The Dead Girl

Something a wee bit different....

The Dead Girl

She lay in the grass; ankles crossed, arms spread wide. Staring up at the grey sky with dull, sightless eyes. Her left eye was completely obscured by clotting blood, a flaking smear of the stuff ran across her cheek like badly applied blusher. One of her teeth was missing. Her bleached blonde hair fanned out across the grass, except for the matted clump stuck to her forehead.

She wasn't naked. She wore skinny jeans that rode low on her emaciated hips and a bright red blouse that failed to cover the lacy pink bra underneath. The buttons of the blouse had been done up in a hurry, mismatched to their respective button-holes. Her feet were bare, and filthy. As if she'd run through the field before she fell. Her cheap red stilettos were several feet away, one on top of the other. The side of one of the vicious looking heels was a different shade of red to the rest of the shoe. Maroon instead of scarlet.

Blood, Detective Inspector Mike Garland thought. Hers, not the assailants. Though the lab would confirm that.

He stood a few feet away from the corpse, listening into to his colleague's patient questioning of the man who had found her.  Constable Jo Perry was new, still finding her feet. This would be her first murder, Garland however was an old hand at it.  He stretched. he was aching, definitely getting too old for stuff like this.

"So you walk through this field every morning? Mr, um?"

"Harrison," the guy said. "Tom Harrison."

Garland studied the man. He was young, twenty-two he'd said, though he looked older. Ex-drug addict, Garland surmised, or one hell of a paper-round. His face was pale, sweaty. He looked nervous, guilty. His hand kept reaching down for the Border Collie by his side. The dog whined.

"I bring Manson here in the mornings," Harrison explained. "We play fetch."

The guy did indeed have a tennis ball with him. Garland noted how pristine it looked.

"Manson?" Perry's eyebrows lifted, "funny name for a dog."

Closet serial killer fetishist? Garland wondered, although Charles Manson had not been a serial killer but a mass murderer. It was surprising how many people did not know the difference. He was impressed Perry picked up on that detail.

"Goth girlfriend," Harrison explained.

Funny, Harrison himself didn't look the type, and Goths usually stuck to their own kind. It was something else they'd look into. Sometimes it was these tiny, throwaway lines that cracked cases.

"Nice dog, well behaved," Perry smiled, reached her hand down to stroke the animal's head. Garland's eyes followed the movement, noticed she was wearing pink nail polish. He frowned. Perry tickled the dog's ears and then got back to business. "So you got here about six am?"

"About ten past," Harrison shuffled his feet. "I set off at six, I always do. It takes about ten minutes to get here."

"And you walk here?"

Not that it mattered. the body had not been dumped here. The girl had been killed right here in the field. Stangled as she lay on her back, the bright stars the last thing she ever saw. Something else the lab boys would confirm later.

Harrison nodded. He raised an arm and pointed over the fields towards the council estate just visible through the trees. "I live over there."

"Address?"

Harrison spelt out his address for Perry. Garland knew it well, a side-street full of undesirables. Not a week went past that didn't see the arrival of an emergency service vehicle of one sort or another.

"So you got here at ten past six and found her lying here, just as she is now?" Perry asked.

"Manson found her." Harrison said, "I threw the ball and he didn't bring it back. Just started barking."

Oh really? Garland thought, it really was one well trained dog. it took months to get a cadaver dog to do that. Maybe they should employ the dog.

"And you haven't touched her or anything?"

Harrison paled even further. he hesitated. "The ball hit her. On the chest. I picked it up."

There was no mark on the chest. No mark on the ball. Garland held out an evidence bag. "We'll need to take the ball." He held the bag open and Harrison obediantly dropped it inside. Garland sealed it. Took a pen from his pocket and filled in the front panel.

Perry asked Harrison a few more questions and Harrison answered them all. By the end of the interview his skin had gone from pale to almost transluscent. His voice was shaking. Garland laid odds of two to one that the guy was going to lose his breakfast in the next five minutes. As he and Perry watched him walk off they saw him bend over a clump of bushes. Garland smirked as he heard Harrison retching.

"It's true," Perry remarked, "It's always the dog-walkers who find them."

Garland nodded.

"I don't think he did it though," Perry continued, "he looked genuinely shocked."

"Best not to immediately dismiss anyone as a potential subject," Garland advised. "Appearances can be very deceptive."  The dead girl certainly had. She'd been a skinny willowy thing but she'd fought like a tiger when Garland's hands had been around her neck. He was going to have the bruises for weeks.
***

This idea came to me whilst I was out with my dog, walking down a really really dark lane. You know when you see something on the ground, and it looks like a body? Imagine if it was....