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  The deputy made a face. “I can’t stand gyms, all that group sweating in smelly rooms. Give me a good game of football any day.”

  “You’re on. I was thinking of getting a team together for the five-a-side league.”

  Before Liam had had a chance to object the gym bunny moved on.

  “I’m assuming you didn’t come over just to watch me eat, so what do you want?”

  Liam pulled up a chair and leaned in confidingly. “You gave me a look yesterday.”

  Aidan leant back as far as he could. “Whoa now, it wasn’t that sort of look.”

  Liam screwed up his face quizzically. “What?”

  As soon as he said it Aidan realised his mistake.

  “Sorry, I thought you meant that you and me-”

  Liam gave a loud guffaw.

  “Trust me, son, if I ever was to fancy a man it wouldn’t be you. You look like a giant carrot!”

  Aidan had decided to pursue a year-round tan to go with his fit physique, and it seemed to vary colour between orange and mahogany depending on which sunbed he used. But he didn’t take offence at Liam’s crack because he was in a good mood; a woman he’d had his eye on at the gym had started chatting to him the evening before about the size of their free weights. Pretty soon they would be sharing a table in the juice bar and then who could say where it might go.

  The carrot returned to the point of Liam’s approach.

  “OK, so what sort of look am I supposed to have given you yesterday then?”

  “One that implied that you could help me with finding what’s up with the boss and his moods. Was I wrong?”

  Just then another chair came scraping across and Andy appeared at Liam’s elbow, interjecting helpfully with, “We worked out that it has to be about a woman.”

  Liam rolled his eyes. “Even I’d worked that out, Einstein. It’s got to be something to do with Katy, but I can’t get to the bottom of what.”

  Aidan frowned. “The hump started in March.”

  “Aye, well, that’s when they split.”

  “Then it got a bit better in June. He changed from being grumpy to being an erratic zombie.”

  Liam laughed loudly and then toned it down, glancing at Craig’s thankfully still-closed office door.

  “That wasn’t a bad joke for you, Hughes. OK, so June and July he was a zombie, but for the past two weeks he’s been even worse than before. So, what’s up now, do you think?”

  Aidan frowned, thinking. He was unconsciously mimicked by Andy until the latter’s eyes suddenly opened wide in revelation.

  “I’ve got it!”

  “OK, then give it to us.”

  Andy leaned further in, followed by the others, making Davy roll his eyes at the gossipy huddle. Whoever had said men weren’t gossips lied. More to the point, if Craig came out of his office now and saw them, they’d better have a damn good excuse for why they weren’t at work. He shared his view with Liam who thanked him with a nod.

  “The boy’s right. We need a story in case the boss comes out.”

  Aidan came up with one. “We’ll tell him we’re discussing theories about why someone might have killed the girl. OK?”

  Two nods said that he was on.

  “OK, so tell us your bright idea then, Angel.”

  The artistic D.C.I. smiled. “OK, so Lucia and Ken got engaged in March and immediately after that the boss and Katy split up, yes?”

  The others nodded.

  “OK, so that means it was something to do with engagement and marriage. Had to be.”

  Liam considered for a moment. “You’re saying she wanted to get married and he didn’t.”

  “Or the other way around. It has been known for men to propose and get rejected you know.”

  The pain with which he said the words said that the scenario hit close to home.

  Liam dismissed the possibility immediately.

  “No way. The boss gives marriage a wide berth, even talking about it. He didn’t ask her.”

  Aidan agreed. “OK, so that just leaves us with, did she dump him because he didn’t ask, or did he end it with her?”

  Davy decided to throw in his penny’s worth.

  “He w...would never have ended it with her. He loved, loves her. That’s why he’s still in a strop months on.”

  Liam concurred. “I agree. The boss might not like the idea of marriage, but he does like Katy. So where does that leave us?”

  He jumped at a sudden tap on his shoulder and swung round to see Nicky standing there.

  “God, woman, you scared the life out of me! I thought you were the boss!”

  She glanced quickly towards Craig’s office and shook her head. “I came over to tell you that you have five minutes max before he comes out. He’s decided to brief at ten.”

  Liam nodded and waved her away, just about to continue speculating when Andy got in first.

  “OK, so he didn’t propose, and she dumped him because she got tired of waiting. Lucia’s engagement in March just brought it all home to her, which explains March to May. June and July they must have started talking again, so he got his hopes up. That’s why he wasn’t quite as grumpy then.”

  “Aye, but he was like a zombie. Why?”

  Andy gave a pained laugh.“Easy. That’s because he was thinking about her all the time.” He sighed heavily. “I’ve been there and zombie’s definitely the word for it. You get bugger-all work done when you’re like that.”

  Liam snorted derisively. He’d been happily married for years, but if he ever had behaved like such a pillock it had been so far in the dim and distant past that no-one on the squad had ever seen it, so if it ever did come out he could deny it, and he most definitely would.

  “Well, you’re both pathetic then, you and the boss. I’d never let a woman get to me that way.”

  “You would if you loved them.”

  Liam treated the words with the disdain he thought they deserved.

  “OK, just say I accept what you’re saying-”

  “That’s big of you.”

  Liam ignored him and went on.

  “How do you explain why he’s in such a state again now? How come the zombie stage ended two weeks ago?”

  Aidan grinned. “I’ve got that one. It ended because something she said dashed his hopes again.”

  Andy nodded furiously. “That’s it. She must have broken his heart by saying no, poor bugger.”

  Liam was getting exasperated. “No to what? No to getting back together or no to marriage?”

  Andy gazed at him with a mixture of sympathy and pity. “You really don’t understand women, do you?”

  Liam was indignant. “Yes, I do! I’ve got two at home!”

  “You make them sound like TV sets! First of all, one of ‘yours’ is seven years old, and second, no two women are the same.”

  Suddenly there was a clatter from Craig’s office, prompting Liam to give Andy a shove.

  “He’s on the move, so get on with it. And focus on Katy, will you. You can explain women in general to me some other time.”

  Andy’s next words came out rapid fire and without any punctuation.

  “She would never get back with him now unless he proposed so he did and she still said no or maybe a more definite no two weeks ago, which would explain his current mood.” He took a deep breath. “But... they’re still talking so there’s obviously still hope. That’s as much detail as I can guess at, but we could always find out more.”

  Craig’s door opened a crack and Liam leapt to his feet.

  “Not from him we won’t.”

  Andy and Aidan exchanged a pitying look.

  “I saw that.”

  “Well, don’t say stupid things then. Of course we won’t ask the chief. We’ll ask her.”

  Liam’s immediate objection to the plan failed to hit the air, as Craig banged on a desk at the front of the office and said, “OK, everyone, gather round.”

  Chapter Five

  The Labs. Third Floor For
ensics.

  John gazed at the small evidence bag lying on Des Marsham’s desk, his eyes focused narrowly to see past the obstacles of location, date and signature written on the seal that held it closed, so that all that fell within his constrained field of vision was the treasure contained within.

  It was a pathetic, tear-wrenching find, even for a scientist, so how much more so it would be to the deceased’s family would be impossible to say. This evidence sample, this tiny hyoid bone, spotless, which was interesting in itself, told them exactly how their victim had died. The pathologist corrected himself hurriedly, giving the dark-haired woman a name inside his head; not Jane Doe as the others would doubtless call her, but The Princess. It seemed fitting if whimsical. For some reason he, a detached scientist, had formed an allegiance to her bones, her lonely, unmarked grave so unspeakably awful that the grand title was an offering of comfort to her somehow, perhaps even an apology of sorts.

  It said, “I’m sorry for how you died” and “I promise to treat you with respect”, something that he did with all his patients, but on this occasion he somehow felt that it needed to be underlined. The girl had been discarded like rubbish, buried in a floor; presumably, her killer had hoped, never to be found.

  As John gazed at the bag and thought, Des and Grace were gazing at him, and when it seemed as if enough time had passed the Head of Forensics broke the silence with a cough, making the pathologist jerk to attention and focus once again on where he was.

  To save him blustering out an embarrassed explanation Des decided to get in first.

  “Grace, perhaps you could tell us exactly where you found the sample?”

  The CSI, in keeping with her ethics, could not tell a lie. “I didn’t find it actually. It was Tommy.”

  Thomas Aloysius Munroe, their youngest CSI, was known affectionately by everyone as Tommy. The abbreviation seemed in keeping with his status as the team’s baby, an image supported by his shock of blond curls and wide blue eyes.

  The lead CSI went on.

  “I honestly don’t know how he found it. It was buried beneath a chunk of concrete that we identified as coming from the base of the hotel’s Upper Queen Street wall.”

  The wall? Des’ eyebrows shot up.

  Had the bone migrated there from the floor as Craig had speculated, or the builders merely gathered the floor and wall debris in one truck? He shook his head at the carelessness of the rubble’s disposal; it had cost him three CSIs working for a whole day to find just the tiny hyoid and a few more hand and foot bones. But then, he admitted grudgingly to himself, how could the construction workers possibly have anticipated what the building’s demolition would yield?

  He focused back on the conversation.

  “Good for Tommy. Show us on the map where it was found, Grace. Exactly, please.”

  The CSI moved closer to her boss’ desk, muttering beneath her breath at its untidiness. By the time she’d managed to extricate the map of the city dump from beneath a dirty mug and a plate, she could restrict her disapproval to a mutter no more.

  “This place is disgusting! Doesn’t anyone ever tidy up?”

  The men’s widening eyes reminded her that she wasn’t in her own home, but instead of back-pedalling and apologising she decided to continue with her offence.

  “I’m coming back later to clean it.”

  Des’ mouth had just opened to object when John kicked him on the shin, and as quickly as his annoyance at being told he was untidy had risen, the forensic lead had spotted the opportunity to get someone to tidy up after him and clamped his mouth shut again.

  Thankfully Grace was oblivious to the exchange; too busy spreading out the map on a cleaner surface. Once she’d secured its edges with books, she leaned in to get her bearings from the day before, finally tapping on an area near the dump’s west gate.

  “That’s where the building debris from the hotel was left. The guard on the gate called it sections G and H.”

  John was curious. “Is that where Kelly’s builders normally leave their rubble?”

  The CSI answered decisively. “Yes. The guard said the contractors Kelly works for have been using it for years, but they hadn’t had anything to dump for six months.”

  “Business must have been slow.”

  She shrugged. “Or they were working on other projects, not demolition.”

  Good point. The second good point was that the six month hiatus and the cleanliness of all the bones they’d found made it almost certain that they had come from The Howard Tower.

  Des prompted her to continue. “Show us exactly where the hyoid was found, please.”

  Another moment’s consideration and Grace had narrowed the area to a point. “Tommy found it there and we bagged it immediately.”

  “And were all the other bones nearby?”

  “Within a couple of square feet. They must have scattered slightly when the rubble was dropped from the lorry.”

  “They probably came from the floor area where we found the skull, which means the hyoid might have come from there too, and just happened to have fallen beneath a wall block.”

  Grace went to shake her head but then gave a small shrug instead. “Impossible to say as it was lying loose.”

  “Did you notice anything embedded?”

  “No, but we’ve got most of the debris downstairs now, so we can take another look.”

  Des thought for a moment and then nodded her out with a thank-you, pulling a stool across to sit beside the map. His next question took John aback.

  “Is it hers, John?”

  The pathologist glanced at him sharply, offended without even knowing why.

  “What?”

  Des repeated his question in a calm, almost detached voice that underlined John’s overly emotional response.

  “Is the hyoid bone hers?”

  His logical tone brought the medic up short. It was a perfectly reasonable question and his over-reaction had demonstrated his own lack of objectivity in the case. The pathologist’s response was to scrutinise the tiny bone again more dispassionately, reporting on it as he did.

  “Its size indicates that it belonged to a female, and the fracture suggests that strangulation was the likeliest cause of death. Also, where it was found-”

  Des cut him off. “Forget where it was found and forget that for it to have belonged to someone other than the body downstairs seems unlikely. What’s your scientific opinion of the type of body that this hyoid came from?”

  John winced at the words, “the body downstairs”, even if in some ways he preferred it to Jane Doe, and tried to focus on the question. What was his scientific opinion of the hyoid’s origin?

  He stared at the bone again, noting that although it was too small to be anything but female, it wasn’t quite as small as he would have expected from their victim’s size. The Princess had been petite, almost delicate, and this bone belonged to a woman of average build. The realisation made him gasp.

  “It’s too big for her! This bone belongs to a woman of at least average size!”

  Seeing that the pathologist’s wheels were about to come off, Des forced him to stay on point.

  “By average you mean what?”

  John focused. “At least four inches taller and a larger frame than our victim, so probably a couple of stone heavier than her in life.”

  “And is it possible to find a large bone in a smaller body?”

  “Possible, yes, but unlikely. The hyoid forms at the same time as the rest of the skeleton so why would it grow so abnormally large in a small frame?” He continued in an incredulous voice. “But the place it was found… it’s where the rubble from The Howard Tower was left. The odds are-”

  Des cut in again. “The odds are Marc’s problem, let’s stick to ours. Remember, they only began work on that corner of the hotel at the weekend, but they may have been dumping rubble from elsewhere on the building site for weeks, so this could have come from there.”

  Just as John said, “We need
to tell Marc about this immediately”, the forensic scientist rose from his stool and shook his head.

  “And start him hunting for a second body before we’re sure there is one? No. First we DNA test all the bones we’ve found, to see whether they belong to the woman downstairs or if we are looking at two deaths. Then we tell Marc.”

  ****

  The C.C.U. 10.30 a.m.

  Blissfully ignorant of the debate happening five miles away across town Craig began updating his team, and was halfway through when he had to concede that they were at the far more questions than answers stage of the case. In the hope of breaking that deadlock he turned to the font of all knowledge, his senior analyst.

  “I know it’s early days, but anything you can give us would be welcome, Davy.”

  The computer expert tapped his smart-pad several times and after a few seconds the LED screen beside Nicky’s desk flickered to life and an arrowed diagram appeared. He abandoned the comfort of his seat and walked across to stand beside it, pointing at the image with his pen.

  “OK, this shows the timeline of ownership of the land where our victim was found, s…since eighteen hundred, thanks to Ash.”

  He moved to an arrow in the middle of the screen and indicated the words below it.

  “I’ll skip past the nineteenth century and move to nineteen-eighty-two, when the Department of Energy’s building w…was built on the land.”

  Craig raised a finger to interrupt. “Was it a new build or the conversion of an existing structure?”

  “A new build on a derelict site. The previous building there was levelled by a bomb in seventy-five, during The Troubles.”

  The Troubles was the term applied to the thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland that had claimed over three thousand five hundred lives and injured almost fifty thousand.

  “So, the land had been vacant for seven years?”

  “Yes, then Stormont bought it in eighty-two and built the DoE building.”

  The analyst tapped his smart-pad again and the image changed to a building sketch.

  “OK, this is the architect’s impression of the outside of the DoE building.”