Chapter One I could not see the street or much of the estate. We were enclosed by dirt-coloured blocks, from windows out of which leaned vested men and women with morning hair and mugs of drink, eating breakfast and watching us. This open ground between the buildings had once been sculpted. It pitched like a golf course--a child's mimicking of geography. Maybe they had been going to wood it and put in a pond. There was a copse but the saplings were dead. The grass was weedy, threaded with paths footwalked between rubbish, rutted by wheel tracks. There were police at various tasks. I wasn't the first detective there--I saw Bardo Naustin and a couple of others-- but I was the most senior. I followed the sergeant to where most of my colleagues clustered, between a low derelict tower and a skateboard park ringed by big drum-shaped trash bins. Just beyond it we could hear the docks. A bunch of kids sat on a wall before standing officers. The gulls coiled over the gathering. "Inspector." I nodded at whomever that was. Someone offered a coffee but I shook my head and looked at the woman I had come to see. She lay near the skate ramps. Nothing is still like the dead are still. The wind moves their hair, as it moved hers, and they don't respond at all. She was in an ugly pose, with legs crooked as if about to get up, her arms in a strange bend. Her face was to the ground. A young woman, brown hair pulled into pigtails poking up like plants. She was almost naked, and it was sad to see her skin smooth that cold morning, unbroken by gooseflesh. She wore only laddered stockings, one high heel on. Seeing me look for it, a sergeant waved at me from a way off, from where she guarded the dropped shoe. It was a couple of hours since the body had been discovered. I looked her over. I held my breath and bent down toward the dirt, to look at her face, but I could only see one open eye. "Where's Shukman?" "Not here yet, Inspector..." "Someone call him, tell him to get a move on." I smacked my watch. I was in charge of what we called the mise-en-crime. No one would move her until Shukman the patho had come, but there were other things to do. I checked sightlines. We were out of the way and the garbage containers obscured us, but I could feel attention on us like insects, from all over the estate. We milled. There was a wet mattress on its edge between two of the bins, by a spread of rusting iron pieces interwoven with discarded chains. "That was on her." The constable who spoke was Lizbyet Corwi, a smart young woman I'd worked with a couple of times. "Couldn't exactly say she was well hidden, but it sort of made her look like a pile of rubbish, I guess." I could see a rough rectangle of darker earth surrounding the dead woman--the remains of the ?mattress-?sheltered dew. Naustin was squatting by it, staring at the earth. "The kids who found her tipped it half off," Corwi said. "How did they find her?" Corwi pointed at the earth, at little scuffs of animal paws. "Stopped her getting mauled. Ran like hell when they saw what it was, made the call. Our lot, when they arrived?.?.?.?" She glanced at two patrolmen I ?didn't know. "They moved it?" She nodded. "See if she was still alive, they said." "What are their names?" "Shushkil and Briamiv." "And these are the finders?" I nodded at the guarded kids. There were two girls, two guys. Midteens, cold, looking down. "Yeah. Chewers." "Early morning pick-you-up?" "That's dedication, hm?" she said. "Maybe they're up for junkies of the month or some shit. They got her Excerpted from The City and the City by China Mieville All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
