Harding handed him a pair of tweezers. ‘Any debris inside there?’
He took the tweezers from her and got down level with the wound to have a look. His fingers disappeared inside the tunnel and re-emerged with the remains of a small eel.
‘Must have been having his breakfast when she was pulled out,’ Carter said.
Harding proceeded to cut away a section at the side of the wound and place it into a specimen tray. ‘She would have been in huge pain from these wounds,’ she said. ‘Some of them are showing signs of trying to heal. I can’t imagine she could have carried on normal life with these. We’ll have to wait until we have the blood results back to know what she had in her system but it will take longer to find out about these infected sites. It’s not a quick process; it involves growing a culture to identify it. The only time I’ve seen this amount of ulceration in random sites like this is in cases of MRSA, the flesh-eating bug. But, without doubt, left untreated like this, this many infected wounds would have led quickly to organ failure and death: I’m not quite sure why they didn’t.’
Harding moved down to the woman’s abdomen. ‘Skin slack – a child maybe? Rapid weight loss evident. There is bruising around the pelvis area.’ She lifted the woman’s right knee up and outwards. She began a detailed examination of the genital area. She opened the entrance to the vagina and examined a short thick scar.
‘She’s had a child within the last few years. She was given an episiotomy.’ Harding waited whilst Ebony photographed. ‘We’ll turn her over now.’
Carter helped Mark turn the body over.
‘We have one ulcerated site on her lower back section which is similar to the wounds on her front,’ said Harding. ‘But we also have deep grazing on the pressure points: shoulder blades, buttocks and calves.’ Mark handed her a scalpel. She cut down the centre of the back and across to free the area of skin over each shoulder blade and then lifted the flaps and cut them free to examine them. ‘Some sort of organic material, splinters or fibres of some kind, are growing into the flesh. She must have rubbed against something over a long period of time and it’s implanted and taken root in her flesh.’ She placed the skin on trays before lifting the victim’s right knee upwards and parting the buttocks.
‘There is tearing of the tissue around the anus and bruising around the inner thigh and leading up to the vagina, but this has also become the entry point into the body for the feeders in the canal.’ Harding inserted the end of a swab into the anus and looked at the end of it – minute particles of decomposing flesh mixed with a grey sludge from the canal were clinging to it.
‘Can there be many fish living in the canal?’ Willis asked
‘Carp, eels, perch, pike even.’ Carter answered. ‘Someone caught a seventeen-pound carp in the Regent’s Canal just near here a while ago. I used to fish there with my dad.’
‘Don’t they all die if the canal freezes over? asked Willis.
‘Survival of the fittest, Ebb,’ answered Carter.
Harding discarded the swab into the specimen tray. ‘I’m going to take a biopsy of the rectum via the anus. It tears easily and there might be something embedded inside.’ She took a scalpel from Mark and cut into the side wall of the anus and took a sample of tissue.
When she had finished, Harding changed her gloves and indicated that Ebony should come across to stand where she was for a moment, level with the woman’s head, to photograph as she cut into the flesh of the neck.
‘I’m now going to make a detailed examination of the injuries that led to her death.’ She pulled the magnifying lens and spotlight down over the victim’s neck and carefully cut into the crushed trachea with a scalpel. She opened up the neck and exposed the splintered bones, then turned the woman’s head and examined the neck closely. ‘All seven cervical vertebrae are broken. The discs and ligaments are crushed, compressed. The large muscles of the neck are torn. To do this much damage it would take continued and immense pressure. There are no signs of a tourniquet, which would show where the initial pressure emanated from, where the screw was turned, so to speak.’
‘Maybe the killer used a length of something smooth, rubber tubing perhaps,’ said Carter.
‘Yes, perhaps,’ Harding answered. ‘It would have to be wrapped several times around the neck and then squeezed slowly to achieve this kind of result. Almost like a blood pressure monitor when it squeezes your arm – even, strong pressure all round.’ She spoke as she worked at opening up the neck and separating the fused bones. ‘Even her collarbone is broken, snapped under the weight of whatever it was that crushed her slowly, cutting off oxygen to the brain simultaneously.’
Ebony looked up at Carter from behind her visor.
‘Not done by the canal’s edge then, Guv? He couldn’t have done this there and taken the time he needed. What about the make-up?’
Mark answered: ‘I took a photo of her face and then I removed what was left of the make-up and I’ve bagged up the swabs to send to pathology to analyze, but I’m sure it’s what we used in the funeral home. It’s semi-permanent, waterproof. It’s really thick and the pigments are much stronger than normal make-up.’
‘So the person who killed her wanted it to be seen,’ said Carter. ‘Why else would he go to the trouble of preserving the head in a watertight bag?’
‘And he didn’t choose to weight her down, either,’ added Ebony. ‘She was always going to rise to the surface.’
‘But then we are crediting him with a lot of planning,’ said Carter.
Harding looked down the body of the woman with the Titian hair.
‘None of this happened overnight. Wherever she’s been, she’s been through immense pain and suffering in the last few months of her life – she’s been to hell.’
Chapter 6
The icy wind blew down Blackstock Road in Finsbury Park. It was three-thirty and dusk. Danielle pulled up her fur-trimmed collar against it as she stood waiting for a number four bus to take her to Holloway Road. She bent over the pushchair and checked Jackson’s gloves were still on. She pulled them up and tucked them inside the cuffs of his coat. She knew he was watching her. She looked at him when she finished and kissed his cold cheek.
‘Who’s going to see Father Christmas?’ Jackson grinned, his eyes watering from the cold. She tickled him through his padded all-in-one suit. He squirmed and giggled. Danielle looked up to see a woman who had come to stand at the bus stop. She was watching them, pity in her eyes. Danielle scowled at the woman as she bent back down to Jackson and pulled his hat further down over his ears. Danielle had Jackson out of the buggy, and the buggy folded in an instant, as soon as the bus arrived. She held his hand and pulled him up onto the bus.
The driver winked at Jackson. Danielle swiped her oyster card and deftly made her way through the vehicle, leaving the buggy in the luggage rack. She sat Jackson on her lap and pulled out a tissue. He squirmed as she wiped his nose. He watched her. She mouthed the words ‘good boy.’
They alighted halfway along Holloway Road and Jackson stood on the pavement waiting as Danielle took one seamless kick and flex of the buggy to make it ready for him. Jackson was slow getting into it; he was straining to look past Danielle and pointing to the window display across the road in the department store where a massive animated Father Christmas was waving at him. Jackson waved back, star-struck. Danielle looked at her watch. She had a half hour to kill. She crossed the road and stopped outside Simmons department store. Danielle pretended to look at the window display as Jackson sat watching Father Christmas wave his arm and mouth the words ‘Ho ho ho’. But her eyes went beyond the display and she searched the cosmetics counter. She watched a woman working on one of the counters that she just knew was Tracy; she felt it inside. She’d stopped at the window many times in the last two weeks. Now she felt a flutter in her stomach. She didn’t want to be spotted too soon. She wanted things to go as she had imagined, and so she kept her head down and pushed the buggy on, steering it through the street towards the Christmas market.