‘I’ll be with you in a minute,’ he shouted and paused. ‘Chrissie, call the police. I’ll be with you as soon as I’ve got hold of Benjy.’
Hearing his name, the dog growled and thumped his tail on the earth.
‘Police? Why? What are you talking about?’
‘Just do it!’
Something in the tone of his voice must have got through to her, because Christine stopped fussing, and a few seconds later he heard her talking to someone.
‘They want to know what’s going on, Tom!’ she called out to him. ‘What do you want me to say to them?’
Leaving Benjy where he was for the moment, Tom hurried back to her.
‘Oh my God, Tom, what’s happened? You look terrible. What is it?’ She stared closely at him. ‘Have you been sick?’
Ignoring Christine’s questions, he grabbed the phone from her and gave his name and their location. ‘There’s a body here, in the bushes. It’s the body of a woman. The police need to get here now before any more animals find her.’
As he hung up it occurred to him that the dead woman must have been lying in the bushes overnight. She might have been there for days, prey to wild scavengers, foxes and rats and goodness knows what else. It was odd that there hadn’t seemed to be any insect activity, but he supposed the animals had frightened them away. It didn’t do to think about it too much. Meanwhile, Christine was becoming hysterical.
‘A body? What do you mean, a body? Who is it? What happened?’
Speaking as calmly as he could so as not to agitate her further, Tom explained that he hadn’t recognised the woman. He didn’t add that there might be no way of telling who she was, because her face had been mutilated, leaving only a bloody mess of ripped flesh. After that, what with doing his best to calm Christine, and having to remove the strip of fabric from Benjy’s jaws, and drag him growling and resisting back to the path, Tom didn’t have a second to himself to think any further about his disturbing find. He had just snapped Benjy’s lead back on and was scolding him for trying to escape back into the bushes when they heard a siren. A few moments later a couple of uniformed police officers came running towards them over the grass.
‘Are you Tom Baines?’
‘Yes, yes, it’s in there,’ Tom replied, stammering with relief that he was no longer responsible for overseeing the body. ‘It’s – my dog found a body, about three feet away, in the bushes. You can’t see it from here.’
He flapped his hand frantically in the direction of the dead woman. One of the police officers began to note down Tom and Christine’s details, while his colleague advanced cautiously into the shrubbery.
‘I can see it!’ he called out after a few seconds.
‘What’s the status?’ the other policeman called back.
There was no reply from his colleague who had disappeared from view.
‘She’s definitely dead,’ Tom answered for him, adding helpfully, ‘your colleague’s probably throwing up. I did. It’s not a pleasant sight.’
‘Don’t worry about that,’ the policeman replied. ‘We’re trained to deal with all eventualities.’
As he was speaking, his colleague emerged from the bushes, looking pale.
‘She’s dead all right,’ he said, his voice trembling uncontrollably.
44
Geraldine was driving to work early on Saturday morning to avoid the traffic, when she received a call about a body that had been discovered lying in the bushes in Museum Gardens, near the ancient ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. It wasn’t far off her route. Although she was already occupied on a case, she went straight to the park to help contain the scene while the initial assessment team were on their way. Fortunately it was still too early for many people to be out walking in the gardens. The forensic tent had not yet been set up, but an approach path had been established, which meant that Geraldine could walk right up to the body to view it in situ. When it was possible, she really liked to take a close look at the victim of an unlawful killing before they were removed to the mortuary. To do so sometimes yielded useful information that was no longer obvious once the body had been moved.
Slipping on protective clothing, she picked her way carefully over to the body which lay exposed to a grey sky. Storms had been forecast, and the air was heavy with the threat of rain. Officers were scurrying around, eager to erect the forensic tent before the downpour started. Ian arrived, having also been contacted while he was on his way to the police station. Pale and grim-faced, he gave Geraldine a brief nod of acknowledgement as he caught sight of her. She barely glimpsed his tortured expression before he turned away to gaze out across the bushes. She went straight over to him.
‘I can carry on here, if you like,’ she said quietly as she reached his side.
Although revulsion for dead bodies was hardly useful when working in serious crime, Geraldine sympathised with Ian’s sensitivity. So many of their colleagues, herself included, were able to witness gruesome injuries with complete equanimity. In her opinion, Ian’s queasiness was a sign of his humanity. She wondered whether he considered her monstrous, because she experienced no emotional reaction when viewing the dead.
But even Geraldine’s composure was disturbed by the state of this victim.
As she drew close enough to observe the body clearly, she saw that the woman’s head had been badly damaged. What had once been her face was now a bloody mess. Her chest and torso were drenched in blood and one of her legs was severely mangled. Her fists were clenched and a few short hairs were visible in her hands, while more clung to her blood-soaked skirt.
‘That looks like animal hair,’ Geraldine said.
The scene of crime officer grunted. ‘That’s what we thought but we’ll know for sure once it’s been checked in the lab.’
‘She bled a lot,’ Ian muttered.
Geraldine repeated her offer in an undertone. ‘Do you want to go back to the station? I don’t mind sticking around for a while, and I can tell you everything they come up with while I’m here.’
He shrugged. ‘It’s too late now. I’ve seen it. You can’t unsee something like this.’
Geraldine had never heard Ian sound so wound up before, but she resisted the temptation to try and comfort him. No words could soften the horror of what they were looking at. Leaving him to his private struggle, she turned her attention to practicalities and walked over to a scene of crime officer.
‘Have you got anything useful to tell us?’
‘The doctor’s here now.’
He nodded at a lanky young man who had just turned up and dropped to his knees beside the body.
Geraldine waited until the doctor straightened up before repeating her question.
‘She was savaged by a large animal,’ he replied solemnly.
‘What kind of creature was it?’
‘My guess would be a large dog. There are vicious bite marks from a large jaw, but no obvious claw marks, so it doesn’t look like she was attacked by a wild cat. But that’s just an opinion based on the superficial appearance of the injuries. A post mortem will tell you more. She died of –’ he shrugged, ‘well, of her injuries.’
‘When?’
‘About twelve hours ago.’
‘So sometime yesterday evening?’
The doctor grunted. ‘She died between seven and nine.’
Geraldine nodded. She understood it was impossible for the time of death to be pinned down more accurately than that, with the body lying outside for a time.
‘I’ve never seen anything quite like this before,’ the doctor admitted. ‘Her face is…’ he broke off, lost for words, before adding helplessly, ‘it’s horrendous.’
‘The attack didn’t take place here,’ a scene of crime officer added briskly. ‘There’s hardly any blood to speak of, the ground beneath her is quite dry, and there’s no sign of disturbance.’
‘So she was fatally attacked by a large animal, probably a dog, and brought here after she was dead, and dumped in the bushes,’ Gera
ldine summed up.
‘Where she might have stayed for a while if she hadn’t been discovered by a domestic dog,’ the scene of crime officer said. ‘She would probably have deteriorated further, demolished by scavengers, foxes, rats, maggots.’
‘She hadn’t been here very long when she was found, because there’s hardly any evidence of insect activity,’ another scene of crime officer added.
The forensic tent arrived and the cordoned-off space around the body grew busy. There was little more they could find out at the scene so Geraldine and Ian left. They hardly spoke on the way back to the road. They reached Ian’s car first.
‘I wonder how old she was?’ he said as he reached for his keys. ‘At least it’s not our case,’ he added. ‘Much as I hate to say it, I’m pleased we’re already occupied on an investigation. I really wouldn’t want to be involved in this one.’ He gave an exaggerated shudder.
Geraldine nodded. Although she was curious to know more about the creature that had mauled the poor woman to death, they had enough to do, looking into the deaths of Mark and his sister. Another team would be set up to deal with the fatal attack on the victim they had just seen. She didn’t envy them.
Engrossed in her work, Geraldine had almost forgotten about the woman who had been mauled to death when Ian summoned her to his office that afternoon. As she arrived, he looked up at her with a sombre expression.
‘Looks like we’re going to be investigating the woman after all,’ he said.
‘What woman?’
‘The one who was killed by the Hound of the Baskervilles.’
‘Ian, what are you talking about?’
But of course she knew.
‘I’m talking about the woman who was found in Museum Gardens this morning.’
‘Yes, yes, I realised that. How many women have we seen today who were mauled to death by an animal? But why would we be looking into it? We’re already on a case.’
Ian sighed. ‘Because the woman who was killed was –’
‘Charlotte?’
‘How did you know?’
‘I didn’t. I mean, I just guessed it from what you were saying.’
‘Well, you’re right. So someone’s got to go to the mortuary, and see her again –’
‘I’ll go.’
Without waiting for a response, Geraldine turned and left Ian’s office. She hoped he hadn’t noticed the expression on her face in case he misinterpreted her gratification at helping him for pleasure at having a chance to view the gruesome corpse again. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
45
The pathologist, Jonah, looked up as Geraldine entered the room.
‘Well, hello again, Geraldine. How are you? No Ian this time, I see?’
She shrugged. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with me today.’
‘That’s probably just as well. I have to say I don’t blame him for not wanting to look at this. She’s a mess.’
Geraldine didn’t answer.
‘I get the impression your inspector’s not keen on looking at dead bodies,’ Jonah went on, staring curiously at Geraldine. ‘Am I right?’
Uncertain how to answer, she didn’t say anything.
‘Either that, or he doesn’t want to see me,’ he added with a grin.
Geraldine returned his smile. ‘That must be it,’ she replied.
‘Aha,’ he cried out. ‘The ice queen melts. So, I suppose you want to know what happened to this poor woman?’ He let out an exaggerated sigh. ‘And I thought you’d come here just to see me.’
‘I wish that was the only reason.’
With a rueful smile, Geraldine turned to look at the body. It was usually disturbing viewing the corpse of someone she had met while they were still alive, but in this instance it was somehow less disconcerting because Charlotte wasn’t easy to recognise. Not merely anonymous, she barely looked human.
‘It’s self-explanatory,’ Jonah began, suddenly brisk. ‘She was killed by physical trauma, shock, blood loss. Her carotid artery was ripped out.’ He pointed at the dead woman’s ravaged throat. ‘She would have bled to death within minutes if she hadn’t already passed out from physical shock.’ The woman’s bloody injuries had been cleaned up and he pointed to bruising on her knees. ‘It looks as though she fell to her knees while she was still breathing, if not actually conscious. The first injury appears to have been inflicted here.’ He pointed again to the woman’s injured throat. ‘All this,’ he waved his hand at her head and chest, ‘all of it was mutilated post mortem.’
‘So the attack continued after she was dead?’
Jonah nodded. ‘I’d say it went on for a while. Either she was on her own with the animal, or someone else there wasn’t able to pull the animal off in time to save her.’
‘Or they were watching,’ Geraldine added quietly.
Jonah glanced at her and frowned. ‘Well, yes, there is that possibility. At any rate, like I said, it appears no attempt was made to stop the attack for a while. Maybe no one else was present. It looks as though the creature was savage, wild even.’ He frowned and glanced at Geraldine again, as though weighing up how much to tell her.
‘Go on,’ she said. ‘You were saying –?’
‘If that dog is still roaming around out there –’ he broke off with a grimace.
‘There’s no way to hide behind euphemisms when you’re talking about something as savage as this,’ Geraldine replied. She thought Jonah looked relieved. ‘I’m not easily thrown by dead bodies,’ she added. ‘I’ve seen a lot of them in my time. I guess there’s something about people like us that sets us apart?’
‘People like us?’
‘I mean, don’t you ever wonder how it is we can see things like – well, like this – without having nightmares?’
Jonah looked solemn. ‘What makes you think I don’t have nightmares? I can assure you I do – and they’re always about my wife’s credit card bills.’ He laughed.
‘I’m being serious. Most people wouldn’t be able to stomach seeing this kind of thing.’
‘It’s all part of the job,’ he replied casually. ‘There are plenty of other jobs I’d have more of a problem with.’
‘Such as?’
‘I wouldn’t want to stick my hand up a cow’s backside, and I couldn’t operate on a living person. How do surgeons do it? What if they make a mistake? At least with these guys,’ he patted Charlotte’s bruised knee, ‘well, the suffering’s over for them, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, that’s what I think,’ Geraldine replied.
Relieved that he understood her, she was about to explain that the worst part of her job was dealing with the bereaved families of the victims, but before she could say any more, Jonah continued.
‘It was only through her dental records that we were able to identify her. We’ll have to try and reconstruct her face but it’s not going to be easy for anyone to formally identify her from her appearance. Fortunately, she had a fair bit of work done on her teeth so we’ve got a definite identification, probably more reliable than visual recognition.’
An hour later Geraldine was back at the police station reporting to Ian about what Jonah had told her. There wasn’t really much to add to what they both already knew, as the nature and extent of the victim’s injuries had been apparent from their first glance at the body. It didn’t take a pathologist to establish the cause of this death. But the reason behind it was far from clear. They could be certain only that shortly after Mark died, his sister had been strangled and his wife had been killed by a vicious dog.
‘So who stands to benefit from all these deaths?’ Eileen asked, once the team had read the report on Charlotte’s death.
No one even questioned whether this was another murder.
‘Oh my God,’ Ariadne blurted out on seeing an image of the dead woman. ‘Her face is…’
A few officers groaned and muttered that it was ‘gross’ and ‘disgusting’.
‘So,’ Eileen’s voice cut a
cross the murmuring. ‘Who stands to gain from all this?’
Once more, the question was rhetorical. Charlotte had inherited Mark’s entire estate which now passed to their only son. It was time to question Eddy again, and Ian was tasked with conducting the interview. Gratified when Ian chose her to accompany him, Geraldine followed his familiar figure along the corridor and out to the car park. It was a bright cold day and they walked quickly.
‘You drive,’ he said as they reached the car, and she nodded.
Neither of them spoke again, but Geraldine was aware they might be heading towards a defining moment in the investigation.
46
As they waited on the doorstep, Geraldine wondered what it would be like to pursue a career where her arrival was actually welcomed by members of the public, someone delivering parcels perhaps, or pizza. It was increasingly rare for anyone to be pleased to see her outside their front door.
‘Do you think anyone’s in?’ Ian asked, looking around impatiently.
‘No one’s ever in a hurry to open the door to us,’ she replied.
‘That’s because we’re mostly bringing bad news.’
‘Or because everyone has a guilty conscience.’
‘Speak for yourself.’
She smiled. ‘I’d open the door to a police officer any day.’
As she was speaking, the front door opened.
‘Edward Abbott?’ Ian greeted the man who was frowning at them from the doorway.
‘Who wants to know?’
Death Rope Page 18