Page 11 of Her Last Breath

The alternative was that Alice ended up here because somebody didn’t want her to be found.

Jane scanned the ground and walked carefully through the break in the treeline with Pawel. The river was at least ten metres behind them.

‘When did it last rain?’ Jane asked.

‘The morning of August eighteenth,’ Pawel said, checking his tablet. ‘Unusually heavy downpour for the season. Your weird British weather. It had been a heatwave for the two weeks before.’

‘The afternoon of the eighteenth is when Alice Rogers sent her last message, when we have her on door cam footage. The last time she was definitely alive. The ground would have been muddy that day, then.’

Crouching down to get a closer look at the ground, Jane stepped forward a few paces. She pointed to marks in the dried-out mud, ridged impressions that Pawel recognised immediately.

‘Tyre marks,’ she murmured.

Pawel moved in closer, taking pictures on his tablet, before measuring the dimensions of the imprints using an app on the same device.

‘I’d say they belong to a small van,’ he said. ‘What time of day I will not be able to tell you, but these are definitely from the day of the eighteenth, as there’s been no rain since.’

A flicker of excitement flared inside Jane. They might have a tangible piece of evidence that someone else had been in the area at the same time as Alice. She called DC Chan.

‘CSI is sending you through some tyre prints. I need them analysed urgently.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Something else came up from one of the analysts. The local bus company operating the route that would take Alice from Rose Hill to the river in Padiham was on strike on the eighteenth of August.’

‘Taxis?’

‘We rang local cab firms, ma’am – no one has any recollection of giving Alice a lift that day – and she didn’t have an Uber account on her phone. It will take time to be absolutely certain though, ma’am.’

The possibility that Alice was brought here was gaining traction, especially as she didn’t have a driver’s licence. Whether that same individual was involved in her death or not was unclear. Maybe the autopsy would give Jane a clearer idea of what had happened?

‘DC Chan, can you get me confirmation of time and place where the forensic pathologist will be doing the autopsy for Alice, please? I would like to be there.’

There was a moment of silence on the phone.

‘The body didn’t go to the forensic pathologist, ma’am. Most suicides go to the hospital mortuary. A histopathologist there will be doing the exam.’

‘Who signed that off?’

Jane could feel the irritation swelling in her voice as she spoke, knowing the answer before DC Chan answered her.

‘DS Johnson, ma’am.’

Chapter 6

The underground corridors of Burnley General Hospital looked like they hadn’t been refurbished since the seventies, decorated with faded Formica flooring and cracked green wall tiles. Discarded furniture gave the impression that this really was the forgotten underbelly of the building.

Rushing through the basement, Jane’s anger drove her on. Using histopathologists wasn’t unusual, she knew there were scant forensic pathologists across the country and Burnley relied heavily on the doctors available to Lancashire Constabulary, but she was livid that DS Johnson had signed this off without asking her. Clearly the morning’s conversation had had zero impact on his behaviour and hours later he was still cutting her out of the loop.

Her phone rang, Jane stopping by the doors to the mortuary to check the caller ID. It was Lorraine, one of the carers. For a moment, she thought something might have happened to her mother, the resentment she harboured giving way to a feeling of dread.

‘DI Hacker,’ she answered urgently.

‘Jane, it’s me. I’m in pain.’ It was her mother, using Lorraine’s phone. ‘The carers aren’t giving me any more pills. They keep saying I’ve had more than I’m allowed. I keep telling them I’m dying anyway, what’s the worst that can happen?’

Her mother sounded petulant, childlike.

‘Mum, I’m at work, I’m sure they know what they’re doing.’

‘They keep trying to give me paracetamol. I want the other ones. Tell them.’