Nine Lives by Anita Waller (best english books to read .txt) 📗

streets of Sheffield that was home to the River Sheaf, after it had swallowed up the smaller Porter.

They could see a man in the distance, and Callum turned to speak to them. He had to shout over the roar of the water, but they got the gist of what he was saying, that the body was where the man was. He had been left to make sure it didn’t dislodge and carry on down to the Sheaf, and ultimately the Don. The speed of the water would have it quickly heading for the coast, and expulsion into the North Sea.

The body was unclothed, her long blonde hair floating on the water. She was young; Erica estimated around nineteen or twenty, and didn’t think she had been dead long. She used her torch to look at the woman, and the way she was being held in situ, trapped by two huge stones that jutted out from the walls of this massive underground tunnel. She wanted to shield her. Her nakedness was on show and she somehow felt that this young girl would be mortified if she knew that four men could all see every part of her. There was nothing obvious to indicate cause of death, and Erica sighed as she switched off her torch.

Beth Machin seemed to sense what her boss was thinking. ‘We can’t,’ she said gently, placing her mouth close to Erica’s ear. ‘We can’t cover her. We have nothing to do it with, and it would be swept away within a minute in this torrent.’

They could see five people approaching in the distance, and Erica breathed a sigh of relief. ‘It looks as if Ivor is here.’

Ivor Simmonite, his white hair almost acting like a beacon, raised a hand in greeting when he spotted the small group of people, and two minutes later he was surveying the scene. He tried to wipe the water spray from his glasses, but knew it was a losing battle. He waited for the photographer to finish taking photographs, and then instructed his team to prepare the body for removal. There was no point attempting to do anything under the present conditions, any clues to what had happened would have been washed away by the force of the water; he wanted this young girl back in his autopsy suite where he could investigate how and when she had died.

Erica’s team were the first to leave; they could do no more. They had given up speaking, the noise from the rushing water was deafening, but slowly their hearing returned as they reached the normality of the station concourse. Crime scene tape had been extended from the concourse to the opening of the culvert, steering passengers away from the area the police needed to use, and the four of them looked a sorry sight as they emerged.

‘Tea?’ Ian Thomas offered, and they all nodded in gratitude.

The station was quiet; it was still only half past five, and the commuter rush hadn’t started.

‘I’m frozen,’ Beth said. ‘Think we can all fit in that little office?’

‘We can try,’ Erica said, sipping at her drink.

She led them across and Graham Carver looked up in surprise as they all entered. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I wanted to get some extra seats in for when you came back, but it’s not taken you as long as I expected.’

‘We couldn’t do much down there,’ Erica explained. ‘They’re bringing the body up shortly, so thank you for getting the area screened off. We will have to go back down, but we will be better equipped, I promise you. I don’t think any of us realised what the conditions were like. In fact I’ll lay odds on none of us knew about this world underneath the station. We couldn’t really speak to the man who was looking after the body for us until we could get there, but I imagine there must have been someone else who raised the alarm and Jim stayed with her. I need Jim’s details, by the way, in case we need to ask him anything.’

‘No problem. Callum McNicol, the chap who led you down, is the man who was with Jim. Callum saw the body first. He called the police immediately, then me. He works nights, he’s sort of the night manager, but he sees to any maintenance that needs doing, stuff like that. As day manager, I deal more with passenger-related things, and trains. He’s still here somewhere. He came back up after he’d taken your Forensic team down. You want to speak to him now? Jim is called James Hardcastle, by the way,’ he added as Beth was taking notes.

Erica shook her head. ‘No, we need to get home and changed into dry clothes and shoes, I think. I’ll ring you later to say what we want, and see where we go from here. I need to requisition waders for us as a priority, because we’re going to have to go back to the place she was found, but it’s possible we’ll have to go in this damn river at some other point when we find out who she is and where she lived.’ Erica leaned across his desk and shook his hand. ‘Thank you for your co-operation, and for opening up the café. Police officers will be here for a couple of days, and will be grateful for that facility.’

Graham watched as they walked back across the concourse and headed out into the wind and rain of the car park. Nice smile, he thought, nice lady; he looked forward to seeing her again.

3

Frannie was eating breakfast when she heard Erica’s car pull onto the drive, and she quickly clicked on the kettle. The front door opened, and Erica called out, ‘Coffee, I need coffee.’

Frannie walked through to the hallway, then stopped. ‘You’re wet.’

‘I’m fucking soaked,’ Erica grumbled. ‘Look at me. And frozen. I’ve been in a river.’

‘What?’

‘A bloody river! I tell you, Fran, I’ve seen things this morning I didn’t even know