Above Suspicion at-1

by Lynda La Plante

  Barolli had disappeared to the toilet; she had no idea where Langton had gone.

  ‘You’re replacing Danny, aren’t you?’ Lewis panted as he reached the top of the flight of stairs.

  ‘I think so,’ she answered.

  ‘He got some kind of stomach bug. One minute he was fine, next buckled up in agony. I thought it was appendicitis, but it’s some intestinal bug. Did you know him?’ Now Lewis was barging down the narrow corridor.

  ‘No,’ she said, trying to keep up.

  Lewis reached double doors at the end and banged them open. The doors swung back and Anna would have been clipped if he had not grabbed a door in time.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said absent-mindedly.

  Anna had not anticipated the number of people she found working on a case where the body had only just been discovered. Eight desks were lined up, four to four on either side of the room. The desks were manned by male and female uniformed officers and two clerical workers. There were stacks of filing cabinets, overflowing files and masses of paperwork. Running along the length of one wall was a whiteboard covered in dates and names scribbled with felt-tip pen by various hands. Besides this was the unnerving display of numerous mortuary and life shots of the different women.

  On one desk was a missing persons file. Anna opened it and found herself staring at a photograph of a stunning-looking young woman, Melissa Stephens — age seventeen, last seen in early February. There was a list including her eye colour, clothes she was last seen wearing and other details.

  ‘Has the victim from this morning been identified?’ she asked Mike Lewis. He was sitting on the edge of a desk, talking to one of the female officers.

  ‘Not yet,’ he replied over his shoulder, then went back to his conversation.

  Anna moved along to the board to look at the other photographs. Side by side were six photographs of victims. Beneath them were descriptions, locations and ongoing enquiries. These women’s faces were hard and old compared to Melissa Stephens, with tough-eyed stares.

  ‘Are these all ongoing cases?’ she asked Lewis.

  He did not hear her as he was talking to Barolli, who had just arrived.

  Anna continued reading. Each of the victims had been raped and strangled and their bodies dumped in various local beauty spots: Richmond Park, Epping Forest, Hampstead Heath. All of them had their hands tied behind their backs and they had all been strangled with their own tights.

  ‘The victim this morning and all these victims — are these ongoing cases? I mean, are they connected?’

  Barolli came over to join her. ‘Hasn’t anyone filled you in on why the governor got us out of bed so early this morning?’

  ‘No. I was just called at seven to say I’d be joining Langton’s team. Nobody’s told me anything about the enquiry.’

  ‘You’re replacing Danny, aren’t you?’

  ‘Mike mentioned he was in hospital.’

  Barolli indicated the victims’ photos. ‘This investigation has been going on for months; six months to be precise. Five of the cases are years old. Their cases were left on file, until the gov dug them up.’

  ‘Six months?’ she said, shocked.

  ‘Yeah.’ He jabbed the board. ‘This was our most recent victim and by the time she was found, she’d been dead over a year. We started grouping them together a few months back: they’ve got the same MO, as you can see.’

  ‘You mean it’s the same killer?’

  ‘We think so, though so far we’ve come up with fuck all. But if the stiff found this morning is connected, we might get some leads. There again, we might not and we won’t get the case. The gov is really wanting it as we’ll be bound to get more evidence with it being fresh.’

  Then the swing doors banged open and all eyes turned towards Langton.

  ‘It’s Melissa. The dental records match.’ Langton moved further into the room, which fell silent. He looked haggard, his eyes sunken and his five o’clock shadow was now even darker. ‘They moved fast for us, but we’ll have to wait for any further results. I’m going over to the lab now. Until we get those details, I won’t know if I need to set up a strategy meeting with ACPO. Mike, you want to come with me?’

  Feeling a bit like a schoolgirl, Anna raised her hand. ‘Could I come too, sir?’

  Langton gave her a slow, studied stare. ‘You been to a post mortem before?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You keel over on me and I’ll send you packing, understand?’ He pointed at Barolli. ‘You handle things for me here. Anything they get in, we need to know immediately. Start up a board.’

  Barolli’s black stencil pen was in his hand as he looked at Melissa’s photograph. He made a note of the dental records on the board as identification, then he wrote Melissa Stephens in large letters, Victim 7, with a question mark.

  Langton sat in the front seat of the car, head leaning on the headrest, his eyes closed. Anna wondered if he was asleep. She leaned back, intent on keeping her mouth shut. Finally, he spoke. ‘This will be a big media show. She’s young and she was beautiful. I’ve got to convince the commander in charge of Pan London Homicide to award me the case. What we’ve been working on isn’t exactly high profile — six old tarts, or old drippers as your dad used to call them, don’t warrant Crime Night specials or reconstructions — but if they give it to me, I’ll get the team I need and with the Holmes database to help, I’ll get a result.’ Anna nodded, still a little confused. ‘Thank you.’ Anna and Langton walked across the car park to the hospital. He knew exactly where he was going and walked fast, pushing doors vigorously without looking behind him, expecting her to make it through after him. Finally, they reached the mortuary, where Langton pointed to a door marked ‘Ladies’.

  ‘Gown up in there and then come straight through,’ he said.

  Anna tied a mask around her head, slipped her feet into overshoes and then tied the green ribbons of her protective gown. She entered the morgue, shivering. It was freezing cold.

  Though recently modernized, the morgue had retained its Victorian tiles, though the swill area and the steel tables and equipment were up to date. At one table a group of assistants cut away the filthy, torn clothes from the corpse of a junkie found that morning. The floor was white tiled and slippery. A second table was empty, being swilled down with a high-powered water jet. On the third table, or ‘slab’, lay their victim, covered by a green plastic sheet.

  While his assistant listed the victim’s clothes, the pathologist, Dr Vernon Henson, spoke quietly to Langton. Anna watched as a black T-shirt and pink skirt were placed in an evidence bag for the forensic lab.

  ‘No underwear?’ Langton said quietly.

  ‘No panties,’ said Henson. ‘But there’s a bra. You probably want to have a look at the way it was tied.’

  Langton gestured for Anna to move beside him as Henson was removing the plastic sheet from the body. It was at this moment that a gowned-up DCI Hedges walked in, snapping on rubber gloves. He glared at Langton. ‘You still breathing down my neck, Jimmy? Or are you just here for the thrill?’

  ‘I’m here, Brian, because if this girl is mine, you’ll have to give her up.’

  Hedges shrugged. ‘You’ll have to prove it first. Right now, this is my case. So, if you don’t mind, butt out of my way.’

  Langton stepped to one side. Hedges moved closer to the table as the two pathologist’s assistants turned the body over gently to face down. The hands were held together with a white cotton sports bra. The bra had been wrapped tightly around the wrists, then tied with some considerable force. Henson stepped aside to allow photographs to be taken from every possible angle before attempting to undo the knot. It resisted his efforts.

  ‘I’m going to have to cut it free,’ he said, almost apologetically.

  ‘Go ahead,’ Hedges instructed.

  Trying to cause as little damage as possible, the pathologist snipped the material from the corpse’s wrists. The hands stayed in tight fists. The weals around the wrists were a
dark plum red. When the girl was carefully laid face upwards again, her arms were drawn out to her sides, but her fists remained clenched.

  ‘We have what I think are her tights; again, they’ve been pulled exceptionally tight round her throat, cutting into the skin, so I doubt I’ll be able to undo them by hand.’

  More photographs were taken of the way the tights had been knotted. Langton and Hedges virtually nudged against each other to get a clearer view.

  The tights were pulled so taut that it was almost impossible to remove them. Eventually Henson clipped the knot away from her neck. The swelling had made the girl’s neck almost twice its normal size. The marks around it were deep, breaking through the skin; the tights had been pulled so roughly around her throat that the bruises were black, vermilion red and a deep purple shade. It was hard to recognize the girl on the slab as the same one in the photograph.

  ‘We’ve sent a lot of the larvae from her eyes and mouth over to the lab; they will give us an indication of how long her body has been in the woods. The insect infestation is more like we would experience in summer, due to the extraordinary weather conditions. I’ve got roses blooming in my garden and a few days ago, they were snowbound.’ Henson had a low, deep voice. His tone seemed more conversational than deferential to the work at hand.

  ‘Can you clean her up? Just so her family don’t see her like this,’ Hedges suggested.

  Langton’s eyes widened. Henson, offended by the suggestion that, as chief pathologist, he would allow any relative to see their loved one’s corpse without ‘cleaning it up’, changed the subject quickly. ‘Stand back, please. Once I cut her up, the swelling will be released. We’ll be drawing her eyelids down, so the relatives won’t see her empty eye-sockets. You’ll see the little buggers have invaded her gums and the tip of her tongue is missing; could have been bitten by a fox.’

  He turned to Langton and took a spatula to indicate the chewed tongue. ‘Unless she bit it off herself. If she did we’ll find it in her stomach.’

  ‘Took quite a blow here to her right temple, just above the ear.’

  The camera continued to flash, taking the close-ups as required: face, neck, eyes, mouth and nose.

  Henson waited till it was done, then drew back the long blonde hair to reveal a dark circular bruise congealed with dry blood.

  ‘I’d say it was a blunt, round-edged object, size of a ten pence piece. Once again, we have maggot infestation around the perimeter and there are eggs, so they’ll give us more to go on as to the time she’s been dead.’ Henson pulled at his mask.

  Langton nodded. ‘Off the cuff, how long would you say?’

  ‘Bloody hard to tell. Decomposition is not that bad, but if she was left during the past month, well, we’ve had freezing weather, snow and ice, etc., etc. She has very dark areas over the entire underside of her body, which indicate she’s been in this position for a considerable time. Could be a few months, or a few weeks, definitely not days.’

  Henson began to prise open her fingers.

  ‘Nails are in good condition. Looks like I won’t get much from underneath, but we’ll check, obviously.’

  Henson stood back to observe the length of the body in more detail from the pink-painted toenails to the top of the head.

  ‘There are no scratches, or other signs she tried to fight back. Hopefully, the crack on her temple rendered her unconscious. I’d say by looking there was vaginal and anal penetration.’

  Henson indicated the girl’s vagina, his fingers brushing her skin softly. ‘You see these bruises? That indicates it was pretty brutal. We’ll take swabs, obviously, but the anus is split on two sides. Basically that’s it until we cut her open and find out more, so let’s get started, shall we?

  She’s been weighed: just seven stone ten, little thing. The X-rays will be coming back to us shortly. I didn’t find anything broken, but we will get them to you anyway. There’s a small birthmark on her right shoulder, but apart from that, she is blemishless. A very pretty creature at one time.’

  Langton nodded. He had not glanced in Anna’s direction once and she was thankful, as she knew her face above the white mask was about the same colour. But so was DCI Hedges’s face and she was surprised when he turned to Henson.

  ‘Keep me updated, I want to see if forensics get anything from her clothes.’

  Hedges walked out and Anna heard Langton give a soft, derisive laugh. Henson caught it and his eyes crinkled above his mask.

  ‘She’s already been washed down, so we’ll get started. I just need the stabilizing block under her head.’

  Henson picked up the scalpel. Leaning in closely to make the Y-incision, he cut shoulder to shoulder, meeting at the sternum and then slicing down to the abdomen and into the pelvis. When the internal organs were exposed, the stench of rotting flower stalks was overpowering. As the hiss of body fluids and gasses permeated the room, Anna took fast intakes of breath, fighting to stay upright. Her head felt fuzzy. No wonder Hedges had made his exit quickly.

  Next, Henson cut through the ribs and collarbone before lifting the ribcage up and away from the girl’s internal organs. Henson removed the organs individually to weigh them. After he had taken samples of fluids in the organs, he opened the stomach and intestines to begin an examination of the contents.

  Despite her fuzzy head, Anna observed that Henson’s assistants worked as a tight unit. He never had to give an order and while they were doing the weighing and blood tests, he could concentrate on the corpse’s head.

  As Henson probed Melissa’s eyes, Anna’s view was obliterated. Without looking back, Henson addressed the room. ‘Well, she’d had severe haemorrhaging, which is usual for strangulation and we still have a veritable feeding frenzy in her eye-sockets. Nasty little sods.’

  Anna focused her mind on trying to assimilate what he was saying, rather than looking down at the sliced-open body. Though the stomach contents had almost brought her to her knees, somehow she was still standing. Henson began the incision to lift the scalp. He sliced from behind the head, then peeled the scalp forwards over the face to expose the skull. At that point an assistant handed him a high-powered, high-speed, oscillating saw to open the skull. Next he was handed a chisel to prise off the skullcap.

  So far Anna had managed to stay upright. It had seemingly become easier; the stench had mingled with antiseptic which helped. The sound of the chisel finished her off. Unable to control her retching, she only just made it to the ladies’ toilet in time. Banging past the cubicle door, she gasped for breath. She knelt over the toilet bowl and heaved. After several minutes, when she attempted to stand, her whole body was still shaking.

  At the basin she ran cold water and kept splashing and dabbing her face with a paper towel, but every time she stood straight, she felt her stomach heave. The stench seemed to cling to her clothes, her hair and her hands, even though she washed and rewashed them using soap from the dispenser.

  Still feeling dizzy, Anna leaned against the corridor wall and waited.

  Langton eventually strode out of the morgue. ‘Dead approximately four weeks,’ he muttered to Anna and pulled off his green tunic. ‘She’d been lying there all that time.’ His mask hung by its thread. ‘It’s bloody unbelievable.’

  Not waiting for her response, he continued towards the gents and disappeared inside. A moment later he emerged and gestured for her to follow him along the corridor.

  ‘You ever done synchronized swimming?’ he asked, still zipping up his trousers.

  Anna was unsure if she had heard him correctly. ‘Sorry?’

  ‘They have these nose clips so they can stay underwater. They’re very useful. You clip one on and it forces you to breathe in and out with your mouth.’

  ‘You can also suck Mint Imperials.’ Langton turned round towards Anna once they were in the patrol car. ‘Those little round mints.’ He rested his arm along the back of the seat. ‘You get used to it; when you know what to expect, it’s easier.’ He returned his gaze to the fro
nt again.

  ‘Thank you,’ she murmured, embarrassed. She was at a loss what to say next, or whether there were questions she should have been asking.

  The smell of the soap dispenser’s liquid, an odour like pinewood forests, was making her feel car sick. As if she didn’t have enough to contend with already. She closed her eyes, praying that she wouldn’t start retching again.

  ‘Sorry,’ Langton murmured as she opened a window. She noticed he had a lit cigarette in his hand. ‘Can’t smoke in the station. Well, not supposed to, anyway. Can’t smoke in most places now, so …’ He shrugged, then, inhaling deeply, leaned back on the headrest. A few moments later, somewhat out of the blue, he asked her, ‘Your mother still alive?’

  ‘No, she died two years before my father.’

  ‘Right. I remember, now. What was her name?’

  ‘Isabelle,’ she said, bemused.

  ‘Isabelle? Yes. She was very beautiful, I remember.’

  She watched him flick the cigarette butt out of the window. The cool air from the open window was making her feel less nauseous. To her surprise, she found herself saying, ‘I take after my father.’

  He chuckled, ‘I guess you do.’

  Her father had been a heavy-set man: square-shouldered, with thick red curls. Her mother on the other hand had had olive skin and deep-black hair. She had been a stunning woman, tall and slender and very artistic; a designer. Anna had her dad’s hair, which sprouted all over rather than growing in a specific direction. She wore hers cropped short. For a redhead, she was unusually dark-skinned, unlike her pale freckly dad, and had inherited her mother’s dark eyes. She was short, also rather square, but she carried no fat; it was all muscle.

  Anna had ridden horses since she was a toddler. She had won so many rosettes that she could cover herself from top to toe in red and blue ribbons. Once her dad had pinned them all over her and taken a photograph; she had only been eleven years old.