24

There were three patrol cars in attendance when they arrived. Broadyards Country Park was unrecognizable to Joe. He knew that they were close to its perimeter, but on the other side, perhaps half a mile from the car park where Craig Shaw had been left to burn. The new kill, though, was within the Kirklees boundary.

As soon as a pencil had been found in the victim’s eye socket, the info had been relayed back to District, and it was immediately confirmed that DS Rita Scannon would be SIO. She’d been informed shortly after she arrived at the scene with Joe. When she got the call, she took a deep breath, looked around, and that was that.

Joe had stayed just long enough to watch her assume control. Suddenly she was everywhere. Calm, smiling, efficient. Rushing nothing, not so much as a raised voice. She knew the name of every officer, and they responded to her orders as if they were glad she was in charge. It didn’t feel much like a typical murder scene, he thought as he watched her work. Then again, what was typical about murder?

There hadn’t been much for Joe to do. A quick look at the victim: a young lad with his head caved in, a square impression deep into his skull, around the temple area. The pencil had been left this time, pushed all the way in, the eye itself still intact, wide open, a watery grey.

With the gentle chunter of the mobile generator in the background, he’d watched things come to life. Rita was like a circus ringmaster, the way she orchestrated the show but never dominated it, a kind of centre-stage confidence, self-assured but making each player feel like the star.

He’d seen his fair share of circuses, too. Gustavo Romano, his granddad, had been a circus clown. A great one, famous enough in Italy to be offered work at Blackpool’s Tower Circus. Not the top job, though. Another Italian got that, and never let go of it. As Joe’s grandma used to say: Be careful with clowns, they’re the worst.

By one in the morning Joe was back in Leeds. There were no other officers at Elland Road from the Shaw case, not at that time of night, so he did it all himself, manning the phones, sending stuff from the Shaw case file across to Kirklees.

Now, as dawn broke, he was back at the murder scene. Light was just beginning to break through the trees overhead. There were vehicles parked right along the narrow lane, some facing one way, some the other. The road had been sealed off and tyre-track impressions had already been taken, so it didn’t much matter where anyone parked.