The Body Under the Bridge

by The Body Under the Bridge (epub)

  ‘You got my message, Mr Halliday,’ she said, with faux formality.

  ‘Call me Kyle,’ he said, inviting her in. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Let me help,’ she said. They moved around the kitchen together, an awkward pas de deux of kettles and mugs, and jars of instant. The proximity was quite unsettling, in a good way. She noticed he was looking at her in the same way he had on her first visit, his knowing hazel eyes roaming around her face. Suddenly they were in each other’s arms, kissing fiercely, his hands on the back of her head. He plucked off her clip-on tie and threw it aside.

  ‘You’ve got a nerve,’ she said. ‘And I’ve got a boyfriend.’

  ‘And I’ve got a wife.’ Halliday checked his watch. ‘Back at five. We’ve got two hours.’ His large hands skated down the front of her tunic, undoing buttons.

  Lynne blinked. She couldn’t quite believe that she was going to do this, but she knew there was a reason why she had left her stab vest with its built-in bodycam in the car.

  ‘I wanted you the first time I saw you,’ she whispered.

  ‘And I wanted you.’ He put the crutch aside and effortlessly lifted her onto the kitchen counter. He then slid one arm up her skirt.

  ‘I’m not wearing any.’ She grinned. ‘Saves time.’

  * * *

  Two hours later Research Intelligence Officer Rob Townsend and DCI Gillard sat hunched together around a screen in the surveillance suite at Mount Browne’s forensic unit. They were looking at a Google map of the position of the Teikin Athlo-Watch, Gillard’s fitness tracker that he had tossed into the back of the Warrior. A flashing red dot showed it was currently at an industrial site on the edge of Gosport in Hampshire. It hadn’t moved in eighteen hours.

  ‘What is that place?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘It’s an aggregate yard, full of big quarry lorries. I’ve rung them up and nobody at the site has seen the green Warrior. There’s a patrol car on its way to double-check.’

  ‘Okay, good work. Let’s go back and look at the trace from start to finish.’

  Townsend rewound the data feed. It had taken more than twenty-four hours to get the Korean manufacturer’s legal consent to download the Teikin’s GPS trace from the head office in Seoul. That delay was frustrating because, unlike cell site analysis for mobile phones, the GPS trace was very nearly real-time. The first few minutes of the route were from Gillard’s home to the point of the hit-and-run. Soon after, with the watch now in the assailant’s vehicle, the dot started moving at speed down the winding road, over the M25 heading south. The trace joined the A25 south of Bletchingley and started heading west, through Redhill and towards Guildford. That matched the ANPR route that Townsend had tracked the day before, based on Gillard’s accurate recall of the number plate, relayed as he was on his way to hospital. ANPR was great, but the coverage was patchy, and the Warrior had disappeared from the A25 at some point between Redhill and Guildford. The GPS at least would show them exactly where.

  Townsend fast-forwarded the trace until it seemed to be travelling at several hundred miles an hour, heading on minor roads towards Woking. Then it hesitated at the junction of the A3 before heading off rapidly on that major road to the south-west. Townsend speeded up the trace again, but Gillard asked him to stop. ‘Rob can you go back to the turn-off on the A3?’

  The young officer did so. Gillard asked him to zoom in on the map, until it started to be populated with road names and other details. The minor road crossing the A3 was called Rose Lane, heading from West Horsley to Ripley. ‘Just what I thought,’ Gillard said. ‘The minor road goes over the A3 here. But the trace shows him turning off onto it.’

  ‘Yes, it’s a bridge.’ Townsend tried to drag the little Google man icon across to the bridge which would link to a Google Street View photograph. He wanted to see whether it was possible to get onto the A3 here. But the icon kept bouncing back, indicating that this particular lane had not been traversed by the Google mapping cars. He was however able to get a Street View image of the bridge from the A3. It showed that there was no slip road or track of any kind.

  ‘I don’t get it,’ Townsend said, staring sullenly at the screen.

  ‘I do,’ Gillard said. ‘Our suspect probably heard the watch rattling in the back, stopped to take a look, guessed what it was and thought he’d fool us. Leaning over the bridge, he was probably able to drop it into the back of some quarry lorry or similar.’

  ‘He’s very forensically aware, isn’t he?’ Townsend asked.

  ‘Did you do the ANPR searches for the Warrior over the preceding days?’ Gillard asked.

  ‘Yes, as you suspected, it was the vehicle stolen from the address in Woking. There have only been a few ANPR camera hits, in the rough area bordered by Woking to the north, Guildford to the west, and the M25 to the east. One was from a mobile patrol vehicle.’

  The detective rubbed his chin. ‘That’s all a little surprising, isn’t it?’

  ‘Why?’ the young officer replied.

  ‘Look, if you have just picked and stolen a newish, high-value and quite distinctive four-wheel-drive from some poor sod in Woking, the last thing you would be doing is driving it round the same area he lives, right?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘If you were a professional thief, you’d change the plates for a start, and sell it to someone on the Scottish Borders, in West Wales, or even get it shipped abroad to Albania where they never ask questions.’

  Townsend nodded again.

  ‘If he continues to drive it round just in this small area, we can catch him,’ Gillard said.

  ‘Maybe he’s not so smart.’

  ‘Don’t count on it. Everything he’s done so far has been clever. Very clever.’

  Chapter Twelve

  Thursday

  DI Perry had made an appointment to see Dr Nina Summers at the mortuary in Redhill, and Gillard wanted to come too. The Home Office forensic pathologist was one of the most senior and experienced in the country, and had agreed to undertake the post-mortem of Beatrice Ulbricht at Dr Delahaye’s request. Dr Summers was there to greet them.

  ‘I’ve now had a chance to examine Beatrice Ulbricht,’ she said, leading them in to the examination room, where a half open body bag was already on an examination table. Perry looked nervous; he had admitted that this was the first time he’d ever been inside a room where bodies were dissected. Dr Summers was a tiny dark-haired woman with a Mediterranean look, dark eyes and olive skin. But there was nothing in her accent to hint that she had ever lived anywhere but the south-east of England.

  The forensic pathologist unzipped the body bag to reveal the naked girl in her entirety. Perry gagged audibly next to Gillard. Beatrice was an alabaster statue, a Halloween Snow White; perfect in every detail but for the crudely stitched Y-shaped incision in her thorax where her viscera had been removed, and the less obvious cut around her crown. That was where the top of the skull had been removed by an electric saw and had now been popped back, the scalp held on with a few stitches. Gillard and Dr Summers exchanged a quick glance as Perry turned away to compose himself. The detective chief inspector could see from the dead woman’s body that she had sustained cuts and bruising around her face, throat, forearms and feet.

  Dr Summers continued: ‘The trickiest element in this case is to establish to what extent, one, did her immersion in water cause the injuries we see and, two, erase evidence of previous injury. Typical external injuries for a submerged body, which normally floats face down, include lateral abrasions to the forehead, nose, chin, the backs of the hands and the shins. There are patently very few such injuries. The corpse was trapped underneath a floating tree, but not for much of the time she was in the water.’

  ‘She may well have been in the Allegro with Jane Morris,’ Perry said.

  Summers nodded. ‘In my estimation she was in the water for roughly twenty-four hours. Skin maceration was moderate, and she had not sloughed off significant keratin from hands or feet. Moreover, there’s no water
in the stomach and nothing suggesting inhalation, which may well indicate she was already dead before immersion.’

  ‘So we can rule out accidental death?’ Perry asked.

  ‘Probably,’ Dr Summers said. ‘The cause of death seems to be strangulation prior to immersion, which I note chimes with Dr Delahaye’s conclusion for Jane Morris’ cause of death. In this case, self-evident bruising in the strap muscles and a fractured hyoid bone are indicative. There are also a few petechiae still evident in the face.’

  ‘What’s petechiae?’ Perry asked.

  ‘Broken blood vessels. In strangulation or drowning, they can often be seen in the eye.’

  ‘Oh, you mean bloodshot?’

  ‘Yes.’ She turned back to Gillard. ‘There is strong evidence of blunt force trauma throughout, including fingernail marks externally on the throat which I think you will have noticed.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘I think she may have put up a fight.’

  ‘Yes, I am gratified that despite her immersion there are fibres and skin and a little blood still retained under the middle fingernail of her left hand. DNA as you know decomposes fairly rapidly in water, but we might be lucky. I sent them off for analysis this morning. Here is something interesting, too.’ She brought over a small torch from another table, and shone it on the body. It revealed a fine mist of glittery particles on her hair and right temple under the ultraviolet light.

  ‘What’s that?’ Perry asked.

  ‘It’s a dye from some security product,’ Summers said. ‘Probably pepper spray.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘Beatrice’s friends said she had a pepper spray. Most of them have a permanent dye, but some of the better ones have a UV marker. They’re generally illegal in the UK, but it’s further evidence that she fought like crazy to save herself, and even had the time to use the spray. With luck the perpetrator will be similarly marked.’

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’ Perry asked.

  ‘I was going to come to that,’ Summers said. ‘There are scratches to the vulva, and traces of bleach internally, which indicates to me she may have been washed post-mortem, even before the immersion in the river.’

  Gillard blew a sigh. ‘That tells us the perpetrator is not only a sexual predator but a calm one. He has somewhere to work on the body before deciding how to dispose of it. It just reinforces the notion that this is a man who is comfortable with the dead. A first-time murderer often panics, and just wants to get rid of the corpse as soon as possible. We already know that this man is in a different league. Forensically highly aware too.’

  ‘Ex-police?’ asked Perry.

  ‘It’s certainly possible,’ Gillard said.

  ‘There is one final thing,’ Summers said. ‘A particular question about the time of death has been puzzling me. I understand that the victim went missing on Sunday. However the decomposition profile of the corpse is rather strange. The internal organs and digestive tract would normally decompose first, but they are in almost perfect condition. No discolouration of the abdomen at all. That of itself would indicate that she was alive until shortly before immersion.’

  ‘So the abductor kept her alive?’ Perry asked.

  ‘That’s possible,’ Summers said. ‘But I favour a different answer, given what we already know about Jane Morris. I think she too was frozen, for a couple of days at least.’

  Perry’s eyes widened. ‘One frozen for almost forty years and one for a couple of days.’

  Gillard nodded. ‘If our murderer has those kind of facilities, there could be many more victims. He has solved the biggest problem that most killers face: how to dispose of the body.’

  * * *

  Gillard sat in the hospital car park for half an hour, waiting for Perry to finish being sick in the toilet. He passed the time by listening to the Lysander Quartet CD. When you take apart a person to their constituent components, as Dr Summers had done, where does all that music, all that creativity, all that emotion end up? The bone, the gristle, Beatrice’s beautifully moulded flesh, were merely an extraordinary piece of scaffolding for the woman’s achievement, a rocket launcher for her destiny. The violin. To be able to communicate such extraordinary emotion through the judicious scraping of horsehair over wire. It was a wonder of the world. One now lost.

  He looked up to see the detective inspector lurching towards him across the car park, wan face above a dark grey raincoat, hunched against the chill wind. He still didn’t look too chipper. Gillard quickly ejected the CD, and slid it carefully into its cardboard sleeve.

  ‘Feeling better?’ he asked him, as the DI slid into the passenger seat.

  Perry nodded. ‘Yes, thank you. I’ve seen the odd body before. You know, the old man who died in a toilet, the drug overdose in a doorway. But there’s something about seeing a young woman like…’ He ran out of words, his left hand rotating as if it could conjure a eulogy from thin air.

  ‘She’s got to me too,’ Gillard said, as he drove off. He knew that this was where, had they both been women, a bonding conversation of mutual emotional revelation might begin. But they were blokes, and it couldn’t be done that way. First of all there was silence, for a few uncomfortable minutes.

  ‘Did you see the England match the other night?’ Perry asked.

  ‘Yeah, total rubbish. He was never offside.’

  Back on safer ground, they laughed.

  * * *

  Perry nipped home mid-shift to pick up a couple of datasticks that he had forgotten. He was surprised to see a black Range Rover parked on the road outside, blocking in his wife’s baby-blue Audi soft-top. Just as he was putting his key in the front door, it opened and Mel was there in a bathrobe, looking a little flustered and sweaty, her hair damp at the forehead. ‘I wasn’t expecting you back,’ she said. ‘I was just about to take a shower.’

  ‘I forget a couple of datasticks. Isn’t this your day to work full-time?’ He squeezed past her, and headed to the kitchen.

  ‘Normally, but Kate wanted to swap with me. So I just came in half an hour ago. I’ve been at the gym.’

  ‘Who’s car is that at the front? It’s blocking you in.’

  She hesitated, and pursed her lips. ‘I don’t know. Look, John, do you have a few minutes? We need to talk about Vanessa.’

  He turned to her. ‘God, what is it now?’

  ‘Come on through.’ She led him to the sun lounge at the rear of the house. It wasn’t very sunny, and the room was cool. ‘We need to do something about her drug taking. You said you would talk to—’

  Perry sighed. Last weekend their seventeen-year-old daughter Vanessa had been among a dozen youngsters caught in possession of drugs at a rowdy party raided by police, in the centre of town. The number of ecstasy and amphetamine tablets she had on her seemed indicative of a custodial sentence, even as a first offence.

  ‘I’ve had a word, against my better judgement. Her file has been “lost”. She won’t be part of the case going up to the CPS.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, thank you so much.’

  ‘It’s not brilliant, it’s corrupt. I could go to prison if they find out.’

  ‘But they won’t find out, will they, darling?’

  Darling? Not a word she used often.

  She reached out for him and kissed him with unusual passion, her hands holding his face, her tongue probing inside his mouth. It had not been there for a very long time. As her bathrobe came undone, the tips of her breasts brushing against him, he started to feel aroused but, more than anything, surprised. After a minute, he gently pulled away and looked quizzically at her face. ‘Mel, that’s really nice, but I don’t have time. I’ve got to get back.’

  She gave him a look, not of disappointment, but something else. As if they had just had an argument which he had lost and she had trumped it with: I told you so.

  ‘What’s up, Mel? Has something else happened?’

  ‘I found some more drugs, in her room.’

  ‘What kind?’ He started to move towards the stairs,
to start examining this domestic crime scene.

  She held him back. ‘I don’t know exactly, I flushed them all down the loo.’

  ‘What? Why did you do that, Mel? How are we ever going to—’

  She seemed distracted, glancing over his shoulder towards the door into the house.

  ‘Is she here?’ he asked, turning to look too.

  ‘No, John. She’s not. She is never here at a Thursday lunchtime, she’s got that part-time waitressing job, remember?’ Mel said, looking back at her husband. ‘I’ve not seen her since Monday, but she texted me a few times.’

  Now released, he went upstairs to the spare room which he used as his home office. In doing so he passed Vanessa’s room, ‘Keep Out’ in large stick-on letters on the door. He took a deep breath, turned the handle and peered inside. Many crime scenes were tidier. The bed, a double mattress on the carpet, was unmade and there were clothes all over the floor. The place reeked of sex. Clearly, despite Mel’s certainties, Vanessa had sneaked back with her boyfriend. Perry went inside, and opened the window. As he looked out, he saw that the black Range Rover had gone. He wished now he had made a note of the registration number.

  ‘Mel, I think she’s been back recently,’ he called down.

  ‘Really?’ she shouted back up to him.

  ‘For God’s sake, didn’t you notice the whiff when you were up here? It’s like a bloody bordello.’ He pulled back the duvet on her bed. A used condom, scrunched up tissues and a tell-tale patch on the dark blue sheet, not yet dry. Christ almighty! The girl is seventeen.

  ‘Mel, it’s disgusting.’

  ‘I’ve not been up there today. I can’t face it every day.’

  ‘I can see why,’ he replied. Then, looking at his daughter’s pillow, he saw something on it. Something that changed everything.

  * * *

  Later that afternoon, Gillard and Perry sat in one of the meeting rooms going through everything that was known about Jane Morris. They started with the newspaper coverage, finishing with one piece on the one-year anniversary of her disappearance.