No Place to Die (9 page)

‘Jane, nice to see you.’

She looked up to see Patrick, Dave’s senior assistant, walking towards her.

‘Either I’m lost or you’re going in the wrong direction,’ she said, smiling.

‘Don’t worry; you’re in the right place. Dave’s almost ready,’ he said, touching her arm as he passed her. ‘I’ve just got to make a call for him. I’ll be back in a second.’

‘No problem,’ she said. She continued down the hallway, lifting her pass to the entry-reader before pushing through two sets of doors that led into the suite. The viewing room was off to the left. The Hungerfords had been in to formally identify their daughter, after Jane saw them this morning. Even though it wasn’t possible, Jane felt sure she had heard Elizabeth Hungerford’s cries rising up the three floors to her office. She turned to the right and walked into the main room. The lights were bright, harsh beams bouncing off the copious amounts of steel and Formica. Maggie was already in place. She was covered by a white sheet, with only her feet exposed. They looked smaller than they had in the tomb. In fact her whole body looked tiny compared with the large steel dissection table. Jane busied herself pulling on surgical gloves and putting on an apron, tying a loose bow at her back.

‘Jane, how’s it going?’

She turned at the sound of Dave’s voice. He was dressed in his usual scrubs and a thick apron that went all the way down to his shins. ‘Hi, Dave. I’m doing okay. How about you?’

‘I’ll be glad when this week is over.’ He looked at the cart next to the body and counted off the items, talking to himself the whole time. Jane stepped back to the edge of the room and stood in silence. ‘How’s your boss doing?’ he asked.

She hesitated, unsure how to respond: what to say and what not to say. ‘He’s . . . okay,’ she said, staring at the floor.

Dave turned. ‘Oh, as good as that,’ he said, walking to the other side of the suite and beginning to check the labels and equipment laid out in front of him. ‘I did wonder. I’ve tried to talk to him a few times, but to be honest even getting him out of his flat has been a challenge.’

‘Really?’ she said, although she wasn’t in the least bit surprised.

‘I’ve just about exhausted my “good reasons to get out” list,’ he said, counting off a row of scalpels. ‘I even joined him on one of his runs, to see if he’d talk. Almost killed me,’ Dave said, turning to her and rolling his eyes.

‘The run or Lockyer?’ she asked.

‘Both,’ Dave said. ‘I’m sure he doesn’t normally run that fast.’

‘And?’ she said, stepping forward.

‘He’s never been one for deep conversation, but he’s not right,’ Dave said, shaking his head. ‘At first I kept it work-oriented and tried to talk to him about the Stevens case, about the issues he had there, but he shut me down . . . said he couldn’t talk about it until it had been resolved internally.’ Jane could see Dave was just as frustrated as she was. ‘“Resolved internally” – what the bloody hell does that even mean?’ he asked, throwing a gloved hand in the air.

‘He hasn’t said much since he’s been back,’ Jane said, aware that despite Dave’s friendship with Lockyer, she was still talking about her boss. ‘There’s been no official . . . disciplinary action, as far as I’m aware.’ She felt guilty. Just talking about him made her feel guilty.

‘There was never going to be, Jane, was there?’ he said, turning to face her. ‘It could derail the entire case, something like that. I still can’t believe he’d be so bloody stupid.’

She was shocked by his candour. It occurred to her that perhaps Dave found defining his relationship with Lockyer just as difficult as she did. Lockyer was Jane’s superior and he was Dave’s colleague, first and foremost. But then there was the murky boundary between that and the amount of time at work, and out of work, they both spent with him.

‘What can we do?’ she asked.

‘Another time,’ Dave said, nodding towards the doors leading into the suite just as Patrick walked in. ‘Here he is. Patrick, let’s get things moving, so DS Bennett can get on with her day.’

25th April
–
Friday

Jane watched and listened as Dave and Patrick worked on Maggie Hungerford. Both men talked in hushed whispers, Dave speaking into a Dictaphone pinned to the strap of his apron. Before he could ask for a piece of equipment, it seemed Patrick was handing it to him. They worked together in perfect harmony. It was impressive to watch.

‘So, what can you tell me, Dave?’ Even though he had managed to get through the external examination in less than half an hour, Jane was aware of the time and how long the rest of the procedure would take. She didn’t want to be late for her meeting with Phil; or rather, she knew being late would cause her more hassle than she could stomach. A press conference was being arranged to coincide with the evening news. She needed time to prepare for that, too.

‘Okay, here we go,’ he said, stepping back from Maggie’s body. ‘As I suspected from my initial examination on-site, the head contusion is superficial. Blunt head-trauma to the upper right quadrant here,’ he said, pointing to an area behind the girl’s right ear. It had been cleaned and a small amount of the hair removed to expose the wound. ‘The assailant would have approached from behind, leading with their right hand. The instrument used was small with a rounded end, but with enough weight to inflict this type of injury. The victim would have been knocked unconscious, but only momentarily – a few minutes at most.’ Jane uncapped her pen and made a note of the wound, its position and a description of the object used. ‘Are the labs back on the blood found outside the girl’s home address?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Jane said, making a rough sketch of the wound on Maggie’s head. ‘They came in just before I came down. It’s hers. Not that I’m surprised. It was a safe assumption that she was taken from her house . . . She was wearing her pyjamas, after all.’

‘Right,’ he said, lifting Maggie’s hand. ‘There was a lot of dirt and organic matter under the victim’s nails, although it’s hard to tell what we’ve got as the ends of her fingers are damaged.’ He looked over at Jane. They both knew what that meant. Maggie had tried to dig her way out. ‘Patrick has taken samples. We might get lucky and find something of the assailant’s: fibres, blood or tissue. Have to wait and see.’

She nodded, but didn’t feel hopeful. Maggie’s attacker had knocked her unconscious; even if it was only for a few minutes, there would have been time to restrain her. If Maggie was tied up, she wouldn’t have been able to scratch him. Him – Jane realized that her brain had automatically assigned a gender to Maggie’s killer. ‘Does she have any ligature marks?’ she asked.

‘Not that I can see,’ he said, ‘but if the attacker used soft restraints you wouldn’t necessarily be able to. Closer examination will confirm either way if there are fibres embedded in her skin, so you’ll have to wait for my full report on that one,’ he said as he leaned closer to examine one of Maggie’s wrists. ‘I’ll know more once we have the lab results back, but in my opinion – given the lack of defensive wounds, and the limited time she would have been unconscious from the head-trauma – I think a sedative might have been used to subdue and transport her.’

‘That would make sense,’ she said. ‘Be good to have that info as soon as you can manage it, Dave.’

‘Of course,’ he said, not looking at her.

‘Would you say the attacker was male or female?’

He seemed to consider her question, tilting his head to one side. ‘Male,’ he said after a few seconds. ‘From the angle of the head-trauma, the attacker was tall: six foot, I’d say. Also, the amount of force required to render the victim unconscious would have been considerable. Not to mention transporting the victim, carrying her into the tomb . . . That would be challenging for a woman, in my opinion.’

‘That’s what I figured,’ Jane said.

‘There is something else,’ Dave went on, looking over at Patrick. ‘From the initial examination, it looks like she had intercourse not long before she was interred.’

Jane looked up from her pad. Two words stood out to her: ‘interred’ and ‘intercourse’. Neither was good to hear. ‘Rape?’

Dave’s lips turned down at the edges as his shoulders lifted in a small shrug. ‘I’m not sure on that yet,’ he said. ‘I don’t think so. I’ll do a full rape-kit, but from my external examination it looks consensual – rough possibly, but consensual.’

‘What makes you say that?’ she asked. She had written the word ‘rape’ on her pad, circled it and then surrounded it with question marks.

‘There’s a significant amount of vaginal secretion, which suggests she was conscious and consenting. There’s semen as well. There are external abrasions and swelling consistent with aggressive intercourse, but not enough to suggest forced penetration. She has a contraceptive implant in her arm,’ he said.

‘So there might be a boyfriend,’ Jane mused, making a note on her pad. A lover killing his partner in a rage wasn’t unusual, but it didn’t seem to fit this scenario. The tomb suggested premeditation, but to have sex with the victim and bury her without even attempting to remove traces of bodily fluids seemed spur-of-the moment or reactive. ‘How long before she died did the intercourse take place?’ she asked.

‘A few hours. Certainly not long before she was interred,’ he said. She couldn’t help cringing. There was something about the word ‘interred’. A body could be interred, but it seemed wholly wrong that the same could be said for a living, breathing human being. ‘Sorry,’ Dave said. ‘“Interred” doesn’t sound right, I know. But then “buried” doesn’t fit, either. Not in this case.’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, I’ll know more about timings when I do the internal examination. Sperm can survive for up to five days inside the uterus. We’re working on the hypothesis that she was alive when she was placed in the tomb, and that she wasn’t there for more than five to seven days. Once I’ve taken more samples I should be able to give you a more accurate timeline for both intercourse and time of death.’

‘Okay,’ Jane said, looking down at her watch. It was ten to six already.

‘Somewhere else to be?’ he said, frowning.

‘I’ve got a meeting with Phil Bathgate at six-thirty, up in the conference room. I could do with ten minutes to prepare . . . ’ She trailed off. Nothing could prepare her for Phil. ‘And there’s a press conference later on.’

‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, the internal will take me forty-five minutes to an hour. I’ve got to do the chest cavity and digestive system first, so it’ll be a while before I get on to the reproductive system. Up to you.’

She looked at her watch again. ‘Well, if you don’t mind, I’m going to head back then,’ she said, trying to ignore the disapproving look Dave was giving her. His deference to his patients knew no bounds. ‘I know you’ll take care of her,’ she added.

Dave’s face softened and he nodded. ‘No problem. You’ll be upstairs for a while?’

‘Definitely,’ she said, walking towards the exit, pulling off her apron and gloves and throwing them in the bin by the door. ‘I’ll be in the office until seven-thirty or eight, so if you find anything or need me for anything, just give me a buzz and I’ll come back down. In fact,’ she said, putting her finger to her head as if she had been struck by a brainwave, ‘you could call me at about half-past six with something vitally significant . . . ’

He laughed and shook his head. ‘No, no, my friend. I wouldn’t dream of dragging you away from such an important meeting.’ He turned away and indicated for Patrick to bring over the shears for opening up the chest. ‘Be sure to pass on my regards to Phil,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘I love that man,’ he said in an exaggerated shout.

‘Will do,’ Jane replied, pushing open the doors and walking out into the hallway.

She turned and looked back into the mortuary suite. Dave and Patrick had resumed their hushed chatter. As she looked at them she thought they looked like mourners, standing at a graveside, respectful. Dave was a gift to the dead. She had always thought so. He was a gift to Maggie and her family, because he would care for her as if she were still living.

Jane carried her laptop into the conference room and started to set up. Maggie Hungerford’s file looked slim and unremarkable on the glass table. It contained the preliminary paperwork and a few crime-scene photographs. It wouldn’t stay slim for long. Penny was typing up the notes from their meeting with Maggie’s parents, SOCO were sending over their report from Maggie’s home address, the PM would arrive sometime tomorrow, and Jane had no doubt that Phil’s notes would be extensive. All of the information relating to Maggie’s case would be available on computer files but, like most of the coppers, she preferred the bulk of a ‘real’ file. There was something about the substance of papers, the file’s increasing thickness as the case developed, that reassured her. She thought about what Dave had said in the post-mortem about Maggie’s birth-control implant. The Hungerfords had told her their daughter was single, that she didn’t have time for distractions. Her MA in psychology and her long-term goal of opening her own practice were her main focus. An interview had been arranged with Christina O’Reilly for Monday morning. Jane was banking on Chrissie having a different story.

‘Are you ready for me?’

She looked over her shoulder as Philip Bathgate strolled into the room, a folder clasped under his arm. She wished she had set up on the opposite side of the table. Her position in the room made her feel as if she had been waiting for the headmaster. ‘Yes, of course. Come in, Phil,’ she said, repositioning Maggie’s file in front of her.

‘Good, good,’ he said, walking to the other side of the conference table and sitting down as he whipped the file from under his arm with a flourish. ‘Interesting, Jane, fascinating,’ he said, indicating the file and tapping his lips with his fingers as he sat down. His chair was set much higher than hers, his knees grazing the underneath of the glass tabletop.

‘That’s good – great,’ she said, finding it almost impossible to maintain eye contact with him. She cleared her throat and sat up straighter in her chair. This was ridiculous. She was in charge. This was her case. ‘I could certainly use your insight here, Phil. This case isn’t exactly standard.’