He sprang over the wall and down onto the road at the other side, making sure he landed on the tarmac, avoiding the bare earth close to the wall. And there it was, in the still-damp earth. A perfectly formed tyre track. A bicycle tyre.

‘Different kind of track, Joe,’ she said, looking down at him. ‘And it’s one set of tracks. One bike. I think we just made some progress.’

He was already on his phone.

17

They’d taken a cast of the tyre track and mud samples themselves. Rita had a kit in the Land Rover. By the time they were back at Elland Road, the CCTV footage of the various routes away from the crime scene had been prioritized, anywhere a bike could have gone, a spider’s web on the map, spinning out in all directions from the crime scene. The only thing now was finding someone willing to go through it all.

‘You get anywhere with Karen Cullen last night? Your report was a bit vague.’

They were in the pathologist’s lab, speaking in hushed tones, as though the dead might resent the sound of raised voices.

‘Not sure. I think so. It felt like there was something going on. I reckon she’ll tell me. Got her mobile number.’

She smirked. ‘You always get their number?’

‘I wish.’

‘You phoned that French chick up at the university yet?’

‘What? No!’

In truth he’d forgotten all about her. No wonder he was single. Then there was the woman from the library. He had managed to get her number. But that was work-related. For the moment, at least.

‘You know,’ Rita said as they waited for the pathologist to go through the paperwork, ‘you’ve got a good way with folk. All those little silences of yours, the pauses, the patience? I mean, I’m more the jump-in-with-both-feet type.’

‘I’d noticed. By the way, what was all that we-don’t-think-you-did-it stuff yesterday with Cullen and his goons?’

‘Well, we don’t, do we? Not yet. No point rilin’ ’em up ’til we’ve got a main suspect. Then we can go a-rilin’.’

‘I’ll look forward to it.’

The pathologist was new. She had a Scottish accent and couldn’t have been much more than a teenager. Joe wondered whether Sam might end up doing the same thing, poking around in the singed remains of a scumbag that no one cared about. Was there a more dispiriting way to spend one’s Saturday?

‘Jesus,’ Rita whispered as the white plastic sheet was whipped back.

It was a mound, not a person, so far removed from a discernible cadaver that the dull, depressing sight of a murder victim was replaced by a macabre curiosity. What was it Karen Cullen had said? It’d be the end of my life. He wanted to drag her down here now, so she could see what had happened to someone else’s child, their only child.