The Blissfully Dead (5 page)

Chapter 7
Day 3 – Patrick

O
f all the many people Patrick came into contact with through his work, Daniel Hamlet was probably the man he most admired and respected. The forensic pathologist was deadly serious about his p
rofessional responsibilities
, Patrick thought, wincing at the involuntary pun. A black man in his mid-forties, with hair that was greying around the temples, Hamlet had shown rare emotion the last time they had worked together. But today he was back to his earnest, serious self, no sign of the excitement Carmella had mentioned on the phone.

‘I hear you have something interesting to share?’ Patrick asked as they walked towards the lab where the autopsy had been
carried out.

‘That’s right. But first I want to show you something.’

Rose was laid out ready on a metal table, covered with a sheet. Even though Patrick had seen her body already, it still caused him to gulp down air as he approached. She looked even paler now, but more serene, removed from the bloody scene of her death.

‘So,’ Hamlet began. ‘The cause of death is clear – she was strangled. The murderer used a two-handed grip, suggesting that they may not be particularly strong. Of average strength, I would guess.’

‘He used his hands?’

‘Yes. Assuming it is a he.’

Patrick nodded. He had erroneously made that assumption
before.

‘There is no sign of sexual assault, which is surprising. No semen. No sign of Rose taking part in any sexual activity at all, consensual or otherwise.’

‘Was she a virgin?’

Hamlet kept his eyes on the corpse. ‘It’s difficult to tell. I would say very possibly. But she definitely wasn’t raped. Of course, when I say no sexual assault, I mean nothing vaginal. Stripping her, touching her body . . . that is assault, of course. But there is no evidence that the murderer derived sexual gratification.’

‘I understand.’

‘She was in good health, a little overweight but nothing wrong with her at all. She ate a burger and fries an hour or two before her death, so it might be worth seeing if anyone spotted her in
McDonald’s
or similar that evening.’

Patrick made a note.

‘Now, the really interesting thing . . .’

‘The little cuts.’

‘Yes. The cuts are all so small that, though each one bled a little, they weren’t enough for her to bleed to death, even if the murderer waited a long time. The purpose of the cuts was undoubtedly to cause pain. Especially as perfume was sprayed into each one.’

The smell of the perfume had faded, but the scent came back to Lennon now – the way it had filled the hotel room, stinging his eyes and nose.

‘It would have hurt like hell,’ Hamlet said. ‘Like a hundred little wasp stings. Worst would have been these, on the softer and more sensitive parts of her flesh – her thighs, the soles of her feet. Unless it was part of some strange ritual I’ve never heard of, it seems clear this was done to cause her pain. A very unusual form of torture. Slow, painstaking and not too intense, but the cumulative effect would be quite awful.’

They both stared at the body, concentrating on the miniscule marks.

‘The murderer used a very sharp knife. Small, with a blade around four inches long. A pocket knife, but too sharp to be a penknife or Swiss army knife.’

‘Have you ever seen anything like this before?’ Patrick asked.

Hamlet nodded. ‘That’s what I wanted to tell you. The interesting thing is that yes, I have.’

Patrick felt it then: that tingle; the fizz in his bloodstream that acted like a narcotic; the rush that made him addicted to this job. He waited for Hamlet to go on, the pathologist seeming to enjoy the build-up of anticipation, like he was announcing the
winner
of the latest series of
Britain’s Got Talent
.

‘There were marks like these on a body I examined three
mont
hs ago.’

He produced a file, which he’d clearly dug out earlier, and opened it. Immediately, Patrick felt confused. He had expected to see details of an autopsy on another teenage girl. But the date of birth of this victim was 1931. Her name was Nancy Marr, and she had lived in Wimbledon. Patrick vaguely remembered the case. He flicked through the autopsy report. Her body had been found in her flat, killed by strangulation. No sign of sexual assault.

‘Here,’ Daniel said, sliding a photograph from the file. It was a close-up of the woman’s torso, showing her collarbone and upper chest. There were around twenty little cuts on the skin, just like the ones on Rose’s flesh.

‘Shit,’ Patrick said, his voice hushed. ‘Was she naked like Rose?’

‘No.’ Hamlet pointed to the relevant text in the report. ‘Her top had been ripped just below the neck, seemingly as the result of a struggle, possibly the assailant grabbing hold of her before
strangling
her.’

Patrick leafed through the report. ‘Is it the same knife?’

‘Hmm. It’s impossible to say for certain, but it’s the same size.’

Patrick flicked to the back page. ‘Whose case is it?’

‘One of your colleagues’,’ Hamlet said. ‘I called and left a
message
for him too, earlier today.’

Patrick’s heart sank when he saw who it was: Winkler.

Chapter 8
Day 3 – Kai

H
ey, bae.’

Silence, apart from the background sounds of
OnTarget’s latest album on Spotify shuffle.

Kai tried again. ‘Hey, sexy. Wanna get pizza?’

‘Shut it, Kai, I’m busy.’

‘What’ya doing, babe?’

From her bed, where she was lying on her stomach, tapping away at her laptop, Jade turned and pulled a face. ‘Duh! I’m rollerblading naked round the park.’

‘
Are
yer?’ Kai actually looked puzzled, as if he had somehow missed this. He noticed that she’d turned her Shawn Barrett duvet cover the wrong way up, so it looked like she was lying on top of him while he gave her head.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake. No – what does it look like? I’m on the forums, aren’t I?’

‘Anything good?’

Jade made a frustrated sort of noise. ‘I mean, look at this, I’m only being realistic and I’m getting a load of abuse!’

Kai came and lay on top of Jade, grinding his pelvis into the small of her back as he looked over her shoulder at her screen.

F-U-Cancer:
I’m still totally cut up about MissTargetHeart.

Jade had responded:
You need to get over that, seriously.
Not like you two were BFFs, FFS!

F-U-Cancer:
How can you be so heartless, Jade? I knew I shouldn’t have started talking to you again.

‘How can you be so heartless, Jade?’
mimicked Jade in a high-pitched, whiny voice. ‘God, she’s
such
a sap. Posh cow.’

Kai fixed his gaze on one of the dozens of Shawn Barrett posters on Jade’s bedroom wall. ‘I’d be proper gutted if you got throttled.’

Jade ignored him. A new message had made her stiffen with outrage. ‘WHAT. THE. ACTUAL.
FUCK
?’

‘Sup, bae?’ Kai tried to playfully straddle her on the bed so he could massage her tense shoulders, but she slapped him away as though he was a particularly irritating bluebottle.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered, scanning the computer screen. ‘She’s bang out of order. No, no. I ain’t having that, no way.’

‘Who – MissTargetHeart?’ Kai was puzzled. Rose Sharp, a.k.a.
MissTargetHeart
, was in a mortuary somewhere, so it was hard to believe that she could have done anything recently to incur the wrath of Jade – hard to believe, but not impossible. Jade was very easily offended, as he well knew.

‘No, you twat, YOLOSWAG. How dare she?’

‘What’s she said?’

Jade stabbed impatiently at her screen with a long fingernail – each of her gel nails was decorated with a different OnTarget logo.

‘YOLOSWAG – 5 minutes ago – 11,987 times?!’

‘What’s she on about, bae?’

Jade jumped off the bed and paced around the room, furious. ‘Who does she fucking think she is? She’s just jealous, innit, that she didn’t do it, and now I’m getting all the props and she thinks she can have a pop at me? She’s got another think coming.’

‘The tweets?’ Kai asked nervously.

‘Yeah, the tweets!’

Jade was inordinately proud of the fact that the OnTarget website had recently featured her in an article about how she’d tweeted Shawn Barrett 11,897 times in an attempt to get him to follow her back. It called her ‘Shawn’s Biggest Fan?’ She’d printed out the article and it was sellotaped to the wall next to a life-size poster of Shawn:

Of course, we’re all massive Targeters here, but there’s someone out there who’s dedicated weeks to repeatedly spamming Shawn Barrett with almost 12,000 tweets. Now, that’s
slightly
excessive, but the girl behind the tweets, Jade, insists she has a very good reason for doing so. And that reason is that she’s truly, madly, deeply in love with him.

According to BuzzFeed, Jade began tweeting Shawn telling him how her day was going, but she thought that was ‘useless’, so instead decided to write
‘Before I met you @ShawnBarrett I never knew what it was like to be able to look at someone and smile for no reason, follow me, ily.’

She told the website:
‘I only tweet Shawn, I don’t need anything but his follow.’
Unfortunately for Jade, Shawn Barrett is still yet to follow her on Twitter, but we’re sure she won’t stop there.

‘I love them more than my own life, but Shawn is the one who I love the most,’
Jade told BuzzFeed.
‘I actually love him more than I love my boyfriend.’

Kai scowled at the last sentence, as he did every time he looked at the printout or Jade mentioned it – which was about as many times as she’d tweeted Shawn. But he never let Jade see him scowl.

‘Haters gonna hate, babe, she’s totally jealous.’

Why, Kai thought, couldn’t he have thick blond hair and a strong jaw like Shawn’s? Perhaps Jade would be nicer to him if he didn’t have spots on his forehead, skinny legs and wiry black hair that looked like pubes. Secretly he hated Shawn Barrett with a passion and, with his limited imagination, spent a great deal of time planning all sorts of lurid misfortunes for him, preferably
humiliating
and public ones. Jade was so fit, with her unbelievable boobs and long blonde hair, that he did seriously worry whether all her millions of tweets would eventually attract Shawn’s attention – and then what chance did he, Kai, have? Jade wouldn’t give him a second look.

Now, though, Jade rolled onto her side on the bed and twined her arms around his neck. He breathed in her scent – Friendship perfume, hairspray and the sickly smell of her thick brown foundation. She had a tidemark on her jaw contrasting with the white skin of her neck and throat.

‘Yeah, but what are we gonna do about it?’ she whispered, her words tickling his ear. ‘YOLOSWAG has, like, really upset me.’ She flapped her fingers in front of her eyes – the gesture that meant she was trying to hold back tears.

Kai couldn’t bear the prospect of Jade crying. He wrapped his arms around her waist and hugged her tightly. ‘I’ll do whatever you want, bae. I mean it. Whatever you want.’

She nuzzled into his neck and he felt her cheeks curve up into a sly smile.

‘People who dare diss me don’t deserve—’ She sniffed.

‘To live?’ Kai asked.

She guided his hands to her boobs and Kai thought, just like the last little bitch who dared to mess with Jade, that he’d died and gone to heaven.

Chapter 9
Day 3 – Patrick

D
CI Suzanne Laughland stuck her head through the door of her partitioned office and called across to him. ‘A word, please, Pat?’

Heads bent over desks immediately popped up in curiosity, reminding Patrick of meerkats – meerkats in cheap nylon shirts and poorly fitting jackets. Why did so many of his colleagues dress like teenage cashiers in a building society? He pondered this conundrum as he wove around the rows of desks towards Suzanne’s office, mostly to try to quash the tiny lift of excitement he felt whenever she spoke his name.

Patrick could see through the open slats of the blinds that there was someone else sitting in with her, but couldn’t tell who it was until he was almost at her desk. Then he swore softly, although it came as no surprise. Sitting with his back to the door,
cleaning u
nder his fingernails with an unfolded paper clip, was Adrian
Winkler
.

He nodded curtly at them both and Suzanne gestured for him to take a seat next to Winkler. Unfortunately, because her office was quite small, they ended up sitting next to one another opposite Suzanne as if they were naughty schoolboys receiving a telling-off from the Head for fighting. Pat made a conscious effort to relax. He sat back in his seat and tried to stretch out his legs, but the walls of the solid desk were in the way, so he couldn’t. Winkler noticed and smirked. Then he shifted in his chair slightly so that he turned his body away from Patrick, cold-shouldering him.

He’s a cock,
thought Pat
. Don’t let him make you act like one too.

‘Good afternoon, Patrick. Adrian and I were just discussing Hamlet’s autopsy findings, specifically the new development regarding the cuts on the body of Nancy Marr matching those on Rose Sharp’s. Have you had a chance to read up on the Nancy Marr case yet?’

‘Not in detail, I’m afraid,’ Patrick said.

Winkler tutted and Patrick glared at him.

‘I’ve been going over the interviews Carmella and I did with the Travel Inn personnel, and Rose Sharp’s parents. As I’m sure you appreciate, that’s a lot of material to get through.’ He managed to stop himself adding ‘I’ve been here since 6 a.m.’, because it would sound like a defensive whine. ‘Has Hamlet confirmed that it could have been the same knife?’

Suzanne nodded. ‘He just rang Adrian to say that he’s sure it was the same kind—’

She was going to continue, but Winkler jumped in and interrupted. Patrick was childishly glad to see an expression of irritation flicker across Suzanne’s features.

‘So we need to figure out what could possibly be the link
between an eighty-three-year-old widow in Wimbledon and a
fifteen
-year-old boy-band fan in Kingston. If indeed there is one. Just because it’s the same
sort
of knife doesn’t mean it’s the same perp. Lots of lowlifes will have the same
sort
of knife.’

He wondered, why was it that everything coming out of
Winkler’s
mouth made Pat want to punch him?

Suzanne put a hand up before Patrick could respond. ‘Pat, Adrian is already up to speed with Rose Sharp’s murder. So I want you two to sit down together and work through the similarities, see if there’s any other connection. You can jointly head up the operation.’

Both men gaped at her.

‘You’re kidding,’ Patrick managed, furious with himself that he was unable to prevent his voice momentarily turning into an
adolescent
squeak. He was furious with her too. She knew there was no love lost between him and Winkler – what was she thinking?

Adrian had gathered himself and was now nodding sagely, as if him being involved with the case would give it the only possible chance of getting solved. Patrick jumped to his feet.

‘I’m sorry, but I have to object. As Adrian here so rightly says’ – at this he bared his teeth in a fake grin to indicate that he was being sarcastic rather than deferential – ‘any old scumbag could be
carrying
a knife like that used on both of these victims. It’s worth investigating, of course, but surely it won’t mean both of us have to run the case?’

‘That’s as may be, regarding the knife,’ said Suzanne. ‘But you know we’re low on numbers at the moment, what with Connolly still on sick leave and Regan retiring, and Adrian never got a perp for the Marr case, so if you work together you could end up killing two birds with one stone. I’m relying on you both to put aside any personal differences. You’re big boys, so don’t behave like kids in the playground. Sit down, Patrick.’

Chastened, Patrick thought how ironic it was for her to say that, after his earlier image of them in front of the Head. She was right, though. At all costs, he must not allow himself to sink to Winkler’s level. They were professionals, with a job to do.

He believed his face would confirm this, but instead Suzanne looked concerned. She turned to Winkler. ‘That’s all for now, Adrian. I just want a quick word with Patrick.’

Winkler left the office without a backwards glance at Pat. Suzanne took a sip of her coffee and grimaced.

‘What’s the problem, Suzanne?’

‘This coffee is not only disgusting, it’s stone cold.’

‘I didn’t mean with the coffee. You look worried.’

Suzanne leaned towards him over the desk, as if she wanted to take his hand. ‘Yes. Well, I have to say, I
am
quite worried. I know you and Adrian don’t particularly see eye to eye’ –
Patrick
just about managed to prevent a snort – ‘but I need you two to pull together on this one. Unless . . . and forgive me, Pat, but I know things are tough for you at the moment, what with getting ready to move back home . . . and I’m trusting you here to be honest with me – would you like to take a bit of leave, get yourself settled again and have some time with Gill and Bonnie? It can’t be easy juggling all those logistics, let alone the emotions, alongside a high-pressure case like this . . . I could let Winkler lead the investigation.’

‘No way!’ Patrick leapt to his feet again. He was livid. ‘Are you serious?’

‘Oh for God’s sake, Patrick, you’re like a bloody jack-in-a-box! This is precisely why I’m worried about you! It’s just not like you to be so sensitive. You can handle Winkler. He’s an arse and we all know it.’

Patrick couldn’t resist a grin. He knew she would never have said that to anybody else in the station. He saluted her in sardonic acquiescence and took his seat again, glad that Suzanne had twisted the blinds closed when he’d first come in, so that the rest of the open-plan office hadn’t been privy to him jumping up and down like a maniac.

‘You’re right. And not just about the bit where you said
Winkler’s
an arse. I’m sorry, Suzanne. Not that it’s any excuse, but I had a
toddler
sleeping on my head all night, so I’m not exactly raring to go today. But I swear to you I’m going to crack this investigation, and although it would be so much easier to do it without Winkler’s opinions, you’re the boss. If you think it’s the right thing to do, then I will work with him, and I promise I will do my utmost not to let him rile me. Bonnie and I are moving back in tomorrow, so that’s absolutely going to help – Gill will be able to take over the childcare full-time since she’s not going back to work for another few months at least – and Bonnie will be back in her own room again. Plus, I won’t be living with my folks anymore. It will all be a massive improvement.’

‘Good man,’ said Suzanne, and for a moment their eyes met. ‘If you’re sure you can take the pressure.’

Patrick laughed drily. ‘I handled it during the Child Catcher operation, didn’t I? And that was even more of a nightmare,
domestically
.’

‘True. OK. Don’t let me down.’ She swivelled in her chair to face her computer screen, indicating that the meeting was over.
Patrick
caught the faintest whiff of her scent as she turned.

As he left the office, he caught sight of Winkler at his desk, smirking at him. He marched straight past him, unable to face him at the moment, and headed over to Carmella.

‘Come on,’ he said, loudly enough for Winkler to hear,
wanting
to make him paranoid about what Suzanne had said and not
caring
if he was being childish. ‘Let’s go. We’ve got two murders to so
lve now.’