Winds Of Change A Richard Jury Novel

1 The blood spatter on the little girl's dress mixed with the pattern of bluebells as if someone had thrown a handful of petals across her back.Richard Jury was down on one knee in a gutter of a North London street, at the end of a dingy street called Hester Street, looking at the body, the face to one side, not quite believing it. He studied her'the pale hair, the eyes his hand had closed, the caked rivulet of blood that had run from the right side of her mouth, running down and across her neck and soaking the small white collar of the dress with the bluebells. His torch had made out the color. Even the blood could have looked blue in this difficult light. He thought it again'that the blood spots could have been petals. It all seemed miniaturized as if everything'dress, body, blood? were part of some magical tale that reduced proportions, an Alice in Wonderlandsort of story, so that at any moment the little girl would wake, the blood draw back into the mouth like a vapor trail and the dark stains on the dress dissipate, leaving only the flowers. No coat. It was the first day of March and she wore no coat. ?A runaway, possibly? suggested Phyllis Nancy, the police pathologist, who was kneeling beside him. Jury knew it was a question to which she knew the answer. ?No, I don't think so; the dress looks new, that or very well kept, you know, washed and ironed.' What he was saying was rather ridiculous for who cared if the dress was ironed, but he felt almost as if he had to keep saying things, anything, just as Phyllis had done with her question. To say something, anything, was to hold the poor child's reality at bay. ?Yes, you're right.' The hem of her own dress was lying in a puddle of rain, and the rain's detritus. It had rained heavily an hour ago. Jury pulled the dress out of the muddy water. It was a long green velvet gown. When she had left her car and come toward the scene, she had looked regal in that dress. Emerald earrings, green velvet'she had been paged in the Royal Albert Hall and left immediately. She had knelt beside him, on both knees, nothing to kneel on except the hard surface of the street itself. Her kneeling took almost the form of supplication. ?I'll turn her over. Would you help me? He nodded. ?Sure.' She did not need help. Jury had seen her manipulate bodies bigger than his own, turn them this way and that as if they were feathers. She didn't, he supposed, want to see the ragged exit wound and where it had come from, the blood the little girl was lying in. They turned her, weightless. The bullet hole was very small, as if even the bullet had reduced itself to fit the story. Jury said, ?Probably a .22, at any rate, small caliber.' Phyllis Nancy said, ?Richard, she can't be more than five or six years old. Who would shoot a child in the back? Jury didn't answer. Around the two kneeling over the body there were the others: the uniforms cordoning off this part of the road with yellow crime scene tape; the police photographer; the other crime scene people and detectives from homicide; the couple who had been getting into their car when they found the body (she weeping, he with his arm around her); the mortuary van. Blue lights twirling and blinking everywhere. Police had fanned out to knock on every door in Hester Street, searching for someone who had heard or seen anything. Despite all of this activity, there was a strange hush, as if those who were moving were doing it on tiptoe, or talking, keeping it down to almost a whisper. The sort of hush one finds in early morning before the sleeping world becomes the waking one. Moving carefully, as if letting her sleep on. Jury turned to Dr. Nancy again. ?Can you estimate, Phyllis? It could certainly not have been long. Even rolled halfway into the gutter, this was still a residential street, cars going back and forth or parked in the street,Grimes, Martha is the author of 'Winds Of Change A Richard Jury Novel', published 2004 under ISBN 9780670033270 and ISBN 0670033278.