‘Who found her?’
‘A woman walking her dog.’
Why is it always someone walking a dog?
We partially circle two roundabouts and enter a small triangle of streets squeezed between Clifton Lane and Fairham Brook. The cottages and semi-detached bungalows are post-war, with low-pitched roofs, flat-fronted facades and postage stamp-sized front gardens.
I know areas like this one, full of hardworking, respectable people, who have pushed back against low pay, insecure employment and government austerity by working multiple jobs, driving second-hand cars, and setting achievable goals rather than aspirational ones.
Turning a corner, I see a crowd spilling onto the road. People jostle and press forward, hoping for a glimpse of the fallen girl, or to see a real-life tragedy unfold that isn’t on their TV screens. Two police cars are parked across the entrance to the community centre. Forensic technicians clad in light blue overalls are unloading silver cases from the sliding doors of a van.
A handful of uniformed officers are keeping the crowd behind bollards and crime-scene tape. DS Edgar flashes his badge and raises the tape above my head. A big man steps from the crowd, yelling, ‘Is it her? Is it our Jodie?’
He’s wearing a fawn-coloured raincoat tight across his chest and his head seems to perch like a stone ball on top of his shoulders.
‘Please go home, Mr Sheehan,’ says Edgar. ‘We’ll tell you as soon as we know something.’
He tries to force his way past the police but is pushed back. A younger man grabs his arm. ‘Come on, Dad,’ he says. ‘Let it go.’ He’s a smaller, deflated version of his father, with short hair and long sideburns that reach down his cheeks.
‘Poor bastards,’ mutters Edgar as we walk in single file along an asphalt path, entering a large copse of trees surrounded by a wild meadow. It’s four-thirty and already growing dark. Ahead of us three lampposts cast pools of light that lengthen and shorten our shadows. Further on, we reach the footbridge with welded metal handrails and the sound of running water underneath. As we cross Fairham Brook, I glance over the side and see where the channel widens into a pond fringed by reeds. Eighty yards away, in a small clearing, tree trunks have been turned to silver by bright lights, and portable generators are throbbing like a drum track playing on a loop. A white canvas tent has been erected at the base of a steep embankment. Lit from within, it glows like a Chinese paper lantern with moths trapped inside.
Two Land Rovers are parked at the western side of the footbridge. Lenny Parvel is seated in one of them, talking on a two-way radio. I wait until she’s finished.
She shakes my hand, wanting to pull me closer into a hug, but this is work. Her hazel eyes soften. ‘I wouldn’t normally.’
‘Yes, you would.’
Dressed in a Barbour jacket and wellingtons that reach as high as her knees, she has pale, fine features and bottle-black hair cut short enough to brush against her shoulders. Lenny isn’t her real name. She was christened Lenore Eustace Mary Parvel by parents who thought a long name would give their daughter added status, although Lenny would dispute this. She once told me she’d have earned an extra A level if she hadn’t spent so much time filling out her name.
Lenny was the first police officer on the scene when my parents and sisters were murdered. She found me hiding in the garden shed where I’d armed myself with a mattock, convinced I was the next to die. It was Lenny who coaxed me out and wrapped me in her coat and sat with me until the cavalry arrived. I remember her crouching beside the open door of the patrol car, asking me my name. She offered me a Tic Tac, holding my trembling hand as she shook them onto my palm. That moment, her touch, made me realise that there was still warmth in the world.
In the days that followed, Lenny sat with me during the police interviews and watched over me when I slept in a foldout bed at the station. During the committal hearings and the trial, she shielded me from the media and chaperoned me to court, keeping me company as I waited to give evidence. She was sitting at the back of the courtroom when I swore to tell the truth and tried not to look at my brother in the dock.
Back then she was a constable, barely a year into the job. Now she’s head of the serious operations unit in Nottinghamshire Police; married, divorced, remarried, with two grown-up stepchildren. I’m like a third.
‘How much did Edgar tell you?’ she asks.
‘Jodie Sheehan, aged fifteen, went missing last night.’
Lenny shows me a photograph of two girls, pointing to Jodie, a sloe-eyed teen with thick brown hair and a gap in her front teeth that braces didn’t fix.
‘She was last seen by her cousin, Tasmin Whitaker, at five past eight at a fireworks display less than a mile from here.’ Lenny points to the second girl in the picture, who is taller and heavier, with a round face and a lopsided smile.
‘Jodie told Tasmin she was going to a chippie on Southchurch Drive. They planned to meet up later at Tasmin’s house. Jodie didn’t arrive.’
Lenny leads me down the muddy path that switches back and forth and grows steeper in places. As we near the tent, duckboards are set out like stepping stones and arc lights create pools of bright light that turn dew-beaded cobwebs into jewelled threads.
A canvas flap is pulled back and I catch a glimpse of the body. Jodie Sheehan is lying on her right side with her knees pulled up towards her chest. Her jeans and knickers are bunched at her ankles above her suede boots, and her sweater has been pulled up beneath her chin. Her bra is unclasped and twisted to the side, exposing small, pale breasts that are stained with mud or blood. Her eyes are open, popping slightly, with a dull white sheen as though cataracts have grown across her pupils.
I feel embarrassed by her nakedness. I want to pull up her jeans and pull down her sweater and say how sorry I am that we’re meeting like this. I want to apologise that people are taking photographs and scraping beneath her fingernails and swabbing her orifices. I’m sorry that she can’t tell me who did this to her; or point him out from a line-up or scrawl his name on a piece of paper.
I crouch and notice the leaves and grass clinging to her hair. There are scratches on her hands and forearms, and bruising to her right eye, and a bump on her forehead. She’s wearing a single earring – a delicate silver stud that catches the light. Where is the other one? Was it lost in a struggle, or taken as a souvenir?
A ghost-like figure steps into the tent. Clad from head to toe in shapeless hooded coveralls, Robert Ness is barely recognisable, but he makes the tent feel smaller because of his bulk.
The senior Home Office pathologist, sometimes called Nessie, is in his late forties with skin so dark it makes the whites of his eyes seem brighter. He’s wearing rimless glasses that momentarily catch the light when he tilts his head.
‘Do you two know each other?’ asks Lenny.
We nod but don’t shake hands.
‘Let’s make this quick,’ says Ness. ‘I don’t want to leave her out here.’
‘When did she die?’ asks Lenny.
‘Early hours. It was cold last night, which lowered her body temperature and kept the insects away.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Unclear. She suffered a blow to the back of her head that didn’t fracture her skull but might have rendered her unconscious. I’ll know more after the post mortem.’