by Andy Maslen
With the particulars of gross anatomy out of the way, and the organs returned to the body cavity, Craven invited Verity to sew up the Y incision. He watched her work, noting with approval the care she took.
More than one mortuary technician he’d worked with had treated the dead as though they were working with leather, bashing in stitches any old how and cinching them tight with so much force that the re-joined edges of the wound puckered.
When she’d finished, tying a knot and snipping the final length of black thread short, Craven began on the cut known as a modified sagittal-temporal incision. Maintaining firm pressure on the scalpel blade, he opened a semi-circular cut from ear-to-ear round the back of the head. Then he tugged the scalp and the face forward and back on themselves, exposing the pinkish bone of the skull.
He leaned in to examine the revealed flesh beneath the scalp then paused as he spotted something on the right side of the neck, just below the ear, framed by the red flaps of skin that met just above it.
‘Could I have that magnifying glass, please?’
He adjusted the glass until the skin on Niamh Connolly’s neck came into pin-sharp clarity. And there, in the soft space behind the angle of her jaw, was a tiny red mark.
He straightened, rueing the way his crackling spine sent pops echoing off the hard surfaces of the autopsy room.
‘What do you make of that?’ he said, pointing at the mark.
Verity took the glass and repeated the sequence of movements Craven had just made.
‘That looks like a needle prick.’
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
‘So she was,’ Verity paused, ‘sorry, Doctor Craven, she may have been drugged.’
Craven waved away the apology. Someone who made as few mistakes as Verity did was entitled to the occasional lapse into certainty before the evidence.
‘Toxicology will tell us what we need to know on that score. Pass me the Stryker saw, please. Let’s see what Mrs Connolly’s brain can tell us.’
The room filled with the buzz of the electric saw, which changed to a high-pitched whine as its finely engineered teeth bit into bone.
21
THURSDAY 16TH AUGUST 08.00 A.M.
The briefing room was thrumming with energy. Stella knew it was vital they achieve some quick results in the case: what started off as a restless enthusiasm to get things done could change all too quickly to dispirited lethargy as cases dragged on and leads failed to pan out.
She looked round at the thirteen faces. The warranted officers, Rosh, Jumper, Garry, Def, Baz, Will, Becks and Cam. And the police staff: Alec, Lucian, and Martin Brabey and Shirley Trott, two ex-detectives now contracted as civilian investigators. All held her gaze. All had coffees, teas or Cokes in front of them. Garry was munching on a ham roll, Stacey was eating fruit salad out of a M&S pot.
‘Morning,’ Stella said. ‘Let’s go through team reports first, then I’ll update you on what I know. Then we’ll figure out which lines of enquiry we’re going ahead with. OK, Roisin and Will, you’re up.’
Roisin spoke.
‘The neighbours were useless. We didn’t even get the usual “lovely couple” stuff. “Parkside people like to keep themselves to themselves”,’ she said in a cut-glass accent that had the others sniggering. ‘But,’ she said, as Stella opened her mouth, ‘after we extended the search to a hundred metres, guess what?’
‘Please tell me they found something!’ Stella said, feeling a buzz of excitement in her stomach.
‘They did.’
Stella noticed Will squirming in his chair like a small boy in class who needed the toilet.
‘Will, do you want to tell us something, or do you just need a wee?’
More laughter.
‘It’s OK, boss. I can hold it,’ he said with a grin. ‘They found some rope. It was stuffed down inside a skip in a front garden, which, incidentally, was about the size of a tennis court. Obviously the householders were having building work done. It was full of old shower units, a toilet, shelving units, you know, shit they’d grown tired of.’
‘What kind of rope?’ Camille asked.
‘I don’t know. I mean, not specifically. There was about a metre. It wasn’t very thick.’ He held up his finger. ‘Like that, maybe? It’s in the exhibits room.’
‘That’s fantastic!’ Stella said. ‘Lucian, can you prioritise that, please. Sounds like we’ve got the murder weapon. OK, anything else?’
Roisin and Will shook their heads.
‘Jumper, Def, how are you getting on with LoveLife?’
Arran looked at Def.
‘Do you want to kick off?’
She smiled, and Stella couldn’t help thinking Def had chosen the wrong career, since she could be earning about a thousand times more as a model than as a DS.
‘So, the charity itself is squeaky-clean. I spoke to their board of trustees, six of the most upstanding and morally unbending people you could ever hope to meet. Apart from the fact that they nearly choked us with their self-righteousness, and their mediaeval attitude to women’s rights, I couldn’t see anything out of place.’
Arran waited for Def to finish then leaned forwards, looking around the table before speaking.
‘Their finances are clean, but they are a bit strapped for cash. Probably like most charities these days, what with austerity and everything. But no loans, no dodgy investments, no gifts from paedo bishops, nothing.’
‘Jerry Connolly said she was meeting a potential donor the day she was murdered,’ Garry said. ‘Anyone looking to get inside her defences, that would be a smart ploy.’
‘Yeah. And that’s where I think we should be looking, boss,’ Arran said. ‘Not the charity people, but the other lot. What the trustees called, I kid you not, “the Devil’s disciples”.’
Stella blinked.
‘That’s a bit strong, isn’t it? I thought it was all Guardian readers and card-carrying feminists, professors of Women’s Studies, that lot.’
‘It is,’ Arran continued. ‘Plus the usual rent-a-mob from the Socialist Workers’ Party and a few of the more hardcore lefties in the Labour Party. But that’s not the way the LoveLifers see them.’
He consulted his notebook.
‘According to Mister Frederick Galley, seventy-two, one of the trustees, the pro-abortion lot, and I quote, “slake their unquenchable thirst for blood on the tiny corpses of the unborn, so enslaved are they to Satan”.’
He looked around the room, took a beat and delivered the punchline:
‘Makes the Arsenal-Spurs rivalry look a bit tame, doesn’t it?’
Once Stella had restored order, she pointed at Def.
‘Mark Hellworthy at Wandsworth CID sent over Niamh Connolly’s files on the nutters who sent her threatening letters and emails. Can you start working through them? Maybe our killer’s hiding in plain sight.’
‘Yes, boss. What about her phone? Are there more on there?’
‘It’s unlocked and in the Exhibits Room.’
‘Boss?’ Becky asked.
‘What is it, Becks?’
‘They usually film the demos. Maybe one of the camera crews caught someone, you know, off.’
Feeling justified at another of her picks, Stella smiled.
‘Great idea! Can you call round the TV companies and, I don’t know, Buzzfeed News or HuffPost or whoever the web companies are who do any filming? See what footage they’ve got and get them to send us copies.’
‘Yes, boss,’ Becky said, looking like a head girl being praised by the headmistress.
‘OK, this is great, guys. Really good. Baz, what did you guys pull up from the databases?’
‘We’ve got a lovely long list of the country’s dregs to talk to. Couple of hundred violent sex offenders. Plus about a dozen unsolveds where the victim was stabbed or slashed across the breasts. We’re putting together teams to do the interviews, attackers and victims, both. And Cam had a brilliant idea. Tell them, Cam.’
Camille sat stra
ighter in her chair, blue eyes narrowed.
‘Maybe it’s not about all the abortion stuff or sex. Maybe it’s about her being a Catholic. What I mean is, look at all the nonce priests who keep crawling out of the woodwork. And all along, the bishops have been protecting them. I’ve got a mate works in Melbourne on their Child Protection squad. He was one of the ones who arrested that bishop last year. What was his name, McClaren, MacAdam? Anyway, he said there’re a lot of really angry people over there who are practically setting up lynch mobs. So maybe our killer was abused as a kid. He was, like, an altar boy or in the Scouts, and he keeps reading all the media coverage and, finally, he just snaps. You know, gets triggered or whatever the shrinks call it. So he kills a high-profile Catholic.’
‘What, sort of an anti-hypocrisy thing?’ Will asked. ‘She’s setting herself up as a champion of the rights of the unborn child while all along her church is trampling over the rights of children who’ve already been born.’
Camille nodded.
‘Could be, which ties it back to the abortion angle.’
‘He could have been stalking her at the events,’ Becky chipped in.
Stella could feel it: that indefinable sense of the motor running at peak efficiency. People were still getting enough sleep, food and fresh air to think straight and work together.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s worth following up. Which just leaves me and Garry. We spoke to Jerry Connolly. He’s got a watertight alibi so even if we did like him for it, which we didn’t, did we, Garry—’
‘Tried it on for size, didn’t fit,’ he said laconically.
‘– he couldn’t have done it. All right, here’s where we go next. Becks, you’re onto the news teams for footage of the crowds at the last two or three rallies. Def, you’re going through the crazies files. Rosh, can you look at the mystery donor? The timings, the fact he was going to meet her at her home – this looks like our strongest lead so far. Jumper, can you manage the interview teams working the sex offenders and victims, please? And, actually, take Def with you.’
She turned to the blonde DS.
‘You’re our best interviewer, Def. If anyone can get any details out of the victims, it’s going to be you. So instead, let’s have Will on the crazies file. Baz, keep on hammering the databases. And I put in a form one hundred to SCAS yesterday, so can you coordinate that, too, please? Cam, I want you to put together a list of the most outspoken critics of the whole Catholic Church-slash-paedo thing. Especially online: Twitter, Facebook, blogs, whatever. Anyone suggesting direct action, or violence, or—’
‘Taste of their own medicine?’
‘Exactly!’
‘On it, boss.’
Stella’s phone pinged. The alert in the top-right corner of the email icon told her it was Dr Craven’s post mortem report.
‘That’s the PM report. OK, everyone know what they’re doing?’
There was a chorus of agreement as people pushed chairs back and made their way back to their desks or out of the room.
‘Right. I’m going to read this, see what Dr Craven discovered. Lucian, can I have a word before you go?’
Once the room was emptied, Lucian moved to the chair next to Stella’s.
‘You wanted to see me, ma’am,’ he said, winking.
She punched him affectionately on the upper arm. Apart from Callie, Lucian was the only person at Paddington Green who knew the torturous path Stella had travelled only a handful of years earlier. Only half-jokingly, she referred to him as a member of her ‘sanity team’.
‘How’s it going on the forensic side?’
‘We’ve had all the evidence the Wandsworth CSIs collected. We’re reviewing it now. But I can tell you this, our killer was forensically aware. No fingerprints around the victim, none in the office. There was a glass with traces of lemonade in it but it had been wiped clean. The rope sounds interesting, though. I’m going down to the Exhibits Room after this.’
Stella grunted.
‘Send my regards to Reg the Veg, won’t you?’
Reg ‘the Veg’ Willings had been managing the Exhibits Room at Paddington Green since, according to received wisdom, the early part of the reign of Henry the Eighth. His passions were his allotment, hence the soubriquet, ballroom dancing and trotting out platitudes in a variety of what he clearly considered to be amusing regional accents.
Lucian let his eyelids droop to cover his deep-brown eyes for a second as he nodded.
‘You’d have thought he’d have retired by now. He must have his thirty in.’
‘Twenty-nine’s what I heard. Counting the days, eh? So, how are things otherwise? Domestically, I mean? You and Gareth doing OK?’
‘It’s our three-year anniversary this year,’ Lucian said with a smile. ‘In fact, we’re having a dinner party in a couple of weeks. We’d love you to come.’
‘And I’d love to be there, work permitting. Send me the details. And if you’ve got a nice single, straight male friend with no hang-ups, a steady job and a respectful attitude to working women, please invite him!’ she said, raising her voice at the end of this request and clutching the front of Lucian’s shirt, her eyes pleading.
He laughed as he gently dislodged her hands.
‘That would be Stefan. And yes, we are inviting him.’
‘Wait. You mean you actually know someone like that?’
‘Uh-huh. He’s forty-five, divorced, two kids who live with his ex. He’s a landscape gardener, runs his own business and, as far as I know, thinks women should be free to do pretty much whatever they want. And because I know you’re not shallow enough to ask, I’ll tell you that he’s not bad-looking. Full head of hair, nice eyes. Gareth said he was a great loss to the gay community.’
‘Sounds perfect. So why’s he divorced?’
‘His ex is a finance CEO. She couldn’t take his irregular hours. Thought he should be there cooking her tea every evening.’
‘Right. I am definitely coming. Can I wear heels?’
Lucian smiled.
‘He’s over six foot, so heels are no problem.’
‘Thanks,’ Stella said, smiling. Maybe there’s hope for me yet. ‘In return, do you want to read the PM report with me?’
Lucian clapped his hand to his chest.
‘Oh, Stella! You really know how to make a boy feel special!’
A minute later they were sitting side by side at her desk, reading the opening lines of Niamh Connolly’s post mortem report.
Craven gave cause of death as strangulation by ligature (probably rope). The manner of death, he felt, was homicide. God, you’re so cautious, Roy, she thought. What else could it be? He gave time of death, as indicated by digestive process markers and the anal temperature as taken by the on-call police surgeon, as somewhere between 12.30 p.m. and 6.00 p.m. His next note, highlighted, caught her eye.
NOTE: two fibres found in ligature mark, one gold-coloured, one cream. RECOMMENDATION: send for forensic analysis. Identification of fibre could lead to type of rope.
In his precise, unemotional prose, Craven reported that:
Mrs Connolly was tortured before being killed, by having her breasts cut off. Her killer employed some form of double-bladed implement that performed a scissoring action on her living tissue. Particles of rust were found in the wounds.
RECOMMENDATION: consult tool marks expert.
The breasts themselves are otherwise intact. No semen. No bite marks. No other damage.
The mons veneris was denuded of pubic hair, by shaving with a safety razor, probably disposable, although the depilation did not extend to the perineum or anus. This action was, in all probability performed post mortem.
A rape kit has been performed and has come back negative. No semen in the mouth, vagina or anus, on the belly, buttocks or breasts, or in the wounds. No evidence of penetration, either by a penis or object. No damage to the external genitalia or anus. No bite marks. No defensive wounds to hands or forearms.
Awaiting DNA re
sults on epithelial cells and loose pubic hairs trapped by combing.
Fingernail scrapings revealed nothing but household dust and minute fragments of tuna (cooked).
The stomach contents have been analysed: the victim’s last meal consisted of a tuna salad and, in all likelihood, a single glass of white wine (sauvignon blanc).
Stella raised her eyebrows at Craven’s apparent ability to detect grape varieties even when confronted with the sour, acidic overlay of stomach acid and half-digested food.
The victim had no external or internal bruising or haemorrhaging, apart from the gross injuries to the upper thorax and small bruises consistent with a firm manual grip on both breasts.
NOTE: needle mark detected on the victim’s neck, just below the right ear. HYPOTHESIS: the killer injected some form of incapacitating drug. Toxicology will confirm/deny.
The rest of the report consisted of what Stella thought of as ‘housekeeping’. Not exactly boring, but routine data on weight and condition of all organs including the brain, evidence of past illnesses and surgical procedures, and miscellaneous observations on the body’s general condition.
In short, apart from the fact that she had been tortured and then strangled to death, Niamh Connolly, was in excellent physical shape and would probably have lived a long and healthy life, unless one of the big, random bullets – cancer, heart disease, stroke – had felled her first.
The lack of sexual assault was interesting. In Stella’s experience, mutilation of a woman’s breasts or vagina was always accompanied by rape, whether directly or through use of a dildo, a bottle or whatever object came to the attacker’s hand. But this guy hadn’t touched her that way.
According to the CSIs, who’d been over the whole house with alternative light sources, the only semen to be found was in the marital bed and on a pair of pyjama trousers in the laundry basket, and DNA tests would likely confirm it came from Jerry Connolly. Whose alibi had checked out. She had a team looking at the possibility of a spurned lover but, in her heart, she knew they wouldn’t find one.