisy at the same time. In the end, she has to tug at the collar of his tracksuit top. The pressure on his windpipe seems to knock the panic out of him, and he lets Daisy go.

‘Out, ’ snarls Tess.

‘I’m sorry, darling. ’ Alec walks backwards towards the door. ‘I just needed to make sure you were OK. ’

It only takes Tess a couple of minutes to soothe Daisy back to sleep; she’s confused rather than frightened, still young enough that a few soft words from her mother can chase the monsters away, and Tess hopes that in the morning they’ll be able to dismiss it as a bad dream. She waits until Daisy’s breathing regulates, tucks a stray lock of hair behind her daughter’s ear, and tiptoes out onto the landing.

Alec sits in the half-dark like a little boy, his knees pulled up to his chest, leaning against the wall as if he has slid down it. Tess kneels next to him on the carpet. His eyes glitter.

‘I can still see her face, ’ he says. He holds out his arms in front of him, palms upwards, elbows bent. ‘I can still feel the weight of her. ’ Tess pulls him against her shoulder; he resists for a moment, then collapses and weeps into her neck. This time, when she reaches around and starts to work on the muscles in his shoulders, he lets her. His back feels like a sheet of metal; she keeps going until her fingers ache and she starts to feel bone and sinew under his sweatshirt. When Tess shifts position, Alec seems to gather himself, like he’s let out exactly the amount of emotion that was clouding his judgement and not a drop more. He doesn’t move his head from her breast, but there’s an edge to his voice that almost thrills her.

‘We’re no longer dealing with a missing persons inquiry. We know where we stand now. We’ll get this. ’ Without warning, he leaps to his feet. ‘We know who we’re dealing with now. A monster, someone who can leave a child to rot in a river. ’ He starts to pace, his ridiculous bare ankles going backwards and forwards in Tess’s eyeline. ‘This is what we trained for, isn’t it? To get justice for families like this. ’

His new confidence is infectious. Tess often forgets, in all the frustration of living with Alec, what a brilliant detective he is. Or rather, she forgets why he’s so good at his job. It’s the quality that first attracted her to him, that pure, almost old-fashioned belief that good can vanquish evil.

He is a good detective because, underneath it all, he is a good man.

It’s going to make leaving him so much harder.

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