Cross and Burn

by Val McDermid

  ‘So am I.’ He met her eyes again. This time, the smile was sorrowful. ‘Anyway, I wanted to say hello. And to invite you to supper. Next week, perhaps? I’ve got a couple of friends from the village coming over on Tuesday, if you’d like to join us?’

  Carol shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. I’m not very good company right now.’

  He nodded, brisk in his understanding. ‘Of course. Another time, perhaps.’ There was an uncomfortable silence, then he glanced at the barn door. ‘How are you getting on with…’ His voice tailed off.

  ‘I’m gutting it. Come and have a look.’ Seeing his hesitation, she gave him a grim smile. ‘It’s all right, there’s nothing left to see.’

  He followed her inside to the hollow shell of the barn. Seeing it through his eyes, she understood the extent of what she’d done. Only the kitchen area remained unscathed. Everything else was stripped to the bare bones. The last job was the demolition of the gallery floor where Michael and Lucy had been murdered on their bed. She’d already ripped out the staircase. Today’s task was to break down the supporting beam that held up the floor so she could set about the final stage of destroying it. She pointed to the sturdy timber. ‘That’s my next job.’

  ‘You’re not taking the whole beam out, are you?’ He craned his head to follow the beam up to the A-frame joist that ran the width of the barn.

  ‘If I take that out, the floor will start to collapse. It’ll be much easier to break it down.’

  Nicholas stared at her as if she was mad. ‘If you take that out, your whole roof will collapse. That’s a major structural beam. It’s been there since the barn was built.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I’m sure. I’m not an engineer, but I’ve been around old buildings all my life.’ Suspicious, Carol followed his pointing finger as he outlined the structure of the hammer beam truss. ‘If you don’t believe me, get a structural engineer in to have a look. But please, don’t get rid of it until you’ve taken advice.’ He looked so distressed that she surrendered her instinctive mistrust of anyone trying to tell her what to do.

  ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll work around it.’ She crouched down again and ruffled the dog’s fur. ‘Looks like you did me a favour, Jess.’

  ‘We’re always happy to help,’ Nicholas said. ‘I’ll be off now. No doubt I’ll see you around?’

  Carol made a noncommittal sound and followed him to the door. She stood and watched him leave her land and strike out across the rough pasture towards his home. It occurred to her that she’d been more friendly to the dog than to its owner. There was a time when that would have embarrassed her.

  Not any more.

  10

  There was a terrible moment when Paula misunderstood what she was looking at. The shaggy blonde hair, the square shoulders, the legs that had always brought Anne Bancroft to mind; all markers for Carol Jordan. She’d never seen her naked except in fantasy, but her imagination was enough to blur the reality in front of her for a split second. Then she understood that the dead woman sprawled on the floor was not Carol Jordan. She was the wrong body shape. Too heavy in the hips and thighs, too squat in the torso. But it had been a head-swimming moment.

  Fielding had caught it too, which wasn’t going to help her respect for Paula. ‘You all right, McIntyre? I’d have thought you’d be used to this by now.’

  Paula coughed into her paper mask. ‘With respect, ma’am, I never want to be used to it.’

  Fielding turned away with a shrug. ‘Fair enough.’ She took a couple of steps towards the body, stooping for a closer look. ‘He didn’t want us to recognise her, that’s for sure. Look at that.’ She pointed to the mash of flesh and bone that had been the woman’s face. The naked body was a mass of bruises and abrasions. Paula had seen plenty of victims of violence, but she couldn’t remember a body that had taken such a comprehensive beating.

  Then another possibility flashed across her mind. She’d been slow to make the connection. But a description of this bludgeoned woman would also fit Bev McAndrew. Her breakfast coffee burned at the back of her throat and she sidestepped a CSI photographer for a better view. For the second time, relief made her weak in the knees. This wasn’t Bev. Torin’s mother was taller and slimmer, with bigger breasts. Whoever this woman was, she wasn’t the missing pharmacist.

  Paula looked around the room. It was a dismal place to die. The walls were stained with damp and mould and the floorboards were filthy with ground-in dirt. A sagging sofa faced a scarred coffee table whose missing leg had been replaced with a pile of crumbling bricks. Beer cans were piled at either end of the sofa and three ashtrays overflowed with cigarette butts and roaches. Empty blister packs of over-the-counter painkillers were scattered around among crushed boxes that had once held pizzas and burgers. The stench was a gruesome mixture of all the things she wished she’d never smelled.

  Paula turned back to stare bleakly at the murdered woman. She longed for Tony Hill’s facility for reading a crime scene and understanding something of the mind that had created it. But her skills were for interrogating the living, not the dead. She’d go through the motions at the crime scene, but she knew she’d always have to rely on other specialists for what it could reveal.

  And right on cue, one of those specialists walked in on them. ‘DCI Fielding. You have something for me, I’ve been told?’ Paula recognised the warm Canadian drawl of Dr Grisha Shatalov, the Home Office pathologist who generally worked Bradfield’s homicides. He clapped Paula’s shoulder softly as he passed her. ‘Paula. Good to see you.’

  Fielding stepped aside with what looked like relief on the little Paula could see of her face. ‘She’s all yours, Doc. Brutal, this one.’

  ‘Taking someone’s life? That’s always brutal in my book.’ Grisha hunkered down by the body. ‘Even when it looks gentle.’ He moved his hands over her body, gradually applying pressure and pausing to gauge temperature and rigor.

  ‘Did she die here?’ Fielding’s question was brusque. It sounded to Paula as though her reputation for impatience was well-founded. There was clearly no place here for the exchange of pleasantries she’d always seen between Carol and Grisha. Straight to business and no messing around, that seemed to be Fielding’s style. Like a lot of women in senior positions, she set out her stall to out-tough the men.

  Grisha glanced over his shoulder. ‘I’d say so. You’ve got blood spatter from the head wound, you’ve got lividity that looks to me like she hasn’t been moved post-mortem. Chances are high she was still alive when he brought her here.’ He looked up at the photographer. ‘Are you done here? Can I move her?’

  ‘She’s all yours, mate.’ The cameraman stepped away and left them to it.

  Grisha carefully tilted the victim’s head to one side. ‘Look, here. You see this?’ He pointed to a depression in the skull, blonde hair turned dark and matted with a mixture of blood and brain matter. ‘A blow to the head with something long, rounded and heavy. A baseball bat or a metal pipe. I’ll have a better idea once I get her to the lab. If nothing else had happened to her, chances are that would have killed her. But he made sure by giving her a good kicking.’ He gestured at the bruises on her torso. ‘Large, irregular rounded shapes, it’s a classic bruise from a kick. And the colour, red shading towards purple. That tells us she was still alive when he gave kicking her to death his best shot.’ He sat on his heels and considered. ‘Either he’s smart or he got lucky.’ He paused expectantly.

  ‘I’ve not got time for twenty questions,’ Fielding groused. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He kicked her. He kept on kicking her. He didn’t stamp on her. It would have been better for you if he had. You might have got a sole pattern from his boots.’

  ‘Bastard.’ Fielding sounded disgusted. ‘Boots, not shoes?’ Her face gave nothing away, but she folded her arms across her chest as if to defend herself from the violence.

  ‘Given the extent of the damage – her face is wrecked, Fielding, look at it – my best guess
would be steel toecaps. And that tends to boots rather than shoes.’ Grisha pointed to her left ankle. ‘Check out those abrasions. Looks like a restraint tell-tale to me. A shackle of some description. But one with a straight edge. Maybe designed for pipework rather than humans. That’s why it’s torn the skin the way it has. I’ll check her wrists when I get her on the table.’

  Before Fielding could say more, they were interrupted by another white suit. ‘Guv, I thought you’d want to know. It looks like we’ve found her clothes and her bag. Stuffed behind the bath.’

  ‘Good work, Hussain. Bag the clothes and get them straight to the lab. Paula, you go and have a look at the contents when we’re done here. You’re a woman, you’ll have a better sense of what’s what than these hairy-arsed lads.’

  Paula bit her tongue. Only because she was glad to have first crack at the victim’s possessions. But if Fielding thought she could defuse her by putting her in the little woman box, she was going to have another think coming. ‘Ma’am,’ she said.

  ‘What about time of death?’ Fielding was already on to the next thing.

  Grisha took hold of the woman and gently rolled her on to her stomach. ‘Let’s see what she has to tell us.’ He opened the plastic satchel he always brought to crime scenes and took out a thermometer. He parted her legs slightly so he could take a rectal temperature reading. Then Paula heard his breath hiss over his teeth. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. Grisha seldom showed any emotion, but the disgust was obvious in his tone.

  ‘What is it?’ Fielding demanded.

  Grisha bent forward and stared intently between the woman’s legs. He reached out gingerly with one finger. ‘I thought I’d seen everything.’ His voice was so quiet Paula could barely hear him.

  ‘What is it, Grisha?’ she asked, laying a hand on his shoulder.

  He shook his head. ‘It looks like he’s superglued her labia together.’

  11

  By late morning, Marie had a list of questions for Rob Morrison. In her experience, there was no point in holding back out of a misplaced sense of politeness. She needed answers so she could make a start on the strategic developments she’d been hired to initiate and see through. Worrying whether Rob would take her enquiries as subtle criticisms wasn’t helpful. If his finer feelings were going to stand in the way of progress, he’d better develop a thicker skin, she thought. And quickly.

  So she double-checked the handwritten list she’d made – always better to write down a list of questions; they had a tendency to stick in the mind that way and they were less likely to fall through the cracks during the discussion – and bustled across the open-plan area to Rob’s office.

  Marie scanned the room as she went, taking note of who had their head down, talking on the phone or frowning at their screen, and who was staring into space or leaning back in their chair chatting to the person in the next carrel. She wasn’t about to start anything as crude as a time-and-motion study any time soon, but it was never too soon to begin gathering impressions of the staff. Gareth, for example. He might well be one of the most productive employees, but right now he was paying no attention to work. He was half-turned away from his screen, chatting to a smug-looking bloke in a pink shirt and khaki chinos, hair immaculately groomed. Even from across the room she could make out the Ralph Lauren Polo logo. She’d have put money on him reeking of aftershave or cologne. She hadn’t noticed him earlier when she’d been introduced to the floor, and she thought she would have if he’d been there. She knew his type and she didn’t like it.

  Dismissing him from her mind, she walked through Rob’s open door to find him at his computer, mouse clicking as furiously as if he was in the throes of some annoying computer game. ‘Have you got a minute?’ she asked.

  He immediately stopped what he was doing and before she could possibly have seen his screen, he closed the window he was working in. ‘Sure. Is there a problem?’

  ‘I need to go through some of our procedures,’ Marie said, drawing a chair up at right angles to his desk. ‘I want to be clear how we’re doing things at present so I can work out where we can make strategic improvements.’

  He nodded enthusiastically, rubbing his chin then tugging his earlobe. He was, she realised, one of those people who can’t stop touching their face. It made her want to avoid touching anything he’d touched. He smoothed one eyebrow and scratched the side of his nose. ‘Makes perfect sense,’ he said.

  They had barely made a start when Ralph Lauren Man swaggered into the room. He let his eyes slide over Marie, lingering on her breasts and her legs before turning his attention to Rob. ‘Are you up for tonight?’ he said, his tone almost accusatory rather than inviting.

  Rob gave him what appeared to be a warning frown. ‘Nige, I’d like you to meet Marie Mather, our new Director of Marketing. Marie, this is Nigel Dean. He’s one of the boffins from upstairs. Software development for our data-gathering systems.’

  Nigel inclined his head towards her. ‘We’re Big Brother,’ he said. ‘The one that is watching you, that is, not the one that you watch on your telly. We manage data for everything from your local supermarket to speed cameras to mobile phone networks. I could track you from your front door to the office without your knowing.’

  Rob laughed nervously. ‘Pay no attention to him, he likes to wind us all up, does Nige.’

  Creep, she thought. ‘I’ll bear that in mind,’ she said mildly, not making it clear which one she was responding to.

  ‘I was just making sure Rob’s coming along tonight. A bunch of us are going out to celebrate landing a tasty new contract. We’re going to Honeypots, do you know it?’

  You didn’t have to be a lad about town to be aware of Honeypots, Bradfield’s biggest and brashest lap-dancing club. Marie would rather have nailed her hand to the wall than spend an evening there. Not for the first time, she counted her blessings and was grateful for her Marco. ‘I never go out on a school night,’ she said.

  Nigel raised one side of his mouth in a sneer. ‘You ladies and your beauty sleep. Another time, maybe. On a Friday?’

  Marie gave her sweetest smile. ‘I’ll bring my husband. He likes a good laugh.’ She gathered her papers and stood up. ‘Rob, perhaps we could finish this when you’re free?’

  Twat, she thought as she marched back to her office. It didn’t seem to matter where you worked, you couldn’t escape them. More’s the pity.

  12

  The mobile incident room was bedlam with the volume turned down. A constant stream of police officers, CSIs and civilian support staff tramped in and out, covering all the bases from grim and grumpy to crass and chirpy. One look told Paula it was the worst possible place to examine evidence that might end up as a key plank in a court case. Clearing it first with Fielding, she left the crime scene and headed back to Skenfrith Street to find a quiet corner. And if she was honest, she wanted to put some distance between herself and the dead woman.

  During her years with Carol Jordan’s Major Incident Team, Paula had confronted a wide range of the hideous things human beings could do to one another. The things she’d seen had disturbed her nights and her days, but she’d always managed to put them in a box in her head where they couldn’t contaminate the rest of her life. She’d known what it was to be at risk herself, and she’d lost colleagues to the job. It was only by chance that she’d escaped the act of violence that had destroyed Chris Devine’s future during the hunt for Jacko Vance.

  All of this horror she’d got through. Maybe a few extra drinks on the bad nights, a spike in her cigarette consumption on the bad days. Still, she’d absorbed the pain, dealt with the anger. Deep down, she’d learned to live with it. But today’s victim had messed with her head. There was no escaping that. The brutal beating on its own would have been hard to stomach, but she’d have got past that without too much trouble. The other thing – she could hardly bear to articulate the act, even in her head – was somehow infinitely worse. It was as if her killer wanted to deny her everything that mad
e her who she was. Wrecked face, ruined body, not even any use for sex. He’d rendered her utterly worthless. It spoke of a contempt that chilled Paula’s heart. This, she suspected, was a murderer who wasn’t going to stop at one.

  The rest of the team would be gossiping and speculating about it. She knew what cops were like. And for a little while she wanted not to be part of that. Putting together a profile of the victim based on the contents of her bag would be a good enough excuse.

  In the unfamiliar territory of her new base, she managed to find the canteen and set herself up with coffee and the comfort of Jaffa Cakes. And because the canteen staff always knew what was what, she acquired directions to a small meeting room on the fourth floor where nothing was scheduled for the rest of the day.

  Gloved and masked, her coffee and biscuits on a separate table, she finally addressed the dead woman’s life. The bag was businesslike – black leather, worn in but not scuffed, decent quality and capacious. It looked a bit like a scaled-down briefcase, with its neat compartments and pockets. Methodically, Paula emptied the contents on to the table, not pausing to study anything till she was sure the bag was completely empty. She was impressed with the relative absence of crap and made a mental note to clear her own bag of the accumulated detritus of everyday living.

  She went with the obviously female stuff first. Lipstick, mascara, blusher, all own-brand from a chain chemist. Plastic folding comb with a narrow mirror in the handle. So, someone who cared about how she looked but didn’t make a fetish of it.

  Pack of tissues, only a couple left. A small tin that had once held sweets but now contained four compact tampons. A couple of condoms in a plastic pouch. Blister pack of birth control pills, three remaining. So, almost certainly straight, probably single. If you were in a relationship, you generally left those things at home, in the bathroom or the bedside-table drawer. You weren’t going to spend the night in another bed on the spur of the moment.