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the Police National Computer.
    ‘And when you’ve done that go online and look something up for me. Ever heard of free diving?’
    ‘Free diving? Sorry, boss, I’m from Birmingham. We don’t do sea, water, rivers. We like our concrete.’
    ‘Look it up when we’re off the phone. I want to know how long someone can hold their breath. How long they can stay under.’
    ‘Free diving.’ He could almost hear Turnbull frowning. The computer bleeped. ‘PNC’s back. The scooter’s a TWOC.’
    TWOC – Taking Without Consent.
    ‘When?’
    ‘This weekend. From a driveway over in Bradley Stoke. Nothing else.’
    ‘OK – let them know I’ve found it. Then speak to someone in the support unit. Find out what the underwater search unit were doing in quarry number eight, over in Elf’s Grotto.’
    Silence.
    ‘You there, Turnbull? Give someone in Support a call.’
    ‘I don’t need to, boss. I can tell you what the search unit was doing. They were searching for a misper. A woman. Yesterday.’
    ‘Did they find her?’
    ‘Not in the quarry. But they have now. That was the other thing I was going to call you about. They’re not far from you. Eight minutes if you drive legally. Four if you don’t.’
    7
    Lucy Mahoney had been missing for three days. Judging from the state of her she’d been dead for most of that time. Her body had been found by hikers out in the Mendips on the banks of the Strawberry Line, the abandoned railway the Victorians had used to transport strawberries from the fields around Cheddar. The countryside there was pretty, the poppies already out in the linseed fields, a pollen heat haze hanging over it. But there was nothing pretty about the corpse: visible from a hundred yards away, a tower of shifting flies hovering above, a blackened pile of clothing and skin.
    She was lying on her back. Dressed in a distinctive stripy sweater, skirt and flower-printed Doc Martens covered with leaves, she had already decomposed enough for some bones to protrude through the discoloured flesh. Flea led the team through the wrapping of the body: batting away the flies, pulling carefully to unstick the corpse from the fluids on the ground, log-rolling it into a linen sheet, and lifting it into a white body-bag – face up because the mortuaries hated corpses arriving face down. Mahoney had been well built and, even decomposed, she wasn’t easy to lift. Inside the suits the team were sweating: Flea could see the rivulets running down Wellard’s face.
    Flea had had commendations for her work. Two. And she was only twenty-nine. She was scared stiff she’d only got them because she was a woman, scared stiff it was the only reason she’d made sergeant and was leading the unit. Being scared like this was why she over-compensated for her build and height. It was why she knocked herself out doing insane training circuits, running ten miles a day or working weights into the night – high weights, low reps – day after day after day. Under the water everyone was equal. On land she had to work twice as hard to hold her end up.
    They sealed the body in a yellow biohazard bag – XL, because corpses sometimes bloated to twice their original size – and carried it along the quarter-mile track to the rendezvous point, stopping every so often to rest and swap sides. From time to time they’d check for long-range press lenses outside the cordons, waiting for a chance to snap her and the boys covered from head to toe in body fluid.
    The rendezvous car park was packed with vehicles. The coroner’s private ambulance was there – two men in grey suits and black ties standing near it, smoking – and the head of the CSI team, a woman in a red Canada sweatshirt and jeans, sitting in the opened door of a car, drinking a cup of tea. It wasn’t until Flea had got the stretcher into the coroner’s van, had chucked her respirator into a little wheelie-bin, and was standing next to the unit’s Sprinter at the RV car park letting