“It leads up to a B road half a mile away. It brings you out near the village of Harlington. I’ve just got uniform to seal off that area as well.”
“Okay, good job Grace. Are Scenes of Crime here?”
“Just arrived. The Forensic Pathologist and the Senior Investigating Officer are also on route. Everything should be in place in the next hour.”
Hunter realised this was an ideal opportunity to slip off his jacket and make the most of the warm breeze drifting across the fields. Going to the rear of his CID car he sprang open the boot and dropped his coat into the back. Then pulling the sides of his shirt from his sticky and clammy skin he reached into one of the storage boxes within the boot and pulled out a white forensic suit and set of shoe covers. He handed these to Grace and then pulled out another set.
“Come on then, show me what we’ve got,” he said as he stepped into one leg of the protective suit.
Having satisfied themselves that all the relevant evidence sites were secured, DS Hunter Kerr and DC Grace Marshall made their way back to the murder scene, carefully following the police cordon tape past the ruined farmhouse building, and into a tumbledown barn. Streams of light burst through gaps between the old roof timbers where slates had become dislodged or broken, and yet despite the sunlight the interior was cool.
The body of the young girl lay unceremoniously on the dirty stone slab floor, a pool of thick congealed blood around the head and shoulders. The battered and swollen face was caked in the same reddish brown deposit. Where the eyes should have been only two dark sockets crusted in dried blood looked back. At first glance, from the facial injuries, if he hadn’t already been told it was a young girl, he would never have known. The arms were outstretched above the head and Hunter could see that the hands had already been forensically bagged. He also noticed that the girl’s T-shirt had been pulled, along with her padded pink lace bra, up towards the chin, exposing her small pale breasts. A huge gash exposed the breastbone and other less deep cuts covered her abdomen. Her jeans were undone but still around her hips.
In another white forensic suit, bending over the cadaver, he recognised Professor Lizzie McCormack. Slim and petite in her early sixties, with features not dissimilar to the actress Geraldine McEwan she had dutifully earned herself the nickname Miss Marple. She was one of the small number of British forensic experts who had been invited to work with American scientists at the Tennessee body farm studying detection experiments on decomposing murder victims, and had gained national recognition in the location of human remains and the linking of offenders to the scene.
He was pleased that she had been called out. Hunter had first seen her at work a year ago when the remains of a young mother had been found in a muddy ditch just outside town. Being one of only a few forensic botanists in the country she had been able to establish that the pollen found on the shoes of the girl’s partner also exactly matched the type found in the ditch. Not only had this evidence broken his story but also such was her presence in the witness box that the jury had no difficulty in reaching its guilty verdict. It had been a good result.
Her light-grey eyes wandered up from the dead girl and from behind a pair of thin gold-framed spectacles, fixed his. “Detective Sergeant Kerr, long time, no see,” she greeted him in her soft Scottish lilt.
The welcome salutation surprised him. “You’ve remembered me after all this time,” he responded.
“With a fine Scottish name like that, how could I forget you?”
“And there’s me thinking it was because of my good looks.”
She returned a smile, tut-tutted, and gave him a quick dismissive shake of her head. “By the way before I start my examination I think you need this.” The Professor handed him a clear plastic exhibit bag. Inside was a playing card, its reverse side facing him.
He turned it over. The seven of hearts. He returned a quizzical frown.
“My sentiments exactly,” the pathologist responded. “That card was partially covering the gaping wound you can see in the centre of her chest. She dropped her gaze back to the cadaver.
Hunter watched her move painstakingly around the body, her every move captured on video. The samples she pointed to were quickly photographed and bagged by the Scenes of Crime officers and forensic team who followed in her wake. Pausing momentarily she lifted her head towards Hunter and Grace. Glancing over her spectacles, which had fallen onto the bridge of her nose, she enquired, “Has anyone moved the body?”
Hunter gave Grace a questioning look.
Grace responded with a shrug of her shoulders and shake of head. “Not that we know of. The man who found the body couldn’t get away quick enough before he phoned in. Though he has said he heard someone running away from the scene.”
“Well the body has definitely been moved. There are scuffmarks in the matted blood on the floor; clearly where she has been dragged. And also we have the arms outstretched above her head which tend to reinforce that theory.” She slowly rolled the corpse towards her and examined the purple lividity pattern that covered the back and buttocks.
Looking on, Hunter knew that this was the result of the muscles and organs no longer pumping blood around the body, and gravity taking over.
“The lividity is just starting to blanch. Hypostasis is in the early stages and body temperature readings would indicate she has been here for only a few hours. By the drag marks through the blood I would say that someone has attempted to move this body after death.”
“From the bodies general description” interjected Grace, “we’re certain it matches that of a fourteen year old girl who was reported missing only a couple of hours ago.”
“Well my initial findings would suggest she was most probably murdered less than three hours ago. She has multiple stab and incised wounds to her head and as you can see a sharp instrument has penetrated both eyes. There is also the deep wound to the upper chest. Despite the considerable amount of congealed blood I can’t say for sure yet if she was dead before or after the wounds were inflicted because I have also found this.” Professor Lizzie McCormack pulled down the neckline of the dead girl’s T-shirt a few inches below the throat. With a latex gloved hand she pointed to several red weal marks around the front of the neck.
“There is petechial haemorrhaging on the skin which is consistent with some type of ligature being placed tightly around the anterior neck. In other words she has been strangled with something approximately five centimetres wide. And looking at the nip and graze marks on the side of her upper neck my first thoughts are a belt of some type. The post-mortem will give us a better indication.” She snapped off her gloves. “I’ve finished now if you’d like to bag up this once dear creature and remove her to the mortuary for me.”
Lizzie eased herself up gently, her hands clasped around her knee joints. “The arthritis is playing me up today.”
*****
The smell of death was something Hunter Kerr could never get used to. Despite the air conditioning in the white tiled mortuary the stench was a nauseating mixture of decaying flesh and stale blood, which enveloped him, and which he knew would be clinging for many hours thereafter to every article of clothing he wore. He popped an extra strong mint into his mouth in an effort to cover the smell. The mortuary also brought back the memories of the time he had dealt with his first cot death. The baby had been roughly the same age as his own first-born and all he had seen throughout the procedure was the face of Jonathan superimposed on the dead child. For days after he had lain awake at night watching the movement of the Moses basket at the side of the bed, and listening to Jonathan’s breathing pattern.
The girl on the metal slab had now been cleaned up and he could now see clearly the horrendous wounds, which had been inflicted on the head of the girl. The dark mushy sockets, devoid of eyes, gave the face an almost surreal appearance. Throughout his career he had never been squeamish when it had come to looking at dead bodies, whatever state they were in, though as a young cop he had never actually liked having to physically handle the cold flesh. That was always one job he had always faced with trepidation, and wherever possible avoided.