Dying of the Light by Gillian Galbraith

hung low in the sky and heavy clouds began to encircle it, gradually obscuring it, stealing precious daylight and imposing a premature dusk on the chill city. From nowhere, large flakes of snow appeared, an endless, hostile stream of them, choking the windscreen wipers and smothering the icy road.
    At the scrapyard, a man waited for them, ill-dressed for the sudden blizzard, stamping his hob-nailed boots on the ground, trying to preserve any feeling in his feet. Seeing them he hurriedly pushed the heavy double gates open, gesticulating towards the north side of the yard, then jogged behind them to their parking place. As DS Oakley slammed the passenger door shut, he lost his balance on the snow-covered cement, falling forwards heavily and striking his right hand on a length of rusted, exhaust piping.
    ‘Oh, fuck!’ he bellowed on impact, kicking the tube as he lay, still spread-eagled on the ground like an overturned turtle. His thumb had a huge gash on it, running from the pulp down the front of the joint to the knuckle, and blood jetted from it, reddening his cuff as he held his bloody hand upwards, attempting to stem the flow. Taking Alice’s outstretched arm, he pulled himself up and examined his wound for a few seconds, then, grasping his injured hand in the other one, he smiled widely as if to signal that he was now all right. The two sergeants trailed behind their guide towards an untidy mound of skeletal, scrapped cars, smithereens of shattered windscreen glass crunching beneath their feet.
    ‘It’s in there,’ the foreman said, waving vaguely in the direction of a doorless Renault Clio which rested precariously on the burnt chassis of another vehicle.
    ‘I seen it when I wis liftin’ the car up wi’ the crane… so I jist dumped it oan the other wan, and called yous.’
    ‘You’re sure it’s a b… b… body?’ Simon Oakley asked, his thumb pressed hard against his mouth. Thin strands of his fair hair were being blown by the wind into his eyes, making them water.
    ‘No. But it looked like wan… less Andy’s up tae his games again.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ Alice asked.
    ‘A couple o’ months ago he got wan o’ they naked dummies, ken, and put it in a Jag. I nearly wet masel wi’ fright.’
    From their viewpoint on the ground, nothing could be seen inside the Renault, so, exchanging nervous glances, they simultaneously began to climb up to it, Alice clambering onto the bonnet of the burnt hulk and Oakley stepping up onto its boot. He got up there first, bent hisweighty torso through the gap on the driver’s side, and craned in.
    ‘It’s a body alr… r… right, Alice,’ he shouted, wobbling slightly on his makeshift platform, snowflakes starting to lie on his broad back as he continued looking inside. Half a minute later, as he remained motionless, gazing into the space, Alice said, ‘Come on, Simon! We’d better get going, eh? Start taping off the area. I’ll get the stuff from the car. The boss may be here any minute, and she’ll expect us at least to have made a start by the time she arrives.’
    Immediately Oakley’s head re-emerged from the interior , and like a great lumbering bear he began slowly and carefully to descend, stepping warily along the curved surfaces until, in an undignified rush, he slid to the ground, bumping his buttocks and landing feet first, his balance saved only by Alice grabbing his arms.
    ‘Thanks, pal,’ he said, looking anxiously into her eyes.
    ‘Well?’ she asked, still holding onto him as if they were engaged in some kind of strange dance.
    ‘Well, what?’ he replied, bemused, blood from his injured thumb dripping on to the ground.
    ‘A man? A woman? The body. What was it?’
    ‘Female,’ he said wearily, ‘maybe thirty-five or forty. Arms across her chest like the other one. She had a gold chain around her neck and it looks as if she’s been s… s… stabbed, too.’

    Sets of stepladders were produced for the Scenes of Crime officers and