Kelly had agreed to drive Ted to the university hospital in Carlisle, where the autopsy of Carry Tomlin’s body was booked for 9.30 a.m.
They were running a little late, as an accident on the northbound carriageway of the M6 slowed them down. It was a common occurrence: by the time lorry drivers from Europe got so far up the dullest motorway in Britain, they tended to fall asleep. One had jack-knifed across the road early that morning, but traffic was now flowing, albeit slowly. The driver wasn’t hurt. Kelly had left strict instructions with the office and Rob was briefed to work on a programme that could superimpose a pentacle over a map of Cumbria, taking in the two points they already knew: Braithwaite and Thirlmere. She also told him to factor in Threlkeld Quarry. She’d shared her theory with Demi, who was tasked with delivering it to the team in her absence.
Kelly could hear the excitement in Demi’s voice and could see the front cover of a new book, should she be proven correct. But. There was a huge whopping but in their way. The accuracy of her predictions were about as reliable as asking a child to draw the circle and guestimate the second axis. They were trying to enter the mind of a deranged killer, where anything could happen. Expectation had to be kept low at all times, because there might not be any plan at all. The murder at Braithwaite and the dump site at Thirlmere car park could be two random dots on a map, and nothing more. She had to stay level headed.
‘It’s a shame I can’t make the conference and have dinner with June and Amber. When will you go?’ she said to Ted.
‘I wanted to catch some of Demi Cramer’s work.’
‘She’s working with my team at Eden House on these cases for me. Come and meet her.’
‘Well, that would be an honour, I do like her work.’
‘She was my senior mentor when I was doing my detective exams.’
‘Lucky you. What’s she like?’
‘She’s eccentric, loud and colourful.’
‘Sounds fun.’
‘She is.’ Kelly watched the road as the traffic freed up again, and they turned off to enter Carlisle city. The hospital wasn’t far from the motorway junction and they could see it in the distance, the mortuary chimney standing ominously on the skyline. Beyond that, on a clear day, they could make out Glasgow and, on the far side of that, the beginning of the Scottish Highlands.
Kelly ran her theory past Ted as they approached the hospital, explaining all the circumstantial evidence they had so far: the athame, the positions of the bodies, the element symbols, the letters from The Teacher, what she’d found out about the importance of the pentacle… The map, and Johnny pointing out the quarry near Birkett Mire.
‘You need something solid tying it all together. Otherwise, there’s no way of telling if someone is out there plotting still, or it was two single unrelated targets.’
‘I don’t buy that,’ Kelly said.
‘Neither do I, but you’re talking about investing scarce resources; like any department on a tight budget, you’ll have to justify yourself. What did Demi Cramer say?’
‘She’s on board. She wrote a book on The Teacher, and bagged a few interviews. I never want to experience that again.’
‘It sounds awful, I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.’
Ted had never met Amy Richmond but had autopsied all of her victims, or what was left of them. The image of him removing a piece of paper from the thigh of one of the victims had never left her.
‘Here we are.’
Kelly parked and they made their way to the mortuary. She’d come prepared and armed with a large, warm jumper to go over her blouse. She’d also brought some scented oil for under her nose. It seemed only hours since she’d been here last time with him. She was now familiar with where the gowns were stored, how many times Ted checked his equipment, as well as his personal routine before he commenced the grim operation. She never tired of watching him, and witnessing his subtle habits of walking around a cadaver and tapping his chin. The photographer was ready, as was Ted’s assistant. They all waited until Ted opened the body bag. Kelly had come to associate the slow grating sound of a zip with this very moment, and today was no different. The first glimpse of a corpse always made her catch her breath and she had to fight to keep back tears as she thought of Carry’s family. A formal identification had already taken place and Kelly was glad that it wasn’t her job to accompany families when they did so. It was hard enough being on the informing party, and she’d done plenty of those. As a SIO, she no longer carried out that heartbreaking task, but she counselled and mentored those who did.
When she looked at the body of Carry Tomlin, what struck her most of all were the bites. It was clear, now they were away from the shores of the reservoir, and in a place of quiet and sterility, where one had no choice but stare at them, that they were caused by an animal.
‘Probably canine,’ said Ted. They were all over her arms and legs, and there were a few on her face.
‘None of them were fatal, they don’t go deep enough,’ Ted said. He took clippings of her nails and noted the bruising on her fingers and lower arms, indicating a good fight.
‘She was aware when she was set upon.’
‘She must have been terrified.’
Ted measured the bites carefully.
‘There are three different jaw measurements. That’s three animals, at least.’
‘But it wasn’t a frenzy, so maybe they were called off.’
Ted agreed.
Kelly avoided looking at the faces of those she saw dead, unless it was the initial crime scene investigation, because here, on the stainless steel slab, with no dignity left, and a trail of bereaved relatives waiting expectantly for the police to catch those responsible, she found it difficult to face them. They were so vulnerable, even in death, on the slab. It also brought home the terror they’d suffered before their last breath.
Ted spent a long time examining her neck and head, considering the statistic that most homicides involved blunt force trauma to the vital physical structures protected therein.
‘Come and look at this,’ he said, stopping his search. His face told Kelly that he’d found something important. She looked at the side of Carry’s neck, behind her ear. Crudely knifed into the skin was a rough tattoo, etched there in a sloppy, amateur fashion. The sides were encrusted and Ted wiped away the scabs to reveal an unskilful but indisputable carving of the Moon Goddess symbol. An untrained eye would have missed it but Ted’s experience and knowledge of the largest organ of the body – the skin – gave him the tools necessary to spot discrepancies such as this mark. It was red around the outside and an inky colour had been applied to it.
‘Was she alive?’
‘By the way the skin has reacted, I’d say yes.’
‘Oh God.’
It was photographed from all angles and entered into Ted’s oral record via his microphone. He carried on silently, and Kelly could tell that he was thinking about how this young woman suffered. She must have been severely disabled to allow such mutilation. Or scared beyond sanity.
‘I can’t see any evidence of swelling on the cranial surfaces, and there’s no evidence of ligature or other types of strangulation.’ Ted returned to his step by step process. That was his anchor. It was how he got through it: a trusty methodical approach that allowed him to concentrate on the evidence before him. Kelly realised that it wasn’t glaringly obvious how Carry Tomlin had met her end; just that, so far, she’d been set upon by dogs, and tortured. Whether that horrible experience was linked to her final demise was still unclear. It was also obvious that the young woman had been tied at the wrist. Like the Mary Hales murder, Kelly could see signs that the killer had enjoyed the ritual.
Dozens of photographs were taken before Ted announced that it was time to open her up. Kelly looked at her watch: he’d been at it for over three hours already. It was time to check in with her team. She had hoped that Ted would have given her a cause of death by now, because homicide victims usually show visible signs of their demise on the outside. Apart from the restraining wounds around her wrists, this was not the case for Carry. Ted would only know for sure when he examined her internal organs and that would take countless more hours, which Kelly did not have. There was always the chance that a body found by water would produce evidence of drowning, but there was no evidence that Carry had been for a swim, and she was found on the beach rather than in the water.
She stretched and considered her options. Then, she heard the first slurp of skin being peeled back, and it turned her stomach. Ted reached for his Stryker saw and Kelly knew that Carry’s chest was being sawn open so the coroner could get to her organs. She decided that she’d let him finish up with the saw and then excuse herself with a promise that he called her the minute he knew more. She caught sight of Ted grabbing Carry’s gullet and rooting around for the base of the tongue; he was trying to eviscerate all of her organ sac – containing gullet to anus – in one. It was no easy task: it weighed as much as a few serious dumbbells in the gym, but Ted was a seasoned professional. However, he realised halfway through pulling it out of the cavity that it was heavier than usual.
‘Thought so,’ he said.
‘What?’ Kelly asked.
‘There’s water in her lungs. You have your cause.’
‘Could she have been unconscious?’ Kelly asked.
‘Yes, it’s possible, or she could have been restrained still.’
‘In broad daylight, next to Thirlmere? It’s highly unlikely.’
‘I agree,’ he said. ‘I still think we’ll find evidence that there isn’t lake water in there.’
‘All right, Ted, I’ll wait a little longer, then I really need to be going.’
‘I’ll examine the lungs first.’ He slapped the sac onto a stainless steel slab next to the one holding Carry’s body, and it reminded Kelly of a fishing programme, when large specimens were landed after a fight. A fish’s body out of water looked just as awkward and bulky, flopping onto any surface it came into contact with, and wobbling until it settled in an ungainly fashion. Carry’s organ sac did the same. And it stank. Ted expertly cut away one lung and weighed it. As he did so, the bronchial tubes leaked water all over the gurney.
‘Can you smell that?’ he asked. Kelly struggled to decipher what exactly he was referring to. There was such a buffet of smells awaiting detection during an autopsy that she didn’t know how to answer.
‘Soap,’ he said. ‘It’s highly perfumed. Look at the bubbles.’ He went to the liquid that had leaked and rubbed it between his gloves fingers. Sure enough, it produced a soapy soup. As Kelly came closer, she also smelled perfume.
‘Why the hell would she have soapy water in her lungs?’ Kelly asked Ted.
‘She drowned in a bath?’
‘The dogs were called off and her wounds were cleaned?’
‘A trick?’
‘Or genuine care, and someone else was involved? It means she was in a home of sorts, or at least somewhere she could wash. But why the restraints? Was it all a sick role play? I need some air, Ted. Will you call me as soon as you’re done?’
‘Of course. I think I’ll be another three hours or so.’
Kelly left the sterile metal environment of the mortuary and ripped off her overalls. She gathered her personal items as quickly as she could and went out into the corridor to get the lift back up to civilisation where murderers didn’t play games, or set dogs on terrified women.
Animals.
They were looking for a remote and quiet location, with pets, and a vehicle. Carry could have been driven to Thirlmere in her own car, but that couldn’t be the case, because her car wasn’t seen again after travelling south on the A591.
That’s where they should search. On the way back to her car, she called the office and asked to speak to Rob.
‘How’re you doing on my pentacle?’ she asked. She updated him on Carry’s autopsy so he could enter the details on HOLMES.
‘Sorted, guv. Piece of cake. You can open the map and impose any shape you want in any size. I’ve done what you said and inputted Mary’s house and where Carry Tomlin was found in Thirlmere, and a perfect circle, with a perfectly mathematically correct pentagram inside, gives us a few options. Threlkeld Quarry isn’t an exact match, but then I’m assuming that our killer isn’t also a mathematician or an astrologer.’
‘I’ll be back in under an hour, I’m just leaving Carlisle.’
Ted had already booked into a hotel in Carlisle for the night, knowing that he’d want to put his all into the operation, and be exhausted afterwards. Kelly felt guilty that it was her work that was so demanding of him.
‘I want a detailed search of a three-mile radius around where Carry’s body was found: fields, woodland, farmhouses, youth hostels, caravans… the lot.’
‘Yes, guv. By the way, I called Fred O’Reilly as you asked, to find out if he had a pentacle for his altar.’
‘And?’
‘It’s always been there, right under our noses. It’s on the plate. The pentacle is engraved on the plate, but we couldn’t see it because it was covered in pine. I sent someone to take it for evidence.’
‘Great work, Rob.’