Fire Damage (A Jessie Flynn Investigation, Book 1) by Kate Medina Page A
Authors: Kate Medina
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fraying. He chuckled. Manning the line was part of the police initiation ceremony: the police equivalent of downing a yard of ale or walking around for the day with one trouser leg rolled up to the knee and a sign saying ‘please kick me’ stuck on your back. The constable would be a better officer for it – more cynical, less patient, more able to cut through the crap and zero in on the details that mattered.
The specialist search team had arrived yesterday afternoon, spent the hours until sundown dredging ditches, going through the drains, searching culverts. Nothing had been found. They would be back soon to continue – more chattering fodder for the ‘neighbours’. Police divers would spend the morning searching the water close to the house, and then fan out into adjacent fingers of the harbour. Search conditions promised to be miserable for those on land and in the water: freezing cold, a chill twenty-knot wind cutting across the sea, thick grey clouds massed above their heads promising yet another downpour.
Tugging up the collar of his jacket, Marilyn crossed the gravel drive to meet the dog handlers. There were two, each with a springer spaniel. An experienced sergeant in his mid-thirties who had been handling dogs for fifteen years and a constable with eight years under her belt. Marilyn had worked with both of them before, rated them, trusted them to deliver the best that could be delivered under difficult circumstances, knew of no one on his or neighbouring forces who would do better. He shook hands with each, stepped back and waited while they struggled into their forensic overalls.
From the back of the van the dogs were whining and yapping, scratching to get out. The van had stopped, their handlers disembarked. They knew that something was up, were keen to get on with the job.
These were not ordinary search-and-rescue dogs that Marilyn had called in. These were cadaver dogs. Trained to find a corpse, irrespective of its state of decomposition. These two spaniels were ‘air-scenting dogs’, able to pick up the scent of rotting flesh carried on the breeze. Their sense of smell was so acute that they could follow a microscopic trail of flesh and bone fallen from the skin or clothes of a person who had carried a body to where they had dumped it a month before.
Through the open car door, Marilyn caught sight of a Treagust and Sons’ plastic bag in the passenger footwell, rotten lamb shanks or pigs’ trotters to call the dogs from the body once it had been found – prevent them from scoffing what was left of the corpse – or to quench their hunger when the search was called off if it wasn’t found. Treagust was his favourite local butcher, a family-run business based in Emsworth, a quaint fishing village on the harbour a few miles west, which sold fantastic local produce, most of it organic, grass-fed, free-range, traceable. Only the best for the cadaver dogs, he thought grimly.
The handlers opened the back doors of their van, opened the cages within and slipped leashes around their dogs’ necks.
‘So what are we after?’ the male sergeant asked.
‘Legs,’ Marilyn replied frankly.
‘Right.’ They nodded in unison, entirely unfazed; they’d heard and seen far worse.
‘A man’s legs,’ Marilyn added. Rubbing his nose, which he suspected had succumbed to frostbite a couple of hours ago, feeling nothing but faint pins and needles pricking in its tip, he looked across the sloping grass to the water. The autopsy was booked for two thirty this afternoon and he would like to present Dr Ghoshal, the pathologist, with a whole body, rather than the ravaged half that he currently had. ‘We have a torso. The legs are missing. I’d like to have the other half by the autopsy this afternoon if possible. The legs may be in some serial killer’s freezer, but my sense is that’s unlikely.’
Whatever the general public thought from the plethora of police series and novels featuring serial killers,
The specialist search team had arrived yesterday afternoon, spent the hours until sundown dredging ditches, going through the drains, searching culverts. Nothing had been found. They would be back soon to continue – more chattering fodder for the ‘neighbours’. Police divers would spend the morning searching the water close to the house, and then fan out into adjacent fingers of the harbour. Search conditions promised to be miserable for those on land and in the water: freezing cold, a chill twenty-knot wind cutting across the sea, thick grey clouds massed above their heads promising yet another downpour.
Tugging up the collar of his jacket, Marilyn crossed the gravel drive to meet the dog handlers. There were two, each with a springer spaniel. An experienced sergeant in his mid-thirties who had been handling dogs for fifteen years and a constable with eight years under her belt. Marilyn had worked with both of them before, rated them, trusted them to deliver the best that could be delivered under difficult circumstances, knew of no one on his or neighbouring forces who would do better. He shook hands with each, stepped back and waited while they struggled into their forensic overalls.
From the back of the van the dogs were whining and yapping, scratching to get out. The van had stopped, their handlers disembarked. They knew that something was up, were keen to get on with the job.
These were not ordinary search-and-rescue dogs that Marilyn had called in. These were cadaver dogs. Trained to find a corpse, irrespective of its state of decomposition. These two spaniels were ‘air-scenting dogs’, able to pick up the scent of rotting flesh carried on the breeze. Their sense of smell was so acute that they could follow a microscopic trail of flesh and bone fallen from the skin or clothes of a person who had carried a body to where they had dumped it a month before.
Through the open car door, Marilyn caught sight of a Treagust and Sons’ plastic bag in the passenger footwell, rotten lamb shanks or pigs’ trotters to call the dogs from the body once it had been found – prevent them from scoffing what was left of the corpse – or to quench their hunger when the search was called off if it wasn’t found. Treagust was his favourite local butcher, a family-run business based in Emsworth, a quaint fishing village on the harbour a few miles west, which sold fantastic local produce, most of it organic, grass-fed, free-range, traceable. Only the best for the cadaver dogs, he thought grimly.
The handlers opened the back doors of their van, opened the cages within and slipped leashes around their dogs’ necks.
‘So what are we after?’ the male sergeant asked.
‘Legs,’ Marilyn replied frankly.
‘Right.’ They nodded in unison, entirely unfazed; they’d heard and seen far worse.
‘A man’s legs,’ Marilyn added. Rubbing his nose, which he suspected had succumbed to frostbite a couple of hours ago, feeling nothing but faint pins and needles pricking in its tip, he looked across the sloping grass to the water. The autopsy was booked for two thirty this afternoon and he would like to present Dr Ghoshal, the pathologist, with a whole body, rather than the ravaged half that he currently had. ‘We have a torso. The legs are missing. I’d like to have the other half by the autopsy this afternoon if possible. The legs may be in some serial killer’s freezer, but my sense is that’s unlikely.’
Whatever the general public thought from the plethora of police series and novels featuring serial killers,
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