Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [4]
He had escorted Mark Dennis and Annette Rogers to the front door with minimal deviation to maintain the corridor of entry and exit to the scene.
He had checked the bedroom window and quickly found scrape-marks surrounding the latch. It was only a four-foot drop from the sill to the flat roof of the lean-to.
He had secured the scene. Which here in Shipcott meant shutting the front door and putting a note on it torn from his police-issue notebook. He'd considered the content of that note with care, running from the self-important 'Crime Scene' - which seemed merely laughable on a scrap of lined paper - through 'Police! Do Not Pass' (too bossy) and 'No Entry' (too vague), finally ending up with 'Please Do Not Disturb', which appealed to everybody's better nature and which he felt confident would work. And it did.
He had alerted Tiverton to the fact that foul play may possibly be involved in the death of Mrs Margaret Priddy of Big Pot Cottage, Shipcott, and Tiverton had called on the services of Taunton CID.
Taunton Homicide was a team of frustrated detectives generally under-extended by drunken brawls gone wrong, and Jonas thought Marvel should have been grateful for the call, not openly disdainful of him. He understood that in police hierarchy the village bobby - or 'community beat officer' as he was officially called - was the lowest of the low. He also knew that his youth worked against him. Any policeman of his age worth his salt should be at the top of his game - swathed in Kevlar, armed with something shiny, clearing tall buildings in his pursuit of criminal masterminds and mad bombers - not walking the beat, ticking off children and corralling stray sheep in some sleepy backwater. That was a job for an old man and Jonas had only just turned thirty-one, so it smacked of laziness or stupidity. Therefore Jonas tried hard to appear neither lazy nor stupid as he ran through his notes with Marvel.
It made no difference.
Marvel listened to the young PC's report with a glazed look in his eyes, then asked: 'Did you touch her?'
Jonas blinked then nodded - reddening at the same time.
Marvel pursed his lips. 'Where?'
'Her nose. Dr Dennis said it was broken and I felt it.'
'Why?'
Jonas felt his face burn as everyone in the room seemed to have stopped what they were doing to watch him being grilled.
'I don't know, sir. Just to see.'
'Just for fun?'
'No, sir, the doctor said it was broken and I checked.'
'Because you needed to confirm his diagnosis? Are you more highly qualified than him? Medically speaking?' Marvel dripped sarcasm from every pore, and from the corner of his eye Jonas saw the Taunton cops grin and roll their eyes at each other.
'No, sir.'
'Anyone else touch her?'
'The nurse, sir.'
'Was she more highly qualified than Dr Dennis?'
'No, sir.'
Marvel sighed and flapped his arms once helplessly like a man who has given up chasing down a mugger. The flap said, 'There's only so much you can do.'
'So the doctor touched her. Then you touched her. Then the nurse touched her.'
Jonas didn't correct Marvel on the sequence of events.
'Yes, sir.'
'Anyone else?'
'No, sir.'
'You sure? Not the milkman? The village idiot? You didn't get one man and his dog up here to give her a little poke?'
There were snorts of amusement all round.
'I'm sure, sir.'
Marvel sighed, then asked: 'What's your name?'
'PC Holly, sir.'
'Have you ever heard of a crime scene, Holly?'
'Yes, sir.' Jonas hated Marvel now. The man was grandstanding in front of his team and Jonas shouldn't have touched Margaret Priddy's nose, but still ...
'Have you ever heard of contaminating a crime scene, Holly?'
'Yes, sir.' The heat of embarrassment was leaving Jonas and being replaced by a cool and distant anger, which he found easy to hide but which he knew he would nurture forever in that very small and stony corner where he kept all that was not kind, responsible and