Strange Blood (14 page)

‘So the church is kept locked most of the time, is it?' Megan frowned. ‘People can't just wander in and pray if they want to?'

‘Yes. It's a shame, but it's one of those sad facts of modern life. There's been lot of burglary in Pendleton over the past few years and unfortunately St. Paul's is a prime target. That's why we've started keeping things like this in our own homes. He stroked the neck of the chalice with his finger and thumb. ‘But I can guess what you're thinking, Doctor Rhys,' he said slowly. ‘Religious maniacs? Nutters? I'm not sure what the correct psychological term would be. And yes, we do get people like that at Saint Paul's occasionally. It's unavoidable. The church is there to help people with problems and we don't turn anybody away.'

He paused, looking searchingly into her eyes. ‘But if you believe someone like that is responsible for what happened to Tessa,' he said, ‘I can only say she couldn't possibly have been followed home from the church that morning.' He paused, his fingers moving away from the chalice. Taking his wife's hand he squeezed it gently. ‘We'll be praying for you,' he said softly.

*   *   *

Megan cast a nervous glance at her car as she left the Spelmans' house. She was in the heart of the Pendleton estate. Five minutes' drive from Tessa Ledbury's house and just a few streets away from the address on Sean Raven's police file. The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that Mariel Raven was responsible for the lipstick pentagram. Apart from the police, she was the only one who knew what had been done to Tessa's body. But why do it? The question had been hammering away in Megan's head since the previous night. Was it a reckless, opportunistic thing or something much more sinister?

The car was just as she had left it and she jumped in, pulling the A-Z from the glove compartment and scanning the index for the name of the Ravens' street. It was even closer to the Spelmans' house than she had realised. After a couple of right turns she was cruising past the houses, looking for number 171. She didn't have to look for long. As she rounded a bend she caught sight of a gaggle of people on the pavement. Photographers and journalists camped out on the Ravens' doorstep. Megan put her foot on the accelerator and sped past. Nothing to be gained by wading into that lot, she thought. Had something happened? Had Sean been released?

She switched channels on the car radio, trying to catch a news bulletin. But by the time she got home all she had managed to learn was the latest cricket score and the best way to keep slugs off plants without using pesticide. The press pack didn't necessarily signify anything new, she reflected. Could have been hanging around ever since Sean Raven was arrested.

Draping her coat on the banister she went straight to her study. Nothing on e-mail from Steve Foy. Just two messages from Patrick. One was about an academic reference he had been unable to track down in the library at Liverpool and the other simply said, ‘See you tomorrow.'

Megan stared at the screen, frowning. He had e-mailed her yesterday to say his mobile phone had broken. There was no phone in his room at the hall of residence, so unless he went to a payphone, e-mails were the only means of communication.

But his messages were usually longer and a lot more romantic. He'd always been into leaving little notes around the house for her to find and now he was away she had expected him to be, if anything, even more communicative via the computer. She had a nagging feeling something was wrong, but without being able to speak to him properly it was impossible to suss out what it was.

Megan tried to put it out of her mind. They could have a long chat when he got back tomorrow night. She went downstairs and switched on the television, leaving the door of the living room open as she went to the kitchen to make a coffee. Just as the kettle boiled she heard the familiar opening sting of the local lunchtime news and she wandered back through to catch the headlines. A shot of forensics people in white overalls going up a path bordered by red and white police tape alerted her before the presenter had even opened his mouth:
‘Fears of a serial killer on the loose as the body of a second woman is found in Wolverhampton…'

Megan sank onto the sofa, staring at the newsreader but taking in nothing as he announced job losses at a local car plant and news of a Birmingham woman giving birth to sextuplets. Then pictures of a Victorian house very similar to her sister's came up on the screen and her brain ground back into gear as he picked up the lead story.
‘The discovery of a woman's body at a house in Wolverhampton has sparked fears that a serial killer has struck again. Twenty-five-year-old Joanna Hamilton was found dead after police broke into her home this morning…'

Pictures of scenes-of-crime officers flashed back onto the screen and the van transporting the body was shown driving away from the house. Megan's mind was in a whirl. If the body was found this morning, she reasoned, the woman was probably killed last night. When Sean Raven was still in custody …

‘Police have refused to confirm reports that the victim was stabbed to death. They say there will be no official confirmation of the cause until a post-mortem examination has been carried out. But they are not ruling out the possibilty that the death is linked to the murder of mother-of-three Tessa Ledbury, who was stabbed to death at her home in the Wolverhampton suburb of Pendleton a week ago…'

The shrill sound of Megan's mobile phone cut across the newsreader's voice and she ran into the hall to retrieve it from her bag.

‘Megan? It's Steve Foy…' He sounded breathless, excited.

‘I've just heard it on the news,' she cut in, stealing his thunder. ‘When did it happen?'

‘Oh, our friend Sean's not off the hook yet. Not by a long chalk.' He sounded like a snake about to strike. ‘We're waiting for official confirmation from the pathologist, of course, but the word is the poor woman's been lying in that house for more than a week.' He paused, waiting for the impact of his words to sink in. ‘I thought you might like to be in on the post-mortem,' he said in the sweet voice she had heard him use when he was being deeply sarcastic. ‘Looks like it could be another case of overkill.'

Chapter 10

Megan's fingers left trails of perspiration on the steering wheel as she battled to reverse into a space in the mortuary car park. She was still wearing the navy wool trouser suit she'd put on that morning and now she wished she'd changed into something cooler. As she straightened the car up she caught sight of a familiar-looking figure in the rearview mirror. It was Dave Todd. He was coming down the steps, hunched over, supporting someone much shorter than himself. As Megan watched, Kate O'Leary caught them up. They reached a black Ford Mondeo and Dave opened one of the rear doors. Now Megan could see that the person he was with was a young woman. Her face looked very red and she was holding a handkerchief a few inches from her mouth the way someone would if they were afraid they were going to vomit.

Kate got in beside the woman and Dave jumped into the driver's seat, pulling out in a single manoeuvre and picking up speed as he headed for the exit at the other end of the car park.

Steve Foy was waiting for Megan in a small, sparsely furnished room. A pair of heavy, dusky pink curtains screened the window and there was a faded artificial geranium in a pot on the sill. There was a partition in one wall and through it she could see a long metal trolley covered in a white sheet. The sheet was wrinkled, as if something heavy had been lying on it. Now Megan knew why the woman she had just seen looked so awful. This was the viewing room. The place relatives were bought to identify a body.

‘Who was that?' Megan jerked her head towards the car park.

‘Young lady by the name of Vicky Tomlins,' Foy replied. He let out a sigh and shook his head. ‘Poor cow. Not a pleasant sight for anyone, but when it's your best friend…'

Megan sighed and shook her head.

‘It was her raised the alarm,' he went on, ‘They were supposed to meet for lunch yesterday but Joanna didn't show. Vicky said she phoned her a couple of times and kept getting the answering machine. In the end she went round to the house.' He felt in his jacket pocket and pulled out a packet of mints, offering one to Megan. She shook her head. ‘Anyway,' he went on, the mint making a bulge in his cheek, ‘there's an alleyway down the side of the house and when she peered through the back gate she noticed one of the rubbish bins had been knocked over. An animal had dragged out a chicken carcass and made a right mess. That what made her suspicious.'

‘Why?' Megan frowned.

‘She said Joanna was obsessively tidy. The sort who'd spot something like that straightaway and clear it up before she did anything else.'

‘But how did she know she hadn't just gone away somewhere?'

‘Because she hadn't put the bins out the front. Vicky said she would never have gone off without doing that.'

‘Hmm.' Megan thought for a moment. ‘And there are no relatives? No one else who missed her, I mean?'

‘Well there's an ex-husband but he's in Australia. They didn't have any kids. And according to Vicky there's no boyfriend either.'

‘And she didn't work?'

‘Oh yes, she was a freelance illustrator. She worked from home.'

‘So nobody missed her, apart from this Vicky?'

Foy shook his head. ‘Frightening isn't it?'

‘Well, yes,' Megan said, ‘Didn't the neighbours notice anything?'

‘They're not really the type who would,' Foy said. ‘On one side there's an old lady who's bedridden and the other side there's a houseful of students. I don't think they even knew her name. She'd only moved in a few months ago, evidently.'

‘Where exactly did she live? It looked like an old house. Too old for Pendleton, anyway.'

‘It isn't in Pendleton,' Foy said. ‘It's in Stockhall. About three miles away, towards Wolverhampton town centre.'

‘Yes, I know where it is.' Megan felt a cold sensation in her stomach. ‘My sister lives there. What street is it?'

When Foy said the name, Megan wracked her brains, running a mental map of the area around Ceri's house through her brain. No, it wasn't a street she could place. But that didn't make her feel any less anxious. She would have to look it up in the A-Z when she got back to the car.

The door opened and a bespectacled man in a white lab coat appeared. ‘Doctor Laine says he's ready for you now if you'd like to come through,' he said.

The smell hit Megan before she had even entered the room. It had drifted through the gaps under the doors and along the corridor like some invisible, malevolent spirit, assaulting her senses so that her hand shot involuntarily to her mouth.

‘Sorry about the stink,' the pathologist shrugged as they stepped gingerly over the threshold. ‘We've got the extractor fan going flat out but it's not making much of an impact, I'm afraid.'

Slowly, Megan looked up, trying to prepare herself for the appalling sight she knew was going to meet her eyes. She had attended maybe a dozen post-mortems since she'd started working with the police, but never one in which putrefaction was this far advanced.

It was the feet and legs she looked at first. This was deliberate. She would focus on those and work herself up slowly to viewing the rest of the body. The head she would try to avoid seeing until she absolutely had to. Without the head she could distance herself. Pretend that the pale green limbs with their dark marbling of veins were not real but some prosthetic creation borrowed from the set of a horror film.

‘As you can see,' the pathologist was saying, ‘The putrefaction at the site of the wounds is considerably more advanced than for the rest of the body.'

Megan's eyes travelled up the legs to the trunk. The stomach was so swollen that an untrained observer might have mistakenly believed the victim to be pregnant. But she had anticipated this. Anything over a week, she knew, meant that the stomach gases would have expanded alarmingly, giving this characteristic bloated appearance.

‘This is consistent with trauma to the body,' the pathologist went on. ‘The destruction of haemoglobin by bacteria means blood at the site of the wound or abrasion gives a blackened appearance to the surrounding skin.'

Megan allowed herself to move slightly so that she could see the victim's chest. The pale green skin of the neck gave way to a blackened mess of torn flesh.

‘Have you been able to estimate the number of stab wounds?' Steve Foy bent closer to the body, apparently unmoved by its appearance.

‘It's difficult to say until we begin the dissection, the pathologist said, ‘Because the extent of putrefaction tends to blur the boundaries between points of entry. We'll get a better idea when we examine the heart and lungs although I'd say the majority of the wounds were superficial.'

‘Can you give a ballpark figure though?' Foy pressed him. ‘I mean, is it less than say, fifty? More than twenty?'

‘At a conservative estimate, I'd say no less than a couple of dozen.' The pathologist motioned to his assistant who produced an outline diagram of a human body. The chest area was peppered with red biro marks. ‘This is a representation of the surface appearance of the upper trunk,' he said.

‘Hmm.' Foy studied the diagram and passed it to Megan. ‘What do you think?'

‘It's very similar to the distribution of wounds on Tessa Ledbury's body, isn't it?' she replied. ‘What about clothing? Was she wearing anything when they found her?'

‘Yes' Foy said. ‘This one was fully dressed. She was stabbed through her clothes, like Tessa, but they weren't removed afterwards.'

‘What about the weapon?' She turned to the pathologist. ‘Has the flesh decayed too much to be able to tell what kind of knife was used?'