After coming up to speed on her phone, Kelly watched as Keira’s body was zipped up and loaded into a coroner’s van. People were still on the streets asking questions and offering theories. The boyfriend seemed a popular one, but they had to find out his name. Somebody mentioned a guy called Tyrone. Information came in slowly but surely. She left the forensic team to tidy up and was happy that the perimeter was secure. It was time to go and meet the dive team, and Will.
As she walked in the direction of the pond, it struck her how close it was to Wordsworth Towers. She radioed the coordinator for the witness statements on the Beacon Estate and asked them to mention yesterday’s crime during their inquiries to see if anything flagged up. If her theory was correct, somebody must have seen the perpetrators returning to the estate.
She saw Will in the distance, near the pond, and he waved.
‘Morning, Will. Everything good?’ She smelled a waft of Ralph Lauren and found it reassuring. She liked that he took care of himself. Though he was looking tired of late.
‘Yes, boss. Always happy to be out of the office.’
‘We’ll let the others chew through the statements from the Beacon Estate for now. Do we know of any active CCTV cameras in the area?’
‘I didn’t go into Eden House, I came straight here, but I know there are plenty dotted around. Maybe we’ll get lucky.’
‘Something up?’
‘No. Just a tough day yesterday. Looking at knife wounds is probably my least favourite part of the job.’
‘Me too. It was a shit day. You not sleeping?’
‘I’m fine, boss.’
Kelly left it and they walked in silence towards the underwater search team van, which had set up next to the pond. It hadn’t snowed as forecast but the sky was heavy with promise. The pond looked uninviting; not that it was normally used for a pleasant dip anyway. It was the preserve of ducks, swans and litter, and was around three hundred metres long and twenty wide. Kelly had charted a route from the scene of Ella’s homicide, taking into account that they knew from the two CCTV cameras that worked that the attackers hadn’t fled through the exits. Instead, she concentrated her search towards the Beacon Estate, which was their biggest lead so far. That route passed the edge of the lake, where a person could dump a weapon before disappearing. She’d checked the area for CCTV and, as she’d expected, found none. She surmised that the attackers had made their decisions based on exactly the same criteria, which proved premeditation and some resourcefulness. It also meant prior planning and preparation.
The dive sergeant introduced himself and Kelly did likewise. He was dressed for dry land, and she guessed that somebody else was going in. The whole area had been secured, but they couldn’t prevent people watching them from balconies and walls surrounding the park. She explained her theory to him, and they agreed that a strong man could potentially throw a weapon about thirty feet if he was running, or up to fifty walking. The speed and viciousness of the attack suggested that the perps would be running. The sergeant said he’d map out to fifty feet to be on the safe side. Kelly and Will watched as he charted a grid of squares over the area of the pond, and liaised with two divers readying themselves to go in.
Kelly had picked up a bit about diving in Florida. She and Johnny had done two casual aided dives, meaning they weren’t qualified to go alone, but still they’d had to learn the jargon, and now she understood most of what was being said. She knew that the DV was the demand valve on the breathing regulator, and this was discussed a lot. It had to be tested before entering the water. She also understood that BAR was the air pressure left in the tank. She and Johnny had had to work out underwater how much they were consuming per minute and at what depth. They’d been so engrossed in their calculations that the instructor had to point out a grey nurse shark that had come to feed on the reef.
Key West was a far cry from the grey sky of Penrith and the murky brown water of Potton Pond. The two divers looked weighed down with equipment, and reminded her of other specialist departments on the force. They were muscular, focused and systematic and gave off the sense that one could trust them implicitly with the job at hand.
The dive sergeant explained what would happen.
‘It’ll be a fingertip search, as the visibility is so bad. Ponds like this are caked with bird shit and general rubbish. They’ll split up and take half the grid each, like this.’
Kelly and Will watched as he pressed buttons and changed screens, checking the vital signs being sent by computer to his control room. It wasn’t like a beach jaunt on holiday.
‘They’re going deeper than ten feet, so they’re in full kit. We don’t want to waste time.’
The two divers prepared to go in, and the sergeant tested their radios. He’d already taken a scan of the intended search area and Kelly looked at it with interest. There were peaks and troughs that she couldn’t identify, and he explained that they were representative of the pond bed. He also explained that the true bed was probably under two feet of gunge, given his experience with ponds. They were used to plunging their thickly gloved hands into freezing cold mud, looking for sharp – potentially dangerous – weapons. A kind of underwater metal detector was attached to their search equipment, but Kelly knew that not all knives showed up on such gadgetry. At the end of the day, their fingers did the best work, but they were also the most prone to being sliced off by said weapons. The sergeant was well aware of what they were looking for, as were his divers.
The atmosphere grew tense as the gravity of what could be in that pond weighed on them. Kelly couldn’t help but be hopeful, but in the same breath, she’d attended hundreds of crime scenes where evidence was found to be lacking, frustrating the whole case.
The screens beeped and they listened to the divers submerging. They had cameras on their heads and the gloomy world of the pond came into view. It was like watching the search for the Titanic.
No one spoke, though they could hear the divers’ breathing. The radio crackled and the divers reported their findings. It was slow and laborious work as they pushed their hands carefully into lumps of mud, looking for indications of recent disturbance. They pulled out cans, chains, litter and toys and tried to lay them back down gently without disturbing the mud too much. Kelly noted that their breathing was much better regulated than hers when she’d seen that shark.
The sergeant checked their BAR, but they were so shallow that they both had plenty to complete the dive. Ghostly images came into view and Kelly wondered what attracted people to this particular job; she thought it grim, like being a miner, stuck in the airless dark.
The radio crackled again, and one of the divers reported that her metal detector was indicating something solid beneath her: it was a small object, the sergeant explained, judging by the sound of the alarm and the way the diver cast it across the area. She was instructed to search beneath the mud carefully. They watched as she tentatively sank her hand into the mud and probed, as if caressing a pet.
Kelly held her breath and squinted at the screen. The diver pulled something from the dirt and it kept coming. When the detritus settled, they could see that she was holding a knife.
‘Yes!’ Will fist-bumped the air.
‘Submerged in no more than two centimetres of dirt, Sarge,’ the diver reported. ‘Looks like a recent dump: no corrosive damage and no adherence of organic matter. It’s pristine.’
At the same time, the other diver’s metal detector indicated another find. The same procedure was followed and the diver put his hand in where the detector was most acute. After a few minutes of gently delving, he pulled an object from the gloop. It was a second knife.
Will and Kelly looked at one another and slapped high-fives.
The atmosphere in the van was super-charged. Kelly knew that any team helping the police in a professional capacity wanted results, and they’d hit the jackpot.
‘Shall I halt the dive?’ the sergeant asked.
‘I think we’ve found everything we’re g
oing to.’
‘Right you are. Good job, guys, bringing you back in.’
They watched as the divers gave the OK sign and turned around. It was a short swim to shore and there was no need for off-gassing, as they weren’t deep enough. They sat on a platform at the edge of the pond and took off their tanks and buoyancy aids, and Kelly and Will went outside to congratulate and thank them. They wore full suits because the pond was freezing and the amount of bacteria probably eye-watering, but they removed their gloves and shook hands.
The items had been carefully stowed in strongboxes, and they were handed over to Will, who took them to the van. Advances in latent fingerprint extraction on items submerged in fresh water had rocketed forward in the last ten years, to an extent where defence barristers had been rendered red-faced in court: the science staggered everyone.
They had something. They had more than something. The knives were different sizes and she’d know soon enough from Ted if they were a match. Now she had to get them measured, logged and sent over to him.
She paused for a second, watching Will, wearing gloves, transfer the items to evidence boxes. Two people had decided to leave home that day with knives, intent on bringing down an innocent victim. She might just be looking at the two weapons they had chosen. Were they taken from their mother’s knife block? Were they newly purchased? Had they chopped potatoes with them to make chips?
She shivered and realised that she’d grown cold. She held out her hand to the dive sergeant to thank him.
‘Glad to help,’ he said.
As Will and Kelly walked back to the car, DS Umshaw called with good news: four CCTV cameras overlooked the part of the estate where Keira had died and the surrounding area. Footage was being trawled now.
Chapter 14
Ted Wallis had been the senior coroner for the north-west of England for approaching fifteen years. It was the type of position where one had to wait for one’s predecessor to die. Now he knew why. There was no way he wanted to hand over the ropes to someone else, despite his advancing age. He was as sharp as ever (so he thought, anyway) and the work kept coming. One day he’d go into lecturing and touring, and perhaps even write a book: that was how most retired pathologists seemed to make their money. But he also had plans to spend more time with his family.
Neither Amber nor June had got around to having children, and it was something he regretted, though he knew they’d probably been put off the idea by his marriage to their mother. Mary was an alcoholic. Amber and June, looking back, had borne the brunt of her blackouts and had virtually brought themselves up. They were resourceful girls as a result, but he wished he’d spotted it sooner.
Wendy Porter had dazzled him in emerald green at a fancy ball thrown by the Earl of Lowesdale at Wasdale Hall on the shore of Ullswater. She’d been beautiful. He hadn’t found out that he was Kelly’s father until last year. And now he wanted to make the most of it. Part of that involved doing his job properly so she could do hers. Funny, he thought, how he’d worked with her for two years before they found out her heritage.
The mortuary was peaceful, as always. It was a singularly still place, unlike any other he’d ever experienced. It wasn’t for everyone, working with the dead, but it gave him immense satisfaction to tease out their secrets and perhaps even solve the riddle of their demise. He had several assistants who all performed different tasks. One took photographs, from angles dictated by Ted. Another handed him equipment, and measured and weighed. It was a smooth operation and there was no rush. There were no lives being saved on his slab.
He wore gloves for his own protection, not that of his patient. He positioned his microphone and tested it, satisfied that it worked properly, and began by logging the time. He was to perform the post-mortem on Ella Watson first. He double-checked her details with his assistant. It was protocol, to make sure they cut up the correct body.
He unzipped the bag. Samples of her clothes had been cut off and sent away in forensic packages. It was his job to remove the rest and discover what the police, CSI team and forensic experts could not see: micro fibres, hairs, residues and DNA material. Finally, he would delve deep inside the body, discovering what had happened to make the magnificent human organism expire. It took a lot more effort than people thought. In the movies, people got shot or stabbed and literally keeled over and died. It wasn’t like that in real life. The human body was tough as old boots and took time to die. Snuffing someone out was no easy task. The bodies that graced his metal operating table were the unlucky ones. If the emergency services couldn’t save you, then you must have been in a pretty bad way.
Ella’s body was laid out on her back. She looked drained of blood, like the victims of old vampire movies. The bulk of it from the crime scene had no doubt been collected and swabbed, and the rest of it washed away from the road so that the public could enjoy the scenery without being reminded of what had happened there.
As he’d told Kelly at the scene, there were two wounds. Both were gaping gashes, with subcutaneous fat bulging from within, as was wont to happen with a live victim. Post-mortem wounds didn’t bleed or split as much. He measured them both; as he had suspected, two different weapons had been used. He probed inside them, and found that both were longer than his finger could reach. He’d have to wait to see her organs to discover how deep the wounds went.
It had been a vicious assault. He could see, deep down, the severing of her femoral artery. It poked out into the wound like a plastic straw. The other wound was directly above her abdomen, where her aorta would be. It was a tragic coincidence and truly unlucky. The odds of two stabs slicing through two major arteries at the same time, from two different assailants and two opposing directions, must be a million to one. Those poor children had lost their mother in a lottery.
He turned his attention to her blood-soaked clothes. Swabs would have been taken at the site, but he put on magnifying glasses and searched for fibres. Locard’s principle of exchange usually rang true, unless an investigation was particularly unlucky. Fact was, you couldn’t kill someone without leaving something of yourself at the scene, as well as taking something away. Molecules were pesky little blighters that liked to latch on to the closest thing, both assailant and victim. A thorough hunt delivered. He found several fibres not matching Ella’s jogging kit. One looked like a hair, and the others were all black and stood out on her blue running top: probably some sort of plastic amalgamation.
Satisfied with his inspection, Ted removed her clothes and carried on. Ella Watson had no other wounds or marks on her body. She didn’t even show signs of having fallen hard; she must have collapsed pretty gently, with the weakness in her body taking over rapidly. Pooling had occurred all along one side where she’d lain until she was discovered. Death was quick, and his conclusion was exsanguination.
After just over an hour, Ted began to eviscerate the body. As soon as he pulled out the organ sac, he could see the aorta was cut in two. It would have spurted like a split balloon, explaining the amount of blood that Ella had been lying in when the emergency services arrived. He considered the way she had lain in the road and the direction of the strike, and concluded that it was possible the assailants could have got away without any obvious evidence of her blood on them. However, it was highly likely that they’d both received minute blood spatter patterns on their clothes and hands. Blood had a habit of travelling vast distances, as if the tiny cells colluded to form clues not visible to the naked eye to help catch the killer. Whoever had done this would have stained clothes. Not huge stains, but ones that would be visible in a lab. And the protein from blood wouldn’t be washed out easily. It was something for Kelly.
After a thorough examination of Ella’s internal organs, he noted that one of the stab wounds had travelled ten inches into her body and the other eight inches. They were not only very large knives, they were strikes of incredible force. The woman hadn’t stood a chance.
He finished up and decided to have a short break. He was hungry and
thirsty. Perhaps he was slowing down after all.
He sent his initial findings on Ella Watson to Kelly and told her he’d get started on Keira Bradley soon. She’d been brought straight to the hospital from the crime scene.
After a coffee and a raspberry Danish in the hospital staff canteen – both marked with red stickers to indicate that they were unhealthy – Ted stretched and made his way back to the mortuary to scrub up again.
Keira’s body was different in the sense that the wounds indicated rage rather than speed. The amount of adrenaline required to fuel murder varies wildly. Ted was experienced enough to spot the difference between a pre-planned adrenalin-charged hit such as that on Ella Watson, and a split-second decision to lash out. For a start, Keira’s wounds were mainly in her stomach, and numbered eleven in total. Kelly had told him that Keira wasn’t robbed either; she’d still had a stash of cash and drugs on her. This attack smacked to him of panic, not the controlled power he’d seen with Ella. He reckoned it was an argument gone wrong.
Stomach wounds were generally the result of a lesson being taught to a rival or an inferior. In this case it could have been a man showing a woman her place. Ted confirmed that there was only one assailant and one weapon: a small, pointed knife, about six inches long. Given that they were all anterior wounds, the attacker would have a substantial amount of blood spatter on him – or her – but if they were wearing dark clothing, it might not be immediately obvious. However, they would have a lot of blood on their stabbing hand, and perhaps even slashes as the knife became slippery with blood and the attacker lost control. Again, it was something for Kelly.
It was Keira’s fingernails that caught Ted’s attention. He gave them a good scrape and placed some of the matter in bags to be tagged, and some in test tubes to be cultured, then finally a sample onto a slide for his electron microscope. With a bit of luck, it wasn’t just dirt and grime under there. Fingertips were generally hives of nasty bacteria, fungus and yeast. But with a victim of homicide, close attention was paid to what else might lurk under there. Ella Watson’s had been pristine. That was not the case for Keira. They were stuffed with the normal keratin debris and skin cells found under dirty nails, so the chances of finding not only her own DNA but that of whoever she’d been close to in the hours before her death were good. He also found three hairs, deep in the hyponychium of two nails. Keira’s hair was black, but the hairs were chestnut brown. Either her personal hygiene was questionable and she hadn’t washed her hands for a long time, or she’d grabbed her attacker.
Little Doubt Page 8