The Special Dead

by Lin Anderson

  He finally took a sharp right into a back lane, just off Hope Street, where a police van was already parked.

  ‘Okay?’ he said.

  ‘Never better.’

  Short looks and few words were all they exchanged these days. The secret that they both shared lay uneasily between them. McNab had offered her the chance to ‘spill the beans’ to Detective Inspector Bill Wilson. Rhona hadn’t as yet, knowing that it might end McNab’s already shaky career. She’d told herself that was the reason, but was unsure if it was, and the longer she kept quiet, the more difficult it had become.

  McNab gestured to an open door. ‘First floor.’

  Rhona got out and began kitting up. The lack of conversation in the car meant she had no idea what she was about to walk in on, which could be an advantage. Forensically, the first image of a crime scene was a powerful and informative one. From her experience, the questions that immediately sprang to mind were often the most important ones. There was, of course, a routine to be followed, a structure to every investigation, to ensure nothing was forgotten in the emotional impact of the moment, but first impressions mattered. A lot.

  The steps of the stairwell were well worn, the walls patterned with glazed green tiles. When she reached the first landing, she found the single door there standing open, an officer on duty.

  Recognizing her, he stood aside to allow Rhona entry.

  She tucked her hair under the hood and pulled up her mask, then stepped over the threshold onto one of the metal treads already laid out on the floor to avoid contamination, indicating that McNab was treating this suspicious death seriously.

  The hall was painted red and poorly lit. There were four inner doors, three of which stood open. A swift look established that one led to a bedroom, another a kitchen, and the third a toilet and shower room. A crime-scene photographer was already busy in the bedroom. When he spotted her, he indicated the closed door was the one she sought. Rhona nodded her thanks and approached it. Then she heard a terrible sound, which made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. High pitched, almost a scream, she recognized it as a cat in distress.

  ‘It’s in there with the body,’ the photographer told her. ‘We haven’t been able to catch it yet. They’ve contacted the SSPCA.’

  As Rhona cautiously opened the door, the suffocating scent of death escaped, her mask barely weakening it. She stepped inside and quickly shut the door.

  The image that presented itself in the blazing light from two arc lamps shocked even her. Rhona had prepared herself for a body, and a mourning cat, but not for the curtain of naked Barbie-type dolls that hung from the ceiling.

  The draught generated by her entry had set them in motion, the noise of their hard plastic limbs clicking off one another as disquieting as the sight of them. What was even more disturbing was what she glimpsed beyond the curtain of dolls.

  The young woman was naked, her body suspended from a large hook in the back wall via a red cord wound round her neck. Her green eyes were wide open and staring, the tongue protruding between swollen lips. At her feet stood a large black cat, hair bristling, tail upright, the tip swishing back and forth in a warning.

  Rhona met its green glare and knew that it meant business, and with the cat there, she had no chance of examining its owner. She didn’t even attempt the Here kitty routine. Her best chance, she decided, was to let it come at her, which it surely would, then do her best to catch it.

  As she got closer to the body, the cat arched its back and hissed. Rhona braced herself, conscious that the flying claws might pierce her forensic suit. But it had given her too much warning and she was ready for it. With a practised hand she grabbed it by the scruff of the neck and held it away from her body, the paws and tail thrashing thin air.

  Rhona made for the bathroom. The shower cubicle seemed the ideal place to corral it. She dropped it in and swiftly shut the door. The cat, further infuriated by its enclosure, clawed and spat at her through the glass.

  Retreating, Rhona shut the door behind her, before warning the photographer of the menacing presence in the bathroom.

  ‘I’ve never seen a cat so mad before,’ he said.

  ‘Neither have I,’ Rhona agreed. ‘Let me know when the SSPCA arrive.’

  Free of the enraged feline, Rhona re-entered the room and was struck again by the image of the dolls and the body.

  Hanging was a fairly common method of suicide. Accidental hangings were less common, and homicidal hangings rare. True, murderers sometimes tried to cover strangulation by stringing up their victim afterwards, not realizing that the signs of each method of death were easily distinguished.

  Most suicides, if determined to succeed, stepped off a raised object, such as a chair or a ladder. No such object existed in the room. In fact, the room was bare apart from the victim and the spooky dolls.

  The body hung four inches above the floor. On closer inspection, the cord proved to be a knotted plait of a red silky material. Looped round what resembled a large meat hook, it was finally tied together at the right-hand side of the neck to fashion the noose.

  The body appeared unmarked apart from two tattoos, consisting of a small Celtic cross in the middle of the forehead and a pentagram about two inches in diameter in the region of the heart. The hair was dark auburn, cut short, the body slight, the breasts small. There were no piercings apart from the earlobes, where the small silver earrings were the same design as the forehead tattoo.

  The face was very pale; the green eyes had dilated pupils, their whites marbled red by tiny burst blood vessels. The protruding tongue was cyanosed – coloured blue by deoxygenated blood. All features of hanging.

  In cases of suicide, the ligature mark generally followed the line of the lower jaw, before going upwards behind the ear, depending on whether a fixed or running noose was used.

  The mark from the plaited cord was incomplete and above that normally seen in strangulation by ligature. The forearms, hands, legs below the knees, and feet showed evidence of lividity, which suggested the body had been suspended for at least three to four hours after death.

  It had all the hallmarks of a suicide, but the question remained. How had the victim got herself onto the hook?

  The door opened and Rhona turned to find Chrissy, her forensic assistant, eyes wide above her mask as she registered the dolls.

  ‘I used to have one of those,’ she said. ‘Two if you count Ken.’

  Chrissy began zigzagging her way through the curtain of dolls, sending them into a paroxysm of stilted movements, their outstretched arms and legs glancing off one another like maracas. Finally she emerged to confront Rhona and the body on the back wall.

  Chrissy ran a practised eye over the victim.

  ‘If it had been a man I would have taken a guess at auto-erotic strangulation, especially with the field of naked female dolls on view.’

  A thought already contemplated by Rhona.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Chrissy said.

  ‘I think it’s a suspicious death.’ That’s all Rhona would commit herself to.

  Chrissy looked about, obviously checking for the missing step.

  ‘There wasn’t one,’ Rhona said.

  ‘So she managed to hang herself without her feet touching the ground? Very suspicious, I would say.’ Chrissy wasn’t one to mince her words.

  Rhona set Chrissy to work on the surrounding area while she concentrated on the body.

  A little over an hour later, Chrissy had completed her forensic search of the room and Rhona had almost completed her sampling of the front portion of the body. A presumptive test for semen had indicated the likelihood that the victim had had sex prior to her death. Rhona had swabbed all orifices and taped the skin, locating two white fibres from the roof of the mouth.

  The fingernails had also proved fruitful. This time the fibres were fine and red and may have come from the ligature, something she would check in the laboratory under the microscope. A presumptive test for blood under the nail
s had proved negative, so it didn’t look as though she had fended off an attacker. Neither did Rhona find evidence of obvious bruising anywhere on the body.

  Although women were less likely than men to indulge in erotic asphyxiation, there was an outside chance this could be the reason for the hanging. If so, the victim would have needed help to suspend herself and someone on hand to rescue her after climax had been achieved.

  If that had been the case, the sexual partner may have panicked and left when things went wrong, thinking it better to make it look like suicide than be blamed for her death.

  Rhona set about recording the scene for herself. She wouldn’t remove the cord prior to the post-mortem, for fear of damaging evidence. Only when it was taken off could they be sure that there were no other marks on the neck indicating injury before the hanging.

  By now the heat and the smell in the room were becoming overpowering, and Rhona could feel the trickle of perspiration constantly running down her body inside the suit. Thinking about a shower reminded her of the cat and she wondered if it had been removed by the SSPCA yet. She hoped not.

  Emerging into the hall, she was rewarded by a cool draught from the open front door and the sight of an SSPCA officer heading into the bathroom. Rhona followed him.

  The cat stood in the cubicle, hair bristling, defying anyone to approach.

  ‘Sorry, we’re a bit overstretched,’ he said, explaining the time lapse since they’d been contacted. He eyed the cat’s angry glare. ‘Well done in isolating it.’

  ‘It was standing guard over its mistress’s body.’

  ‘Unusual for a cat.’

  ‘Are you going to sedate it?’

  ‘It might be necessary. It’s pretty distressed.’

  Rhona explained her thoughts on how the animal might provide evidence, if she could take some samples.

  ‘Okay, give me five minutes and ignore any screams from me or the cat in the interim.’

  Rhona moved into the hall and shut the door, silently wishing him good luck.

  Laid out now on the bathroom mat, the cat bore little resemblance to the furious creature she’d first encountered. Rhona focused on the front claws, where a presumptive test indicated the presence of blood. Under a magnifying glass, she also located skin particles. She had managed to avoid its claws, but it seemed it had succeeded in attacking someone, and recently.

  Once the cat was safely on its way, Rhona checked with the photographer, who told her the cat had been in the room when he’d arrived.

  ‘Do you know who discovered the body?’

  ‘DS McNab said it was the postman. He found the front door lying open, heard the squealing cat, knew something was wrong and called the police.’

  ‘Did the postman or McNab enter the room?’

  He didn’t know for certain. ‘You’ll have to ask the DS.’

  Rhona had only glimpsed the bedroom in passing. Now she studied it in all its glory. Painted a midnight blue, the drawn curtains were similar in colour, patterned by silver stars and crescent moons. The room was dotted with candles and night lights, particularly round a mirror shaped like a five-pointed star. To add to the reflective possibilities, the wall behind the bed was occupied by a large ornate mirror, as was the ceiling above it and the opposite wall. The room smelt of vomit and sex, barely masked by the scented wax of the candles.

  ‘The bed’s covered in cat hairs,’ Chrissy informed her. ‘There’s evidence of blood in small quantities on the pillow and semen on the undersheet. And, of course, the watery vomit on the carpet next to the bed. Beer, I would say, but thankfully no diced carrots. Plenty of fingerprints. I retrieved a decent man-size bare footprint from the carpet, probably from inadvertently standing in the vomit.’

  ‘So more than just the victim in the room recently?’

  ‘I would say so.’

  Rhona nodded, pleased at Chrissy’s thoroughness.

  The body, released from the hook, now lay on the floor, the crooked stiffness of its limbs mirroring those of the surrounding dolls.

  As the photographer captured this on camera, Rhona checked the victim’s back to find no obvious signs of cuts or bruising. She counted nine knots tied in the cord, including one at each end, probably to prevent fraying. The remaining seven were distributed evenly along its length. She would need to wait until the cord was cut free of the neck to study the noose knot in detail.

  Whatever had taken place here, the red silk cord looked significant to the proceedings. If it was a suicide, then the victim had knotted the cord round her own neck. Easy enough to do that, then step off a ladder or a chair, but . . .

  ‘You nearly done?’ McNab’s voice came from the doorway. He was kitted up to match Rhona, only the blue eyes showing above the mask. ‘The mortuary van’s here.’

  Rhona nodded. ‘I’ve left the rope in place until the PM.’

  ‘So you don’t think it’s a straightforward suicide?’

  ‘Do you?’

  McNab looked up at the hook. ‘How the hell did she get herself up there? That’s what I’d like to know.’

  ‘Me too.’ They could agree on this at least.

  ‘Fancy a coffee when you’ve finished? I’d like to discuss this further,’ he added, as though to make things perfectly clear.

  Rhona still brushed him off. ‘Let’s wait for the post-mortem, then we might have something to discuss.’

  McNab’s eyes flashed back at her. He looked as though he might argue, then wisely chose not to.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said curtly, then turned on his heel.

  Rhona heard further murmured words and laughter and realized he’d moved on to Chrissy. Her forensic assistant held McNab in high regard and had reason to. He had saved her unborn son by taking a bullet in his own back. McNab was a hero in Chrissy’s eyes.

  The memory of that night and McNab’s near-death experience didn’t make Rhona any more comfortable with the situation that currently lay between them.

  Damn blast the man, for putting her in this position.

  Taking down the dolls for transport to the laboratory was more time-consuming than moving the body. There were twenty-seven of them and, on closer inspection, they proved to have patterns drawn on them similar to the victim’s tattoos. Each one was attached to the roof with a large tack, via a length of standard household string wound round the doll’s neck.

  They had worked out a method of getting them down which consisted of Rhona standing on a chair taken from the kitchen and Chrissy bagging each doll as she took possession of it.

  ‘My brothers used to pinch my Barbie and torture it,’ Chrissy informed Rhona as they worked.

  This latest revelation about the male members of Chrissy’s family came as no surprise to Rhona. Chrissy had three brothers, only one of whom, Patrick, Chrissy had any time for. The other two were carbon copies of her father. Mean, spiteful, drunken, brutish pigs.

  ‘It used to reappear with a leg missing or an eye put out,’ she elaborated. ‘But I always got my own back.’

  Rhona had to ask how.

  ‘Various ways. Mostly involving their prize possessions.’

  ‘Which were?’

  ‘Their pricks, of course.’ Chrissy grinned up at her. ‘Remember itching powder?’

  She took a flame-haired doll from Rhona and slipped it into an evidence bag. ‘I always wondered why it was okay to give the female doll tits, but the male equivalent, Ken, had no dick.’

  Rhona decided there was no answer to that.

  Once the room was bare of body and dolls, Rhona settled down to write up her notes while everything was fresh in her mind. Now that the smell of death had been removed, other scents resurfaced, the predominant one being damp.

  There was only one window in the room. Grimy with the dirt of the inner city, it looked out over the back lane in which she’d been deposited abruptly by McNab some hours before. Looking out, she suddenly registered exactly where she was. The block directly in front of her was the north s
ide of the Lion Chambers, an art nouveau building, eight storeys tall, listed, but in critical need of repair. Originally designed and built as artists’ studios, it was an early example of reinforced concrete construction, waiting, she suspected, to be knocked down. Yet its countenance was still regal, even though the lion carvings were encased in wire netting.

  Looking down into the lane, she noted that there was only one car there now, Chrissy having hitched a ride back to the lab with the dolls via the forensic van. The car, she suspected, was McNab’s. She pictured him sitting there, waiting for her to emerge, with an offer of a lift back, either to the lab or home.

  Rhona exited the flat and the officer on duty closed the door behind her. She stepped out of the forensic suit, conscious of the stink of perspiration, chemicals and death about her person. Catching the tube or a taxi smelling like this was out of the question. She would accept a lift from McNab, regardless.

  He was sitting in the driver’s seat, deep in thought. Rhona stood for a moment in the doorway, watching him, before he sensed her presence and turned. For a moment he smiled, that dazzling smile that had melted a few hearts before her own. Then the dark clouds were back.

  Settled into the passenger seat, Rhona responded to his questioning look.

  ‘Home,’ she said quietly, then added, ‘please.’

  The please slackened McNab’s taut jawline. He visibly relaxed and the return journey was considerably less fraught. He even slowed on approaching traffic lights as though hoping they would change before he got there. Still they didn’t speak until Rhona finally asked if he or the postman had fought off the cat.

  ‘The postman claims he didn’t go into the flat. The open door and the noise from the cat was enough to make him call us. He said the girl, Leila Hardy, treated the cat like a person.

  ‘I took a look in the room,’ he went on. ‘It was obvious she was dead, so I backed out to avoid the cat. No point contaminating the locus. Then I called you.’