Read Some Lie and Some Die for Free Online

girl stared at him, round-eyed, marvelling at this omniscience, he said, ‘Rosie’s all right.’ He pointed. ‘She’s over there, in that tent.’
    ‘Thanks. God, we were really scared.’
    How much more of this was there to be, he wondered, before he had to say yes, yes, it sounds like her? Then he saw Dr Crocker, lean, trim and energetic, stalking towards him. The police doctor wore a white raincoat and carried an umbrella as well as his bag.
    ‘I’ve been away for the weekend, Reg, taking your people’s advice. I thought I was going to keep clear of all this. What’s it about?’
    ‘Didn’t they tell you?’
    ‘No, only that I was wanted.’
    ‘There’s a dead girl in the quarry.’
    ‘Is there, by God? One of
them?’
Crocker pointed vaguely into the crowd.
    ‘I don’t know. Come and see.’
    The rain was falling lightly, intermittentiy, the way rain does after a drought and before a deluge, as if each drop was being squeezed painfully out. Three police cars had succeeded in negotiating the rough ground and were parked at the quarry edge. In the quarry itself the photographers had completed their work, the undergrowth had been cut away and a tarpaulin canopy erected to screen the body from view. In spite of this, a crowd of boys and girls squatted or lolled all round the quarry, speculating among themselves, their eyes wide.
    ‘Get back to your tents, the lot of you,’ Wexford said. ‘You’ll get wet and you won’t see anything.’ Slowly, they began to move. ‘Come on now. Ghoulishness is for ignorant old people. Your generation is supposed to be above this sort of thing.’
    That did it. One or two of them groaned sheepishly. By the time Wexford and the doctor had scrambled down on to the little lawn—the harebells trodden to a mush—the sightseershad dispersed. Crocker knelt by the body and examined it. After about five minutes he got up.
    ‘She’s been dead at least five days.’
    Wexford felt himself relax with relief.
    ‘She was dead before the festival started,’ said Crocker, ‘and she wasn’t a teenager. I’d say at least twenty-seven, maybe thirty.’
    Under the canopy the flies were thick and noisy. Wexford rolled the body on to its side, revealing a large handbag of mauve patent leather which lay beneath it. Handbag, shoes and tights matched each other and clashed with the dark red dress. He opened the bag, spilling the contents on to a sheet of plastic. An envelope addressed to Miss Dawn Stonor, 23 Philimede Gardens, London, S.W.5, fell out. There was a letter inside it addressed from Lower Road, Kingsmarkham:
Dear Dawn, I will be glad to see you Monday but I suppose it will be one of your flying visits and you won’t condescend to stop the night. Granma has had one of her bad turns but is all right again now. I got the mauve slacks and blouse from the cleaners that you left there and you can take it away with you. They charged 65 p. which I will be glad of. See you Monday. Love, Mum
.
    He noted the illiteracies, the badly formed writing. Something else in the letter struck a chord in his mind, but he could think about that later. The main thing was that she had been easily and rapidly identified. ‘Have the body removed,’ he said to Sergeant Martin, ‘and then I want the quarry searched.’
    There was blood on his hand, fresh blood. How could that have come from a body five days dead? He looked again and saw that it hadn’t. The blood was his own, flowing from a small wound near the base of his thumb.
    ‘Broken glass everywhere,’ he said wonderingly.
    ‘Have you only just noticed?’ Crocker gave a harsh, humourless laugh. ‘You needn’t bother to search for a weapon.’They had come gaily and noisily, erupting from cars and trains and buses, arriving on a summer’s day to hear music and bringing their own music with them. They left downcast, in silence, trudging through the rain. Most of them had had no more than a dozen hours of sleep throughout the weekend.