The Trawlerman, стр. 29

Alex said, ‘Oh.’

‘What is it?’

On the screen was a picture of the front door of the Younises’ house. Standing just to the left of the doorway was Jill, dressed from head to toe in a white forensic suit. She had her gloved hands to her eyes and was crying.

‘Do you know her?’

‘Yes. I do.’

There was a male constable, also dressed in overalls, an awkward arm around Jill, presumably trying to comfort her. It was Colin Gilchrist. It was a beautiful image; the tilt of her head caught the summer light, making Jill look like a figure from one of the Raphael paintings Alex’s father had taken her to see at the National Gallery when she was young. There was a kind of desperation on Gilchrist’s face too; as if he were as concerned for her as he was for the dead people they had discovered in the house. An unexpected tenderness in the young man’s face.

‘I love this photograph,’ said Georgia. ‘That police officer is so beautiful. And yet there’s something so awful about it. The blood on her clothes.’

It was unmissable; the bright red blood on Jill’s coverall. She had been the second person there. She must have tried to check whether the victims were alive or not. Alex knew just how that felt. ‘So why didn’t you sell this to the papers? You could have made a few quid.’

Georgia closed her laptop. The wall opposite them turned black. ‘You can get out now if you want to. I don’t have to do this.’

‘I’m sorry. My father used to say my mouth runs ahead of me.’

‘You think people like me are scum, don’t you?’

Alex didn’t answer.

‘I’m sick of it. I was doing a job. I was earning a living. That doesn’t mean I’m a monster.’

‘Would you sell it?’

‘Of course I would.’

‘What was wrong then? Not enough money.’

‘It is a great photo. She’s a public servant. A policewoman. People think you lot are heartless bastards. There’s nothing heartless about her.’ She opened her computer again and woke the screen up. ‘Look at her. She cares. You can tell she really bloody cares.’

Jill’s face again; the trauma of what she had seen was written into her skin too. ‘Why didn’t you sell it, then?’

Georgia coloured. ‘I have my reasons.’

‘That officer’s feelings not being one of them, presumably?’

‘She should be proud of that. She’s a hero for going in that house. They all are.’

Outside, gulls squawked angrily. ‘This was the Thursday, right?’

‘Yes.’

Alex remembered seeing the coveralls in the boot of Jill’s car; the haunted look on her face. ‘How did you know?’

‘How did I know what?’

‘How did you know that there had been a murder there? It was on the evening news. This was what, two o’clock in the afternoon? Maybe earlier. Nobody had told the public.’

Georgia shrugged. ‘I just saw some police cars. Followed them there.’ Alex watched her hands. She had this habit of circling them round each other.

‘Right. Just followed a police car.’

‘Yeah.’

Alex nodded. ‘Show me some more.’

She clicked on. More officers coming and going. Alex recognised them all. She still thought of herself as new around here, but all these were her colleagues, people she had grown to trust. She had once been one of them.

Because of her illness, they had taken her off Serious Crime. When she returned to work next week she would be on what they called ‘light duties’. McAdam said they had found something that wouldn’t upset her.

Georgia clicked the space bar, scrolling through the pictures. The camera was mostly pointed at people coming and going through the front door. Sometimes she panned a little to the left, as officers seemed to be gathering at the north side of the house.

‘I’d found this place under some laurel bushes. It was dark there so they couldn’t see me, but I had to be still or they’d notice. So I couldn’t really get any other angles. I couldn’t move to see what they were doing.’

A gurney appeared in shot, being dragged over the gravel. Even empty, the paramedics seemed to be making heavy work of it. Another photograph of it disappearing round the left-hand corner of the house.

‘That’s them moving the body. I was thinking they were going to come back right past me, but they went round the far side. There’s a stone path there so it would have been easier.’ She looked straight at Alex. ‘And yes. I would have published it if I’d got the shot. It’s public interest.’

The camera moved again, a little to the left. And then back again for the next shots, to the house, to shadowy figures moving on the inside, where Mary Younis’s body must have been found, but it was too dark to make anything out in there.

‘Go back,’ said Alex abruptly.

Georgia flicked at her keyboard.

‘Back again. There.’

In her attempt to follow the paramedics she had photographed the garage, a red brick building with a tiled roof at the end of the driveway. The door was open. Alex leaned forward on the sofa.