Dead Alone Read Online Free Page A

from the daylight. Below her on the gravel and silt floor were the beached whales of the river’s lifeless catch. A shopping trolley. A rusting bicycle frame. Two heavy-duty plastic sacks. There was something that looked like clothing caught under a plank of wood. Jessie jumped off the four-foot ridge and landed squarely on the solid ground. The cloth was a woman’s coat. She slipped on a plastic glove and took hold of the coat, gently tugging it free. She stared into the never-ending darkness ahead of her. Where would such a steep, dry tunnel lead?
    ‘Ma’am,’ shouted Fry. She could make out the silhouette of the lower half of his body at the tunnel entrance. He sounded anxious. ‘Ma’am, what are you doing in there?’
    She walked back down the tunnel. It got softer underfoot the lower she got. Jessie passed Fry the coat without saying anything, then picked a high ridge and walked down the sloping bank to the skeleton. The ground was still getting softer with every step. She stood over the bones. Slowly sinking. Thinking. What had bothered her about the bones when she’d studied them through the binoculars bothered her even more now. She looked back to the gaping archway of the tunnel, staring at her like a one-eyed monster. Dormant. But dangerous. Her eyes returned to the skeleton. It wasn’t what Jessie expected a river to regurgitate. Bodies pulled from the Thames were the worst kind. Like leaves left in water, the skin formed a translucent filmover flooded veins. Bloated with river water, corpses would burst at the touch, emptying their contents like a fisherman’s catch. There was something about the whiteness of this ribcage, rising out of the brown-black mud like a giant clam, that made her think the river had not claimed this body. Human hands had put it there. Nature was never that neat.
    The forensic team arrived eventually. With no sense of urgency, they ambled along the sliver of countryside towards her, laughing and joking, in a pack. Shift workers all. Bodies had a habit of turning up at odd times; theirs was not a nine-to-five existence. They looked confused when they saw the bag of bones they’d been called out for.
    ‘I want everything picked up inside the area. Film it, photograph it, then bag it up. I’ve called the River Police. Low tide is in fifty minutes, then the tide will be racing back in. Take mud samples, water samples and get the temperature of the water and air.’
    They looked at her the same way as DC Fry had. What? For this?
    She felt unsure in front of these men. They knew more about the nature of death than she ever would. She tried to keep the nerves out of her voice. ‘The head, hands and feet are missing. Keep an eye out,’ she said.
    ‘They’d have fallen off during decomposition. The head is probably in Calais by now.’
    ‘Exactly,’ said Jessie. ‘So why isn’t the rest of this poor soul in Calais too? The tide is too strong. This skeleton should be completely broken up, not sitting neatly in the mud like that.’
    ‘What are you thinking?’ said one of them, softening immediately.
    ‘I don’t know yet. But bones don’t emerge clean and white from years of being buried in the mud, without a billion micro-organisms making them their home. Just because it’s a skeleton, doesn’t mean it’s old news.’
    She left them standing in the mud.
    ‘This is a wind-up,’ said one.
    ‘Sounds like she knows what she’s talking about,’ said another.
    ‘Trust me,’ said the first. ‘I heard it from a mate at her AMIT. She’s being taken down a peg or two.’
    DC Fry looked up into the sky. ‘Bloody Nora, you got the flying squad out!’
    Jessie didn’t look up.
    ‘They are filming the foreshore and surrounding area. On my orders.’ Was she mad? She should never have risen to the bait. Jones would go ballistic.
    ‘Ma’am, that isn’t our lot up there, that’s the press.’ PC Ahmet pointed as he walked, his long frame almost reaching the