by Lisa Hartley
They waited in Jo Webber’s office for the pathologist to reappear. She hadn’t said much during the autopsy apart from the observations she had to make, and both detectives were keen to hear her thoughts. The cloudy afternoon had darkened into a miserable evening, rain hammering on the murky window of the room. Knight had phoned Keith Kendrick for an update on the team’s activity that afternoon but it didn’t sound like much progress had been made. With no witnesses except the two teenagers who had found the body and no name as yet for their victim, progress was slow at best.
‘Has Jo Webber come up with any ideas about that gash to her stomach?’ Kendrick’s voice reverberated in Knight’s ear and he held the handset away from his face with a grimace.
‘Not yet. She’s getting cleaned up.’
‘Bloody hell. Your mates have left for the evening, by the way.’
‘Mates?’
‘Shea and Allan. Sound like a country and western act, don’t they?’ Knight waited while Kendrick had a chuckle at his own wit. Eventually the DCI said, ‘I’ll tell this lot to get off home then if you don’t have anything for us yet, then they can be in early for a full briefing. I’ll see you and Catherine in the morning.’
Knight slid the phone back into his pocket just as Catherine received a text from her brother:Going out with Anna. Don’t wait up x
‘They haven’t wasted any time,’ she muttered.
‘Sorry?’ Knight asked.
‘Doesn’t matter.’ There was another text too that must have been received when she’d left her phone and other belongings in a locker outside the mortuary. It was from Chris Rogers; he’d sent her Ellie’s mobile number:Faye asked me to pass this on. Don’t kill the messenger Sarge.She smiled to herself and typed:Does Ellie know about this?
In the chair beside her, Mick Caffery was scrolling through his emails. They all looked up as the office door opened and Jo Webber stuck her head inside.
‘Can I get anyone a drink before we start?’ she offered. Knight and Caffery both asked for coffee and Catherine got to her feet.
‘I’ll come and give you a hand.’
She wanted to ask Jo about another post-mortem she might have performed, this one a few weeks earlier, but she didn’t quite dare. Anyway, what good would it do her? The pathologist would never share any details, and she knew how Claire had died.
A small staff room was located a few doors down from Jo Webber’s office. Its ancient-looking cupboards held the usual assortment of battered crockery and ill-matched cutlery. Webber filled the kettle from a dripping tap and flicked it on to boil as Catherine attempted to select the least grotty mugs from a motley collection. The walls were painted a sickly green and the beige carpet tiles needed replacing. Jo Webber, now dressed in a grey suit and a crisp white shirt, ran her hands through her hair.
‘Long day,’ Catherine observed, leaning against the wall.
‘Aren’t they all?’ Webber’s smile was tired.
There was a pause, the only sound in the room the kettle building up steam. Webber dropped tea bags into two of the mugs and took a jar of instant coffee out of a cupboard, then turned to Catherine.
‘So what’s the story with your DI?’ she asked.
Catherine stared at her in surprise.
‘Jonathan?’
‘How come he’s washed up in Lincolnshire?’
‘He told me he’d had enough of London.’
Jo pulled her hair back into a ponytail and then let it fall again.
‘I can understand that. I love visiting the place, but I wouldn’t want to work there. Is he married?’
Catherine hid a smile. Jo Webber was nothing if not direct.
‘No. He had a girlfriend, but they split up before he transferred up here.’
Jo nodded
‘He’s so quiet.’
‘Shy, I think.’
‘You can say that again,’ the pathologist laughed.
The kettle boiled and Webber poured water in the cups, then hauled a litre of milk out of the fridge and added a splash to each one.
Back in her office, Jo sipped from her mug before setting it on her desk.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think I can give you a cause of death, though I’ll need to wait for confirmation from the toxicology samples.’
Catherine frowned and Knight sat forward in his seat, cradling his cup against his chest.
‘Toxicology? You mean she didn’t drown?’
Jo Webber shook her head. ‘No. The incision in her stomach gave me a clue, but the samples I’ve taken should confirm it.’
‘I thought you said the cut was made after she was dead?’ Knight was bemused.
‘It was. Look,’ Jo said, exchanging a glance with Mick Caffery. ‘Why would you cut open a dead body? Unless you’re a pathologist there’s no reason to, is there? We do see mutilation of corpses sometimes, but I think this was done for a specific reason. Most people can’t wait to get away from a body.’
‘I’m sorry to sound thick, but … you mean someone wanted to take some sort of evidence out of her stomach?’ Catherine puzzled.
Jo took pity on them.
‘In a way, yes. I’m pretty sure the toxicology report will confirm that this woman died of a drug overdose.’
Knight stared at her as she picked up her cup again.
‘So … wait a minute. You don’t mean …?’
Jo Webber drank the last of her tea and nodded.
‘I think this woman was a drug mule.’
There was a silence. Mick didn’t seem surprised, but to Catherine and Knight it was a shock. Catherine recovered first.
‘I can’t believe we didn’t think of it when we first saw her – obviously you two had an idea though?’
‘I thought it made sense, but there was no point in having a guess when the post-mortem would tell us for sure,’ Mick admitted.
‘So you’re saying that this woman had a belly full of … what? Heroin?’ Knight asked.
‘I’m expecting cocaine. It won’t take us long to find out,’ Jo replied.
‘So she would have been carrying a number of packets of the drug, one or more of which burst?’ Catherine was trying to make sense of it. ‘And rather than get her to a hospital, some heartless bastard let her die, then sliced her open rather than lose their merchandise and run the risk of being caught?’
Jo sighed.
‘That’s what I’m assuming happened, yes. Along those lines anyway.’
There was another silence as they digested the inhumanity of it.
‘Just when you think you’ve seen it all …’ Mick mumbled.
‘What else can you tell us, Jo?’ Catherine asked. ‘I’m still wondering if this is Lauren Cook.’
‘How old is Lauren?’
‘Twenty-four.’
‘The ages fits then,’ Jo sighed.
‘Lauren has green eyes – sort of hazel.’
‘Then the colour matches too, though there’s been some deterioration of our victim’s eyes, of course.’
‘It’s supposition until we have some confirmation from fingerprints or DNA, but it’s not looking great for Lauren,’ Catherine said, the faces of Lauren’s husband and parents filling her mind.
‘What about the damage to her face?’ Knight asked. Jo Webber shook her head, her nose wrinkling.
‘Savage is the best way to describe it. Post-mortem, thankfully.’
‘To delay identification or done in a fit of anger?’
Jo shrugged. ‘Either of those, or it could be neither. I’m not going to speculate on the reason behind it, Inspector, you know that. Not my department.’ She smiled at him as he cleared his throat.
‘Her hands were left alone though,’ Mick pointed out. ‘He wasn’t worried about her being identified from fingerprints.’
‘Maybe he knows she doesn’t have a record,’ Catherine suggested. ‘If you were hiring a drug mule, wouldn’t you want one that hadn’t been in contact with the police before?’
Mick no
dded agreement.
‘The damage to her face was caused by several heavy blows with a flat weapon; a shovel perhaps,’ Jo went on. Catherine took a breath, trying not to allow the images of the impact enter her mind. ‘The incision in her stomach was clumsy – our man is no surgeon. There were a couple of small nicks at one end of the wound as if he made a few false starts before really going for it.’ Jo Webber paused for a second. ‘I’d say the blade used was around nine or ten centimetres long.’
‘Not a scalpel then?’ Catherine checked.
‘No. As I say, the cutting was done with no care at all – he seems to have just hacked away until he found what he was looking for. I’m surprised he didn’t slice any of the packets open, or at least I didn’t find any evidence that he did.’
Catherine swallowed. ‘As you said, Mick – just when you think nothing will surprise you …’
He nodded. ‘Talk about plumbing the depths.’
Pushing back his chair, Knight got to his feet. ‘I better phone the DCI again.’
‘Just a second.’ Jo Webber held up a hand and Knight waited. ‘I think this will be useful. In the stomach incision, I found an eyelash. Now, since we’ve established that our victim was already dead when the cut was made, I’d be surprised if it belongs to her as she wouldn’t have been leaning over to have a look at what had been done.’
Mick let out a low whistle as Catherine asked, ‘You’re thinking it could be from whoever did the cutting?’
‘It could be.’ Jo nodded. ‘Whoever it belongs to though, they must have been near her body after death. I doubt it got into the incision from the floor or another surface, but I can’t say for sure.’
‘Either way, they’re a person of interest.’ Jonathan Knight had sat back down.
‘You said she didn’t die by the pond,’ Catherine said. ‘Was there anything else on her body that might help us find where she was when she died or when she was cut?’
‘I doubt it.’ Webber’s tone was regretful. ‘I think the body had been washed.’
‘Washed in what?’ Catherine asked.
‘Again, I’m not sure yet, I’m afraid. Some kind of cleaning fluid though. Diluted bleach is a possibility.’
‘Someone who knew what they were doing then,’ Caffery observed.
‘They missed the eyelash though,’ Jo pointed out.
‘Let’s hope that’s a stroke of luck for us,’ Knight said, on his feet again. He left the room, phone pressed to his ear.
‘Use the staff kitchen,’ Jo Webber called after him.
Out in the corridor, he sidestepped a trolley that was being wheeled along at speed by a porter, and ducked into the dingy little room. As he waited for Keith Kendrick to pick up the phone, he gazed out of the window. The rain was still being driven against the glass, the night blustery. He could see a ward in the next building where a middle-aged man and woman were sitting by the bed of an elderly patient who appeared to be asleep. A nurse approached them and Knight turned away.
‘Jonathan?’ Kendrick’s voiced boomed in his ear at last. Knight filled him in on Webber’s preliminary report.
‘Finding the eyelash is a stroke of luck then,’ Kendrick said. ‘I’m glad Jo Webber did the PM.’ He sighed. ‘Right. I’m still at the station; is it worth me trying to find someone with a brain in their head who can start looking at missing person reports?’
‘It’s hard to say. We can’t confirm that the victim is Lauren Cook, but the PM didn’t rule the possibility out either. It seems a huge coincidence that a body should turn up matching her description within hours of her being reported missing.’
‘But then there are any number of blonde-haired, hazel-eyed young women wandering around the place,’ Kendrick pointed out. ‘Wasn’t there anything unusual about the body that we can check with her husband or parents? A tattoo? I thought everyone had one now.’
Knight’s hand sought out his shoulder blade. ‘Not quite everyone. Our victim didn’t and neither has Lauren Cook.’
Kendrick sucked air in over his teeth and Knight cringed at the sound.
‘Typical. No scars, no blemishes, no birthmarks?’
‘No.’
‘Bugger.’ Kendrick paused, then said, ‘I suppose it’ll be classed as murder.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Hmm. I’d better speak to the Super. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Knight put his phone away, feeling a sudden chill. If it wasn’t murder, what was it?
20
The wind howled, buffeting the car each time there was a gap in the hedge. The rain had become icy hail that bounced off the windscreen as the wipers struggled to cope.
‘What a night,’ Catherine’s eyes were fixed on the road ahead. When Knight didn’t reply, she said, ‘I can guess what you’re thinking.’
He glanced at her, surprised. ‘Can you?’
‘The Hughes family.’
‘I wasn’t actually,’ he retorted.
‘I thought this was just the kind of thing you’d have their card marked for.’
‘If we were in London, maybe. It’s too messy for Hughes anyway.’
‘Messy?’ Catherine braked as they approached a sharp corner.
‘Too amateurish then. Hughes would have had some dodgy doctor around to make sure the woman survived as well as the drugs. Disposing of a dead body isn’t easy, as we know.’
‘It’s weird, isn’t it? Why go to the trouble of destroying her face if you’re going to dump her somewhere she’ll be found quickly? They must have realised she would be. Why not weigh her down and put her in the pond? Jo seems to think the weed was threaded through her hair deliberately, since she hadn’t been in the water. Why would you?’
Knight heard a beep and pulled his phone out of his pocket. ‘I don’t know.’ He opened the text:This is my personal mobile number. I thought you might want to use it some time. Jo. He stared for a second, then a grin spread across his face as he took in what she meant. Catherine glanced at him and smiled to herself.
They arrived at the station and Knight ran across to his own vehicle. Catherine drove away, giving him a helpful wave when he struggled to open his car door against the wind. As she accelerated away from the station, she tried to put the post-mortem out of her mind and focus on tonight’s meeting. She still didn’t know whether what she was doing was wise, but it was too late now.
The pub where they had agreed to meet was in a tiny village, no more than ten houses and a church squatting against the gusting wind. Catherine ran inside, her hair whipping around her face, her shoes and the bottoms of her trousers splattered with muddy water from the potholed car park. She shoved open the heavy wooden door and stumbled into a corridor, taking a few seconds to run her fingers through her hair. There wasn’t much she could do about her wet, grubby clothes though. Another door displayed a sign which said ‘Public Bar’ and she pushed through it.
Inside, the floor was black slate tiles, the bar set in the corner of the room. Dark wood tables and chairs stood along one wall and comfortable-looking booths upholstered in navy blue made up the rest of the seating. The walls were painted white, swirls of plaster giving them texture, with horse brasses hung along them at intervals. Framed photographs decorated the rest of the wall space, some black and white and some colour, all of them of landscapes, both local and further afield. Catherine took in the scene, liking what she saw, feeling herself begin to relax. The pub was quiet with a couple studying menus at a table and an elderly chap reading a newspaper at the bar with a glass of whiskey at his elbow. A young man sat alone in a booth, sipping from a pint of bitter. When he saw her come in, he smiled and raised a hand. His hair was thick, cut close to his head. He got to his feet as she approached and she saw he was quite short, an inch or so taller than her with broad shoulders and an appealing grin. He was casually dressed in dark jeans and a white polo shirt.
‘Sergeant Bishop?’ He held out a hand and she shook it. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘C
all me Catherine. Just a lemonade, thanks, I’m driving.’
‘That’s part of the reason I asked if we could meet here,’ he admitted, flashing her another smile and pointing at his pint. ‘It’s my local. Well, it is now.’
As he set her drink on the table, she said, ‘You’re Welsh?’
He nodded and took a mouthful of beer. ‘I grew up in Powys, in a village not too far from Shrewsbury.’
‘Isn’t that in England?’
‘Shrewsbury is.’ Owen nodded again. ‘My village is in Wales, but it’s close to the border.’
‘Sounds like that matters.’
‘To some people. My dad’s Welsh and my mum’s English. Doesn’t matter to me where people are from or,’ he met Catherine’s eyes, ‘who they sleep with.’
She smiled, acknowledging the point. ‘Pity your boss doesn’t feel the same.’
He screwed his face into an expression of disgust. ‘Tell me about it. If it makes you feel any better, he’s not too keen on me either. He thinks it’s funny to leave inflatable sheep on my desk.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No. And when England play Wales at rugby … Well, you can imagine. Bloke’s a dinosaur.’
