The Lost by Claire McGowan

off a protective white cap and mask to reveal a short woman with glasses, dark hair held back in a metal clip. Her eyes moved over Paula with no sign of recognition and she thrust the clipboard at Guy. ‘You need to sign this.’
    Paula stepped back, heart hammering. Guy blinked. ‘Sorry, I don’t think we’ve—’
    The woman removed her gloves with a snap. ‘I’m the on-call FMO. Saoirse McLoughlin. Will you sign it so I can get out of here?’
    Guy scribbled on the paper, which was rapidly growing soggy in the drizzle. ‘So what are we looking at? Is it a drowning, do you think?’
    Dr McLoughlin wrinkled her small nose. ‘You’ll need to wait for the autopsy. If you’re lucky, they’ll do it over the weekend.’
    ‘There’s no way to speed it up?’
    The doctor eyed him. ‘You’re the one who’s over from London? Yes, well, we’ve a different system here. Bodies all get sent to Belfast. They’ll do it as fast as they can.’
    Paula cleared her throat and spoke. ‘That’s new, is it?’
    The doctor stared at her for a moment. Guy paused and said, ‘Sorry, this is Ms Maguire – Dr Maguire, our forensic psychologist consultant. She’s from here, in fact.’
    ‘Is she, indeed.’ The eyes were dark. Paula looked away first.
    Guy was still pushing. ‘You couldn’t possibly let me have some early thoughts? If we even knew probable cause of death—’
    The woman’s smallface twisted. ‘Have a look for yourself, Inspector. It’ll be fairly obvious. Anyway, the coroner’s been notified and she’ll likely be moved to the mortuary later. You’ll want to get the family in for an ID.’
    She held out her hand and Guy hesitated for a second, perhaps thinking of what she’d been touching, before shaking it. ‘Thank you, Doctor. I’m sorry for getting you out in this rain.’
    She sighed. ‘I wish to God I could have done something for her. Goodnight, Inspector.’ She turned to go, hunched against the rain in her black jacket, without a backward glance.
    Bob Hamilton took the cue and crossed the muddy ground to the area marked off by yellow police tape. He spoke to one of the officers inside, who stood up, pulling aside the tent flap with a gloved hand.
    Guy got there first. Paula saw his reaction, and for a second she didn’t want to look, but then it was too late.
    Don’t cry don’t cry. It was like being punched in the stomach, every time. You couldn’t control the reaction – the nausea, then the tears in your nose – but you could learn to hide it. She thought Guy Brooking was doing the same, as he stared down. Of course, his daughter was the same age.
    He spoke. ‘She was found like this?’
    The white-masked SOCO (identifiable as male only by his voice), said, ‘We’re not sure, sir. The plastic’s come off a bit – but that could have been when the boys pulled her out.’
    The body had been wrapped in green tarpaulin, tucked around with cords like you might use to fix bikes to a roof-rack. In the water they had begun to swell and loosen, so the head now emerged from the plastic, the feet poking out in their woollen knee socks. Underneath, you could see the maroon school uniform, drowned and sodden. The face and hands were white, bloated with water, awful. But from the dark hair and the small pierced ears, the body was just about recognisable as Cathy Carr.
    The unit workedall night, summoned from home. Gerard came racing in, still in his Gaelic football jersey, coated in either sweat or rain or both. Avril drove up in her tidy little Corsa, her face pale above her black polo-neck. Paula was wearing her mother’s dress under her coat, and kept forgetting, wondering why everyone was staring at her. A while later, Fiacra arrived from Dundalk in his rusting Toyota. Glancing at each other in silence, the team gathered their papers and laptops and decamped to the main station on the other side of town, where the case would now officially be launched as a murder enquiry.
    The station was