by Helen Phifer
‘Now what?’
‘Now we wait for the police to come and take over. In the meantime we pray that Annie rolls up with a stinking hangover, but safe and well.’
‘Do you think something’s happened to her? Remember that lass a couple of years ago who got drunk and separated from her mates. She ended up in the lake, drowned. They didn’t find her body for days.’
She glared at Gary. ‘Thanks for that, I really appreciate your comforting words. Let’s bloody well hope she didn’t decide to go for a midnight swim.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
‘No, you’re right. Shit happens and usually to the nicest of people. I’m so worried about her.’
Unable to take any more of Gary’s stupid chatter, she went into the office, slamming the door shut, and collapsed onto the soft leather sofa. She’d never felt so ill and worried in her life. Her eyes were aching, and she just wanted to close them, drift off for a little while and wake up to discover that Annie was back in her room and life was how it should be.
Twenty-Five
Josh was out in the corridor having an animated conversation with someone, while Sam, the detective he’d arrived with, and Beth sat quietly trying not to listen in.
‘I don’t care. Find out who this relative is; when they came in to the station; who they spoke to; if we still have it on CCTV. I want everything. I want to know why someone would come in to the station complaining of suspicious circumstances regarding their elderly relative’s death, when there is no evidence at all to say there was?… I want two officers despatched to their address and then I want them brought to the hospital mortuary to speak to Doctor Adams and myself. I want to know why permission was granted. Who applied for the licence, and what was the reason given on the application form?’ There was a long pause as whoever was on the other end replied. ‘I can’t believe we agreed to exhume a body on so little information. Who signed it off?… When you have all the answers, I need you to get your arse up to the mortuary and come see me. The doctor needs to start the victim’s PM now. As soon as you know, I want to know.’
Beth grimaced at Sam. She’d never heard Josh lose his cool like that before, he was always so laid-back. Judging by Sam’s expression, neither had she. The door opened and he strode in, throwing himself down into the chair so hard that Beth wondered if it was going to snap.
‘Everything okay, boss?’
‘I don’t think so. Something is way off. My bullshit radar is going crazy. Why was Florence Wright’s relative so convinced she needed exhuming? I don’t like that we found another body in that grave.’
Suddenly, a thought struck Beth and she began searching through her notebook, flipping the pages frantically.
‘I spoke to him! I remember someone phoned here asking if they could speak to me for advice about a recent death. It was quite a while ago, but I’m sure I took down his details…’
‘What did he say?’
‘I’m not sure it’s him, but I don’t often get phone calls from people asking about exhumations. It was a couple of months ago; I was just leaving the office when the phone rang. He told me his name and said he had concerns that there was something amiss with the circumstances of his great-aunt’s death. He said something about the GP visiting a lot more than he’d expect given she was such a relatively healthy woman for her age. He also mentioned something about her will being altered recently, maybe the GP being added? I told him he’d need to apply for a special licence and that it would be worth speaking to someone in the police.’
Josh looked at her in horror. ‘Jesus Christ, don’t tell me we have a small-scale Harold Shipman on the loose as well?’
Beth shook her head. ‘No, we don’t because there is nothing at all to support his claims. Obviously, I need the results from the full tox screen, but I’ve seen a lot of bodies with pneumonia over the years and fluid in the lungs was definitely the cause of death in there. I didn’t see any signs of overdosing of medication when I examined her.’
‘What are you saying then?’
‘I think maybe he used that as his cover story; mention a crooked GP and people are going to panic. They wouldn’t want a repeat of what happened back in Hyde with Shipman.’
Josh stared at Beth. ‘So he wanted Florence Wright’s body exhumed and re-examined for no reason? It doesn’t make sense.’
Sam looked at him. ‘He’d have a reason to exhume her if he wanted us to find the dead girl hidden beneath her coffin.’
Beth nodded. ‘Because he put her there?’
Josh shut his eyes and slowly shook his head. ‘We’d never have known about her if he hadn’t made up this story.’
Sam spoke then. ‘They’re not going to find him. He’ll have given a false address and probably had a cheap pay-as-you-go phone that he’s thrown away.’
All three of them looked at each other. Beth stood up. ‘I need to do the post-mortem on the girl. I can’t put it off any longer. Abe will have prepared the mortuary, and you need all the evidence you can get to find this mystery man. You do know we might be completely wrong, and it could all be a genuine mistake.’
‘Somehow, I don’t think we are. At least we have something to work on; it gives us a sense of direction for the time being.’
Josh and Sam both stood up. Sam followed Beth into the ladies’ changing room to get gowned up, while Josh went into the men’s to do the same.
Twenty-Six
When he’d realised his plan wasn’t going to work, he’d panicked. It had seemed like the perfect murder, killing the girl and burying her in a grave dug for someone else, but once she was in there, hidden away, he hadn’t experienced the thrill from it he’d imagined. It was all very well him knowing where she was, but what now? It was the excitement of the chase, recognition for his hard work and admiration of his audacity he wanted, he realised. Killing was easy.
As he sipped his latte from the cardboard cup, staring over the top of his newspaper, he felt a tingle of excitement in the pit of his stomach as a police van pulled up opposite the hotel and an officer got out. He had thought about booking himself into the hotel for a couple of days, to be near her and nearer the action. It might be a little bit too risky though. She was drunk last night, there was no doubt about it, but not that drunk that she wouldn’t remember him. It was vain, but he liked to think he’d made an impression. Instead, he’d spent the day drinking endless cups of coffee and watching the hotel from afar.
He’d already witnessed last night’s conquest come into the coffee shop around an hour ago; he’d slid down into the armchair, put his baseball cap back on and held the newspaper up so she couldn’t see his face. It hadn’t mattered, though, because he could tell she was preoccupied. She hadn’t even glanced around the busy café; her focus had been on the barista and no one else. Which had suited him just fine.
He smiled to himself as he stared across at the cemetery opposite. He’d always had a morbid fascination with cemeteries. He loved the peace and quiet; they’d been his safe haven as a teenager. In fact, it was whilst sitting, propped against a huge gravestone reading a library book about famous American serial killers that he’d first realised he was not at all repulsed by what he was reading. He knew that he should have felt shocked and sickened, but the words made his pulse race and his loins stir like nothing he’d ever experienced before. From that moment on he had read about the lives of every twisted killer he could find until books were no longer enough…
His first kill had been such a bittersweet experience. He’d admired the girl from afar, for months, in that awkward schoolboy way. He’d watched her until he knew everything about her. He’d followed her home from school every day but she never took any of notice of him, always too busy laughing with her friends or flirting with the college boys much older than him. His moment came one night he saw her stumble out of a pub arguing with a lad she was with. He’d watched from across the road as she’d slapped his face. The lad had gone to hit her back, then sto
pped himself, shoving her to the ground and walking off. He’d rushed to help her up, taking her arm and offering to walk her home. She didn’t even flinch. Walking past the cemetery he’d noticed the gates had been left open and took it as a sign, steering her into the darkness.
What happened next happened quickly, too quickly. Next thing he knew he was straddling her dead body, panting and panicking as the realisation of what he had just done set in. He stared at her for a few moments, talking in the beauty of her lifeless face before running all the way home.
The next few days were torture as he waited for the police to come knocking. But they never came. They arrested the boy she’d been seen arguing with outside the pub but eventually let him go for lack of evidence. He would have liked to have had someone to share the experience with back then, but he’d never had any friends and seemed to attract every bully in a three-mile radius. He’d used the cemetery, back where he lived in Barrow, as a shortcut from his home to school and back. When he wasn’t dodging beatings by hiding behind the tombstones he knew like the back of his hand, he was spending time wandering around them with his notebook. He loved reading the inscriptions on the graves, especially the really old ones.
‘Of Your Charity, Pray For The Soul Of…’ was a popular one. Whoever had died and needed so many prayers always piqued his interest: did the people who buried them know all their deep, dark secrets? What would be on his gravestone, he wondered: ‘Forever Burning in the Depths of Eternal Hell’?
He looked across at the small churchyard of Saint Martin’s, with its pretty little graveyard that looked like something off a picture postcard. Some of the graves were adorned with posies of fresh flowers. There were no faded plastic flowers to be seen; no one buried here had to endure that. He inhaled deeply as the memory of the sweet smell of death mingled with the heady, coppery scent of the soil as he’d pushed the girl’s body into the freshly dug grave filled his senses. The flash of her pretty yellow dress, torn and streaked with mud forged into his mind forever. He really was having the most pleasurable of days. Drinking coffee, as near to the police investigation into the missing girl as he could be, with a view of the graves opposite. There wasn’t much more he could ask for, was there? Except maybe for one thing…
Twenty-Seven
Beth noted who was now present in the room: Abe, Josh and Sam had been joined by the two CSIs, Carl and Claire, plus her made six of them. She watched Abe cut the tag from the body bag. As he slowly unzipped it, the sweet, cloying smell of decomposition filled the air. She glanced around the room to see if everyone was coping, because this was the moment of truth; if someone was going to pass out it was generally because of the stench of decay, but everyone looked okay. Between her and Abe they checked inside the bag for any trace evidence, then lifted the legs as they slid the bag down. The body had been wrapped in a sterile white sheet to keep it together. Unwrapping the sheet, they revealed their victim. The soil-encrusted wet rag of a once-sunshine-yellow dress covered most of her body. Beth checked the toe tag which had been placed on the body at the scene.
One of the Jane Doe’s eyes was half closed, as if she’d desperately tried not to fall asleep, and failed. Her once pretty face had been flattened with the weight of the heavy oak coffin that had lain on her for the last few weeks. Her skin was covered in dried mud, like a soldier in the trenches. Her clothes were covered in the brown, sticky soil which was common to the area. The heavy rainfall over the past few weeks had washed away the exposed soil from the slopes behind the cemetery, turning the grounds into a rain-soaked mud bath. She might have fared better had she been buried on higher ground, Beth thought. Abe measured her height and they weighed the body, as Claire began to photograph her from all possible angles.
Beth took her time walking around the table, examining every part of her. Removing the paper bags off first her left and then right hands to reveal her fingers were broken, bloodied and bruised; three of the nails on her right hand had been ripped right off.
‘Looks like she tried to claw her way out of… somewhere.’
Beth noticed Sam shudder at the thought. This poor girl must have been terrified, but Beth knew she couldn’t think about that now; all eyes were on her. She gently let go of the victim’s hand she’d been holding and looked up at Abe. He smiled at her; she knew he was trying to let her know it was okay. She nodded at him as he passed her some nail clippers and a paper bag to put the trimmings in. She proceeded to clip the nails that weren’t bloodied stumps, dropping them into the bag to be sent off for forensic examination. Then he passed her an ultraviolet black light. Turning off the overhead lights, Beth used it to scan the girl’s clothes and body for signs of semen which would fluoresce under it if present. Nothing of any interest showed up. She passed the torch back to Abe, switched the lights back on and began the painstaking task of collecting trace evidence, one hair at a time. These were put into small envelopes, and the date and time marked onto them to be sent off for analysis. There were no pockets in the dress to search.
‘We’ll remove her clothes now,’ Beth instructed, and Abe moved closer to help her remove the girl’s outer garments. Once they were off, they delicately rolled down her torn and shredded tights. They worked together carefully in respectful silence removing every last item of underwear, Claire photographing each piece as Abe carefully laid them out on another table for Beth to examine. There were no obvious injuries to her body that Beth found, and the torn tights were intact on the crotch which had surprised her. The underwear, too, was intact; no rips or tears in her fuchsia lace panties. If there was any evidence of sexual activity, it looked as if it would have been consensual. Unless, of course, the killer removed her underwear, raped her then put it back on. Which she didn’t think was likely. Beth began to speak into the digital recorder, loud and clear so Sam, who was scribing, could take notes as well.
‘This is the body of a female in her late teens, early twenties. This will be confirmed on closer examination and positive identification. She is Caucasian and has bleached blonde hair with quite a large regrowth of at least two inches of dark brown hair from the roots. She is thin but doesn’t look malnourished. There is a large, well-healed scar on the inside forearm of her left hand which runs vertical from her wrist to her elbow. She has a tattoo of a bee on her left ankle and a heart on the top of her right foot.’
She pointed to them and looked at Josh, who took out his phone. He snapped a couple of pictures, then sent them to Sykes and Bell, who were on their way to speak to the local authority homes in the area. Hopefully someone might recognise the tattoos.
Beth opened the mouth and looked inside, giving a detailed description of her teeth. As she moved the head, a single, dark brown shell fell out of the left nostril.
‘Ah, this is interesting.’
Josh frowned. ‘Why?’
Picking it up with a pair of tweezers, Abe passed her a jar to put it into.
‘This is a single fly pupa.’
She shone a light into the nostril cavity. ‘There is very little damage from maggots considering the length of time she’s been buried. I’m not an entomologist, but I know enough. Judging by the lack of maggots within the body, I’d say she was kept somewhere they couldn’t get to her. We all know how persistent the common housefly is when it comes to finding a body. This looks like maybe an odd fly found her or managed to get to where her body was stored before it was buried. The pupa is the third stage of the maggot’s life cycle and they normally disperse anywhere up to ten metres from the body to pupate.’
Josh was staring at her, and she smiled at him; she knew he didn’t have a clue what she was talking about.
‘Basically, what I’m saying is that after she was killed she was kept somewhere for at least twenty-four hours before she was put into the grave. She had to have been for the fly to have found her, then laid its eggs within twenty-four hours of death. Another twenty-four hours later these eggs hatch into first stage larvae which crawl into the recesses, usua
lly focusing on the head orifices. The eyes, nose, mouth, sometimes the genitals. They then feed and twenty-four hours later you have second stage maggots, another twenty-four hours and it’s third stage which then go on to feed on the body for three to four days. When they’ve finished feeding, they leave the body to pupate. Somehow this one didn’t, which is good because it gives us a better chance of figuring out how long she was dead before she was put into the grave. If you can get a definite last sighting of her we’ll be able to estimate a rough time of death. When I say rough, I mean that because it’s hard with all the different circumstances. It’s better than nothing though. You’ll know, very roughly, how long she was alive before she was killed. Does that make sense?’
Josh nodded. ‘I think so. We just need an ID then a confirmed last sighting before she disappeared. Thanks, Beth, I’ll take anything.’
Closing the mouth, Beth then checked for any abnormalities or deformities in her bones. She couldn’t find any fractures apart from the obvious damage to the fingers.
‘Abe, you can wash her down now, thank you.’ She turned to look at Josh, who was standing there looking pale. ‘I don’t think those tattoos are homemade; they’re not the best I’ve seen but they’re not the worst. Do you know of any studios that have a reputation for tattooing underage girls? They’re not new; I’d say at least a year or two old. I don’t think she’s older than eighteen or nineteen. It might be a start, someplace to start looking.’