Caffery took a step closer. ‘Post mortem?’
‘It’s not that clear, but can you see here? On the posterior surface of the trunk there are some excoriations.’ She used a gloved finger to point to an area of skin. ‘Ants, I’d guess. Or some other insect.’
She lowered the corpse and slowly checked the surface of the thighs, belly and arms, running her fingers over the skin, pausing to check each area. She took a hand, lifting it and crouching at eye level with the table so she could peer into Mahoney’s armpit. Something had caught her eye. She angled the little gooseneck light so it shone on to the hollow there.
The district DI took a step nearer. ‘What?’
‘There’s a little wound. Just here.’
She poked at it, then shook her head, dismissing it. ‘Surgery. Not recent, maybe a year, two years ago. Not great as an identifier, even a secondary one, but it might have popped up on the personal descriptive. If the dentals don’t arrive at least we’ve got something.’
‘What kind of surgery?’
‘Keyhole – probably endoscopic thoracic surgery. Could be a lobectomy for lung cancer, that sort of thing. Maybe a biopsy incision. Nice neat mark. Made a better job of it than whoever did her Caesarean.’ She straightened and ran the tip of a gloved finger across the woman’s pelvis. ‘Bloody awful job. Shoot the obstetrician, I say. Now, what about these other scars? These are more important.’ She turned Lucy’s left hand over and studied the inside of the arm. ‘Incised wounds to the right wrist. On the left wrist one wound has partially incised the radial artery. A second has incised the ulnar artery.’
Lucy’s arm hadn’t been transected but sliced longitudinally from top to bottom, the sides like dried meat now, opened to show the intricate network of blood vessel and nerve. Not from side to side. Caffery had seen that before: it was the most effective way to end your life. He bent over, hands on his knees, and peered into the hair again.
‘So she was serious about what she was doing,’ Beatrice said. ‘At least on this wrist. Not so hot on the right side – which is what you’d expect. This second wound is gaping. It’s transacted the volar carpal ligament and exposed the transverse carpal ligament and the flexor digitorum.’
‘There was a bottle of pills next to the body,’ the DI said. ‘Temazepan. And a Stanley knife.’
‘Stanley sounds about right. It would have to’ve been a mounted blade that made these – there’s enough pressure associated here that it would’ve left cuts on the fingers if it was just a razor…’
It took Caffery a moment or two to notice she’d stopped talking. He looked up to find her staring at him. Frowning. She put Lucy Mahoney’s hand down, came round the table to him and stopped quite close so she could speak without being heard by the others.
‘Jack,’ she murmured, ‘I’ve been polite to you, haven’t asked you any questions, haven’t made a fuss about you crowding my room, but if you’re looking for something why don’t you just tell me?’
He glanced at the DI, straightened and put his face close to Beatrice’s, then spoke in a low voice: ‘Comb her hair, will you, Beatrice? Give it a comb and a wash. See if it’s been cut.’
‘Cut? What sort of cut? Trevor Sorbie cut?’
‘Hacked. Clipped, shaved. Anything that looks odd.’
She gave him a long, curious look, then turned to the mortician. ‘Fester? Comb her hair through, my love. Rinse it out for me.’
The mortician did as he was told. He drew a comb through Lucy Mahoney’s hair and inspected the tiny bits of debris that fell on to the paper he held underneath. Then he placed the paper on the exhibits trolley, and rinsed the hair with the small hose attached to the examination table.
Beatrice and Caffery bent over the head. Cleaned up, Lucy Mahoney’s hair was reddish brown. It straggled out in long, damp curls. There were no cuts or shaved areas.
‘Not what you were expecting?’ she asked.
‘Thank you, Beatrice.’ Caffery pulled off the gloves and turned towards the door. ‘I’ll try not to darken your day again.’
11
Small though Flea was, she knew how to use her body. Dressed in her force combats, a neat white T-shirt and dark glasses over her red-rimmed eyes, she was a force to be reckoned with as she stood blocking the entrance to the driveway. The moment he saw her the taxi driver pulled up short. She held up a hand and swung straight into the back seat. No one, she thought darkly, was going to take a car to the front of her house for a while.
It was a warm afternoon and the taxi driver had the air-conditioner on, but they’d only gone a few hundred yards before he began to sniff. Flea, sitting stonily in the back, her arms crossed, her feet planted solidly on the floor, raised her eyes and found him looking at her in the rear-view mirror. He sniffed again, narrowing his eyes suspiciously, trying to look down at her clothing in the reflection. ‘Off somewhere nice?’ he said steadily. ‘Going somewhere nice on this nice day?’
‘No.’ She opened the window to let the air in. ‘I’m not going anywhere nice. I’m going to see my brother.’
She pulled out the phone. She’d called Thom six times already. Each time he’d dumped her straight into his mailbox. There was no point in calling him again. She could call her dad’s oldest friend, Kaiser, but he’d never had sympathy for Thom. Anyway, she’d leant on him too much in the last few days. She dropped the phone into her lap and leant back in the seat. The air coming in was sweet, warm and full of buttercups, bringing with it a sense of the west, a sense of the sea out past Bristol and Wales. She’d known these lanes all her life. She’d grown up here with the views of the seven sacred hills, the Georgian townhouses of Bath cradled between them, with the distant view of Sally-in-the-Wood and beyond it the Avon valley.
She thought about Thom, about how everyone had worried over him as a child. He was underweight, too small for his age. He got infections easily, learnt to walk late, and always seemed to find the fastest way to trouble. Mum and Dad had had to dig deep to keep their patience with him. And sometimes they’d failed.
She remembered coming in from the garden one day. Out of the sunlight, into the cool. It was the school holidays and her parents were in but the house was silent, which made her hesitate and go upstairs quietly. She found her mother first, sitting on the edge of the bed in the big double room. She was dressed in shorts and green Scholl sandals, and was staring at herself in the mirror. Her long white fingers pressed a pair of headphones to her ears and something about her posture, about the tension in her hands, the way her feet were crabbed up in the sandals, told Flea not to approach. Then Jill Marley had looked at her daughter. There was no expression on her face. They held each other’s eyes for almost a minute. Then Jill had turned back to the mirror.
The door to Thom’s room on the other side of the landing was half open. Flea tiptoed over to it and inside saw an odd tableau. Dad was in the middle of the room, kneeling. Thom, who was about eight at the time, stood a pace away, facing him. They weren’t speaking or moving, just staring at each other. Dad’s face had the look on it that he sometimes got when he was determined to do something, as if he believed the force of his gaze was enough to cut through mountains. At first Flea thought they were having a conversation. Then she saw it wasn’t a conversation they were in the middle of. It was violence.
David Marley took a breath, closed his eyes and slapped his son across the face. It wasn’t the first slap that afternoon, Flea knew. She could tell that this had been going on for a long time: Dad staring at Thom, Thom staring back, every few seconds Dad lifting his hand and slapping him. She understood what was happening, too. Dad was trying to make Thom react. But he wouldn’t. She could’ve told Dad he was wasting his time. Thom stood, mouth slightly open, eyes focused in mid-air. He wouldn’t react. He wouldn’t cry. That was just Thom for you. Irritating, distant and otherworldly. Not quite with it.