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steadily and inventively. Kincaid stood a few yardsup the hill, his hands in his pockets, his lips pressed together in impatience.
    The attendants put the stretcher down and looked up at him. “ ’Fraid we’re going to have to upend her, guv,” said the one with the rich vocabulary.
    “Just be careful, will you?” Kincaid admonished them, and Gemma heard him mutter something about “buggering up the physical evidence” under his breath.
    “We’ll get some straps.”
    Gemma took advantage of their descent to the van to slip through the gate and join Kincaid.
    “Feeling a bit better?” he asked.
    “Much. Where’s the inspector?”
    “Limehouse Station, getting things organized. Just our luck they closed the old station here on the Island and the new one’s not finished.”
    Looking up at him, Gemma noticed the small spot on his chin he’d missed with the razor that morning, shaving in her cupboard-sized bathroom. She was close enough to smell her soap on his skin and the thought of their shared shower brought a smile to her lips. “Sorry about your Saturday,” she said. “What about Kit?”
    “The Major stood in for me.”
    “Kit must have been disappointed, just the same.”
    “Yes.” Kincaid didn’t meet her eyes.
    “How rotten for you.” Gemma knew he hated to let Kit down, and she also suspected that any guilt he felt over failing in his commitment to Kit was strengthened by his guilt over Vic’s death. Although he didn’t talk about it, she’d sensed it gnawing at him the past few months, and she felt it driving a wedge between them.
    “Worse for him, poor little beggar.”
    Gemma thought of Toby, who accepted her frequent unexpected absences with equanimity because it was all he’d ever known. “He will get used to it, and you’ve not much choice, have you?”
    “We’ll have her out of here in a tick, guv,” called out the talkative attendant, returning from the van.
    Glancing at Gemma, Kincaid seemed about to reply, then shrugged and turned his attention back to the corpse on the stretcher. Frowning, he said, “If she were dumped here, how did the killer get her into the park? That gate would have made things bloody difficult.”
    “I suppose you could get through it with a body over your shoulder, if you were strong enough. But you’d be visible, even at night. There must be other entrances.” Watching the men strap down the body, then hoist the stretcher into an upright position and maneuver it through the gate, Gemma added, “Did you find anything under the body?”
    “No. Nor any definite evidence of dragging. But the ground’s hard. It might not have left traces.”
    Leveling their burden on the far side of the gate, the stretcher-bearers moved down the path to the car park. As Gemma and Kincaid followed, the attendants slid the stretcher roughly into the van and slammed the doors.
    Gemma winced as she thought of how carefully the woman’s body had been placed in its bower of grass. “That wasn’t necessary. There’s no bloody hurry now, is there?”
    Kincaid gave her a surprised glance. “You know it doesn’t mean anything to them. She’s not a person anymore.”
    Gemma shook her head. “She is to someone, somewhere.”
    “She did look remarkably peaceful,” he said, and she heard the understanding in his voice. It was odd, thought Gemma, that the more disfigured the corpse, the easier it seemed to distance oneself from the victim’s humanity. With a light touch on her shoulder, Kincaid added, “I suppose we’d best get on with it. I think we should see the pensioner who discovered the body. And I’d like to have a look at the geography of the park on our way.”
    When he’d retrieved his jacket and his
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from his car, they climbed back up to the Mudchute plateau. Skirting the crime scene, they continued eastwards along thepath. To their left lay a steep bank, and at its bottom the high-fenced back gardens of a new housing estate. The dense growth of