The Scent of Death

Two

Plot reminder: Whilst searching for the remains of ten-year-old Megan Shaw, Dudley and Jennifer locate older remains believed to be those of Kayleigh Harrison, a nine-year-old who was reported missing almost a decade earlier.

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The en suite bathroom at the bed and breakfast was little bigger than a broom cupboard. As I perched myself onto the closed toilet seat, I had to twist my neck at an unnatural angle to observe the squirt of water from the showerhead above and a little to my left. They say that it helps. That if you just watch the falling water for some time, sort of accustom yourself to it, it becomes less threatening somehow. Two or three minutes went by, but still those downward tumbling drops resembled more a hailstorm of pins and needles rather than something I would voluntarily stand beneath.

With a sigh of resignation, I rose finally to my feet and – being careful not to splash my wrist - switched off the tap. Turning then to the sink, I grabbed the pack of wet wipes I'd brought with me, padded a couple over my forehead, neck, under armpits. As I did so, the face in the mirror watched on with its usual silent disapproval. The delicate features were still pinched and pinkened from the long hours exposed to the winter chill, the brutal 4-millimetre crop of her brown hair a consequence of necessity rather than an act of design. There was something off-kilter to the reflection. Something skewed, otherwordly. An approximation of a human, not quite whole.

Turning, I hurried back out of the door. Like cliff edges or darkened alleyways, bathrooms were places I never dawdled for long.

The sight of Dudley sprawled out across the carpet next to the bed was sufficient to lift my mood a little. As I passed by him I noticed the twitch of his eyelids, the slight jerking of his front paws. One of those dreams again: the hot pursuit of a bird or a cat, the twin sworn enemies of Labrador-kind.

In the corner of the room was a small table accommodating the inevitable kettle, basket of tea bags and tiny, decades-old TV. Settling myself into the somewhat rickety chair, I slid the BLT baguette I'd bought at a nearby baker's from its paper bag and opened up my laptop. After checking the weather forecast for the following day - every bit as dismal as the one just passed, it seemed - I then typed the name Kayleigh Harrison into the search bar.

I'd been aware of the case of course; how was it possible not to have been? My memories were a little hazy though, lacking in detail. I'd have been in my final year at Wynmouth Art College at the time, this long before Dudley came bounding floppily-eared into my life. A different decade, a whole different age.

Search results consisted of a list of newspaper articles - some from national titles, the majority from the Wynmouthshire Evening Echo. As I clicked onto the first of them, the accompanying image provoked a similar emotional response to that of an old sad song playing over the radio that you haven't heard in years. Unlike Meghan Shaw's posed school portrait, the selected media shot in Kayleigh's case had been a much more candid one. Taken on what I assumed to have been a local beach, her neck is turned back towards the lens as if responding to a sudden call of her name while she scurries towards the sun-sparkled sea behind. Blue irises gleam in surprise beneath curled black lashes, her crooked smile a gap-toothed one. The straight, shoulder-length hair is a dark-rooted blonde, its left-side edge caught in the glare of the late-afternoon sun. A perfect alignment of timing, light and facial expression, it wasn't difficult to imagine that it had been one of the parents' most cherished shots of their lovely little girl. One of the most painful now to behold.

The article was dated Saturday October the 3rd. Early autumn, yes - I recalled how the window of my student bedsit had overlooked a copse of trees, the blinding auburn blaze which would await me at that time of the year with each upward glance from my work desk.