IT WAS A young couple, or rather the boyfriend, who spotted the body late Friday afternoon. Tommy O’Dea and Tara Fields, his young co-worker from the department store chain Marks & Spencer’s, had rented Mary Trevean’s hay barn cottage by the cliffs for a “naughty weekend.” Tommy, an Irishman from Galway and an ambitious business graduate from University College, Dublin, had been promoted to menswear manager at the big M&S store at Cribb’s Causeway Mall, just outside Bristol. Tara, just twenty-two and a lithe brunette with cropped hair slashed with a thin line of blue dye along the right side and a silver stud in her right nostril, worked in the store’s food hall. Used to seeing Tommy in suit and tie she found him even sexier in tight jeans and a pressed light blue chambray dress shirt rolled up to his elbows. As they sped south in his black Audi A3 Friday afternoon, she noticed a delicate geometric Celtic tattoo traced around his normally covered right forearm as he held the wheel. She thought that mysterious and sexy, too. They’d had lunch together for a few weeks when Tommy suggested they go away. To his surprise, she accepted. She’d followed his advancement in the company and had decided to grab on to his rising star. Tommy was going places. She’d go with him.
They’d had lunch at an ancient, if touristy, pub on Bodmin Moor: the Jamaica Inn. He told her it had figured in a famous book by Daphne du Maurier. She’d never heard of it.
Later that afternoon Tommy pressed the buzzer mounted on the enamel-white frame of the door to Mary’s farmhouse. No one answered. Not to be deterred, for he was rather eager for this weekend with Tara to begin, Tommy walked around the old farmhouse peering into the ground floor windows. He saw nothing until, from a sitting room window, he caught sight of a bare foot. It protruded from behind a sofa, the back of which faced him. Nothing else was visible from his angle. He raced around to the front of the house and, thinking the landlord was ill or had passed out, hammered on the door. There was no answer. The door was locked. He thought of breaking a window but instead punched 999 into his mobile, the police emergency number.
Tara stepped out of the Audi and met Tommy as he walked away from the house.
“What’s the problem? Is she not at home, Tommy? How will we get our key?”
“Someone is home, luv, but lying on the floor. Unconscious, I think. I’ve spoken to the police.”
“Wait, will this ruin our weekend?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps, okay?” And in that moment Tommy O’Dea knew Tara Fields was not for him.
“TERRY? PENWARREN HERE.”
Terry Bates was at her desk at the Bodmin hub. Penwarren was on his way home to Padstow. It had just gone 4:00.
“Comms just contacted me. We’ve got a body down in Boswednack, south of Zennor. Treen Farm. Can you get there straightaway? Morgan’s on a training course in Exeter: community relations, if you can credit it. Can’t reach her. This one’s yours. West is already on his way, along with the forensic pathologist. They’ll be there first. Fast as you can, right?”
“On it, Sir.” She was grinning and was glad “Mister” couldn’t see her.
Bates grabbed her murder kit and headed for the police car park at the rear of the building. This was her first independent murder investigation. She jumped into a white unmarked two-door Ford Escort, wishing she could use a regulation squad car with its lights and claxon siren, and tore out of the lot heading for the A30 south.
DR. JENNIFER DUNCAN, one of two forensic pathologists under contract to the Devon and Cornwall Police, knelt beside the body of Mary Trevean. Duncan had been wrapping up an autopsy at the mortuary in the Royal Cornwall Hospital at Treliske, just up-county outside Truro, when she got the call. She’d driven south and had just begun her examination when she heard the unmistakable growl of Calum West’s turbocharged Volvo Estate as it down-shifted and skidded into the farmyard.
Man’s a menace, she thought to herself, but a brilliant driver. But she was glad to have her favorite crime scene manager on this one.
West logged in with the young community service officer guarding the yellow police tape outside the door, climbed into his white Tyvek jumpsuit and blue paper booties, clamped a hair cap on his head, pulled on two pairs of nitrile gloves (the top pair were always entered into evidence), and entered the house.
“We must find other ways to meet, Jennifer; these rendezvous are always so unseemly…”
“You look like hell, Calum.”
“These outfits are not flattering.”
“I’m talking about you face. You’re knackered.”
“Remind me never to marry a forensic pathologist; I was down here last night. Case nearby. A lot of driving, not much sleep.”
She smiled, patted his cheek gently, and went back to work. West began taking scene photos. The room was tastefully decorated, like one that might have been pictured in his late wife’s favorite magazine, Country Living. The walls were painted a muted light gray with a touch of brown to warm it. The carpet was a darker warm gray. At one end of the long room a white slipcovered sofa faced a hearth with a small jet black Victorian era cast iron coal grate and surround. Its ashes had not been cleared but were cold. Flanking the sofa were two easy chairs covered in natural linen in a herringbone weave. In the center, there was a weathered antique pine tea table stained with a pale lime wash. Bookshelves lined one wall—apparently, the victim was a reader. At the end of the room, opposite the hearth, stood a baby grand piano polished so high that the early evening summer sunlight slanting through the room was almost blinding. A peaceful, domestic scene, West thought.
The victim lay on her back on the carpeted floor. There was no blood. There were no evident signs of violence either upon her body or anywhere in the room itself. It was as if she’d simply fainted.
Except that she was dead.
West watched the deceptively young-looking pathologist examine every inch of the woman’s now naked corpse. She’d cut off the victim’s plush white robe and bagged it for West as evidence. He’d check the pieces later for hair and fibers. She clipped off and bagged the woman’s fingernails for analysis of whatever might be beneath them. Next, she checked the victim’s rectal temperature and swabbed every orifice. It was standard procedure and though it always seemed to West a violation of the deceased, he left her to it. The last thing she did was uncurl the victim’s fingers and take prints.
Terry Bates arrived a half hour later but remained at the door with the rest of West’s SOCO team. She knew better than to enter the house. For now, this was West’s territory. His job was critical: preserve the integrity of scene and evidence, protect against contamination. As soon as West and Duncan were finished examining the body, West’s people would examine every inch of the house: dusting for fingerprints, using tape to lift fibers from furniture and doorjambs, shining special lights to illuminate possible bloodstains, and searching every drawer, cabinet, and armoire in every room until they were satisfied they were done. Terry would follow after every chance of her contaminating the scene was cleared. Her job was investigation, analysis. In the meantime, part of West’s team was already scouring the grounds around the house. His people were experts in a range of technical fields: etymology, geology and soils, archaeology, botany, and more. If there was something to be discovered, they’d find it. Like Duncan and West, all were dressed in sterile white Tyvek coveralls. Roaming the property, bent toward the ground, they looked like a marauding band of semi-upright polar bears.
Inside the house, Duncan finally rose, stretched her back muscles, and broke the stillness that had enveloped the two of them as she worked.
“The thing most people don’t know, Calum, is that homicidal asphyxiation does actually leave a trace. Of course, if you garrote someone, there will be that wire or other ligature lesion around the throat. And manual strangulation will leave bruises and often a broken hyoid bone at the base of the neck.”
“I love it when you talk dirty…”
“Oh stop,” she said, but she was smiling. Black humor was how they got through their often gruesome tasks.
“Come here,” she ordered. “Look at this woman’s eyes.”
West did. “Okay, they’re bloodshot.”
“Most people would think that simply pressing a cushion over someone’s nose and mouth until they stopped breathing, which appears to be the case here, would be traceless. But it will always result in bloodshot eyes, like this victim’s. I’ll spare you the science, but that’s the tell-tale. This death was not of natural causes. The lady was snuffed.”
CALUM AND DUNCAN wrapped the body in a sterile white plastic sheet to protect what evidence might adhere and then slid it into a black body bag, sealing and labeling it.
“This is a first for me, Jenn: suffocation.”
“And one hopes the last, Calum,” she said touching his arm and gathering her kit.
“How do you do this, Jennifer? How do you go on up to the mortuary at Treliske now and take this person apart, piece by piece, having been right here with her, in her own home, surrounded by the things that comprised her life?”
“Same reason you’re here, Calum: to find answers. To me, it’s an honor: honor the victim by finding the answers. It’s my job, yes, but”—she looked at the black plastic bag—“I owe it to her and to everyone I examine.”
“Yeah, me too,” Calum said, his voice soft, as if trying not to wake the body resting on the floor in the bag.
“And if I were you, Calum, I’d collect every cushion in this room and take it into evidence.”
West lifted an eyebrow: “I didn’t know you’d also become a detective, Jenn.”
“Of course I haven’t. But suffocating someone is not easy; it takes determination. Anger, too, I suspect. I’m just trying to fill you in. There may be hair, fibers, even sweat or spit on whatever cushion was used.”
“Time of death?”
“Rigor’s only beginning to go off. Body’s already at room temperature. Sometime last night, I suspect, and less than twenty-four hours, but I’ll get back to you and Morgan on that. I’ll try to get blood and tox results as soon as the lab can do them. I’ll begin the autopsy as soon as I get up to the mortuary. You’ll be there?”
“Can’t this time, Jennifer. My daughters. Can someone else take record photos while you work? I’ve already ordered Roger Morris, my exhibits manager, to be there to take your samples.”
“No problem. Scotty Thomas can do the photos. Though, as mortuary manager, he doesn’t have much fun unless you are there so he can give you a hard time. Penwarren will no doubt call an MCIT meeting at Bodmin for the morning. I’ll see you there. Now, why don’t you stand aside and let these chaps do their job…”
Two men in dark suits had slipped in silently behind him: undertakers. They’d been so quiet it was like they’d appeared out of thin air. Maybe that was a skill they needed for the job. West had placed a trail of grated aluminum plates from the door to the body so no one would disturb possible evidence on the floor. The undertakers stepped carefully, lifted the body bag, and took it out to their waiting van.
“Anything else to report?” West asked Duncan as he watched them leave.
“Yes. She’d had sex. Possibly just before she died. Check the sofa cushions for semen, and the bed upstairs, though I doubt that’s where it happened. I’ve already taken a swab. I’ll have that checked too, but DNA analysis takes time.”
“Thank you, Jennifer.”
She looked at him and her shoulders sagged. “There’s something primitive, almost animalistic about this murder, Calum: copulate, then kill? Like praying mantises.”
“Except in that case the female kills the male…”
“Yes.”
TERRY BATES STEPPED through the door of the farmhouse after Duncan and the body had gone.
West looked up from the hall. “Detective Bates! What a pleasant change from my usual CID companion.”
“Morgan’s at a community relations course up at Exeter.”
“I wish them luck, whoever they are; she’s untrainable.”
Terry tried not to laugh. “Penwarren sent me here. I have some questions.”
“So do I, but you go first.”
“The door, Calum. Was it locked?”
“It was. Uniformed constables from Penzance—both women, by the way—forced it. I suspect they thought the victim was still alive and it was a rescue operation. Thankfully, they backed right out when they discovered it wasn’t and called DS Ralph Pendennis straightaway. He’s CID at the basic command unit at Penzance. Used to work for Morgan. Somehow, they’re still friends. He was here in under a half hour; raced over the moortop lanes, apparently. Immediately reported it as suspicious and Comms took it from there. St. Ives Community Support Officers have been keeping watch.”
“Other doors?”
“Just one other, also locked.”
“So, locked by whom is the question, yes? If the victim locked the doors, how did the killer get in? If the killer walked in, either a door was unlocked or he or she was let in. If the killer locked the place up again afterward, how did he or she get the key to close up the house? Where is that key? Looks like the killer knew her and was someone whom she trusted, at least to admit to her house.”
“Whoa, slow down there young lady! Put a few pounds on you, spike your hair, bleach it platinum, and I’d swear you were Morgan Davies!”
“I’ll pretend you didn’t say that.”
“Good. She’d smack me.”
“So would I, except that I know how you really feel about her.”
“Excuse me?
“Oh go on, Calum…”
West blinked. “You’re an observant woman, aren’t you?”
“I’m a woman. We observe. I’m also a detective.”
“Then I plead guilty, for what choice do I have against such an onslaught of feminine instinct?”
“Get over it. You said you had questions, too. Give.”
“I have many questions, but one especially big one: the young couple who reported that Mary Trevean appeared to be unconscious had rented one of her cottages for the weekend. Before St. Ives took them in for questioning they explained there were three properties the victim had for holiday lets. They’d chosen the one with the best view. I took a quick look around Trevean’s house for just one thing, which I did not find. My people found nothing either. But it should have been somewhere obvious.”
“And that would be…?”
West smiled, but Terry blinked once and beat him to it.
“A reservations book! Of course! The record of her renters…It’s gone?”
West shrugged. “All I can say is that we have not found it. There’s a counter in the kitchen with a tall seat by the phone where I should think she’d have kept it, but the surface is empty. Wiped clean, in fact. Let’s just have my people continue to take the place apart looking for the book, her personal papers, and whatever else and then the scene will be all yours.”
“The phone?”
“Wall-mounted land line. No mobile evident. Old fashioned, she was, I guess.”
“Who’s her phone service provider?”
“British Telecom, according to bills in a kitchen drawer: they say she had cable and Internet, too.”
“Computer, then?
“That’s not been found either.”
“I wish Morgan were here.”
“You’re doing fine, Terry. All the right questions. I’m just short of answers.”