‘Write down your name, please,’ the young woman on the front door said in an officious tone, pointing to the column and handing Ryder a pen. ‘And the time you entered the building.’
Ryder smiled to himself as he scribbled his name on the sheet. Terry had chosen the right person for the job. ‘Keep up the good work,’ he said, handing the pen to Flowers.
Long Bay was a hive of activity. Benson was in the hallway, talking to two young blokes about search warrants and their rights, and explaining how it was in their best interest not to obstruct the police, especially if they had nothing to hide.
In the kitchen, a detective Ryder didn’t recognise was deep in conversation with a young woman dressed in a university tracksuit and sheepskin boots. Another five girls were waiting in line.
‘What’s going on here?’ Ryder asked, after he’d introduced himself.
‘Detective Benson wanted to know if anyone woke during the night and heard anything unusual. These ladies came forward.’
‘Right. Let me know if you get anything.’
They found Terry standing in the centre of the TV room, clipboard in hand. Close to a dozen staff members were also in the room. A few were curled sleepily in chairs, while others were stretched out on the floor, their attention riveted to a superhero movie playing on the TV. At a table in the corner, four blokes were engrossed in a serious game of poker.
Terry swung around at Ryder’s soft knock. ‘I’m halfway through taking the roll-call,’ he said. ‘I’ll catch you up when I’m done.’
A familiar scent of crime-scene chemicals greeted Ryder as he approached Vanessa’s room. An emergency-services man came backing out of the doorway and into the corridor holding the end of a stretcher. The man’s clothes were covered by plastic overalls, his shoes by plastic booties.
‘Sweet Jesus,’ Flowers muttered as Libby’s covered body came into view. ‘She was too young to end up in a body bag like that.’
‘Why don’t you head back the way we came,’ said Ryder. ‘Close the door to the TV room and clear those girls out of the kitchen. They don’t need to see this.’
‘Right, Sarge.’
‘Oh, and Flowers, find out which room is Bruno’s. I want to question him the minute we’ve finished here.’
Ryder watched as the two men manoeuvred the stretcher through the doorway. ‘How’s it going, fellas?’ he asked quietly.
‘We’re ready to take the body to Canberra,’ the older of the two men said. ‘The helicopter’s on standby.’
Ryder glanced into Vanessa’s room. Harriet Ono and two members of her forensic team were working inside, their movements quiet, respectful and unhurried.
Five minutes later, Libby’s body was taken from the building, and Harriet emerged from Vanessa’s room. She pulled down her face mask and raised her eyebrows at Ryder.
‘Shutting down the resort, hey? You’ll do anything to get your face on telly.’
‘Good to see you out of bed at the crack of dawn, Harriet.’
‘You thinking about me in bed? I’ve told you before I’m not interested.’
Ryder smiled a little. It was a way of coping with the horror, of emotionally detaching from the constant exposure to violent death. ‘So, what’s your take on this one?’
‘Well,’ Harriet spoke on a sigh. ‘From the external examination, she died of asphyxiation.’
‘I’m curious about those unusual marks on her neck.’
‘Velcro.’
‘Velcro?’
‘Yep? I’ve seen the abrasions a few times, not around the neck, but on other body parts.’
Ryder pulled out his phone. ‘Flowers, can you ask Terry to come down here, please?’
‘Any idea of the time of death?’ he asked Harriet.
‘Somewhere between four and four-thirty this morning, according to the medical examiner. He’s already left for another crime scene, by the way. It’s shaping up to be a busy one.’
‘Has the luminol shown up anything?’
Harriet glanced over her shoulder. ‘A ton of marks have appeared already but, as you know, blood isn’t the only activator that glows in the dark. This carpet’s been down a long time. A lamp was smashed at some point. Let’s hope the perp cut himself.’
‘Unlikely. My guess is he was wearing gloves.’
Beyond Harriet’s shoulder, Ryder could see a member of the forensics team kneeling on the floor using tweezers to collect fibres from the carpet, while a fingerprint specialist brushed the surfaces for prints.
‘I’ve taken scrapings from under her fingernails. More extensive tests will be done at the morgue.’
‘I need you to give this priority, Harriet. I’m relying on you. Without security cameras, it’s tough getting a lead here.’
‘There’s no CCTV footage in the village?’
‘Nope. Just a couple of snowcams.’
Harriet rolled her eyes. ‘Like they’ll be of any use. So, do you think this murder is related to the Delaney cold case?’
‘That’s at the forefront of my mind.’
When he didn’t elaborate, she ducked into the room and came back with her pathology bag. ‘I have that cigarette case for you, too.’
Ryder took the small, plastic bag from her and held it up to the light. An officer from Newcastle command had shown a photograph of it to the Delaneys, but neither parent could remember Celia having had the case. He turned the item over, studying it closely. ‘Thanks, Harriet. I’ll log this into evidence and ask her husband about it.’
Harriet gave a soft chuckle. ‘Careful it doesn’t give you nicotine withdrawals.’
Ryder snorted and zipped the case into the pocket of his police jacket. ‘I’ll buy a ticket when you’re doing stand-up comedy.’ He hadn’t thought about lighting up in days. He nodded at the room. ‘Have you had a look inside the cupboard?’
‘It’s mainly clothes. All neatly folded. Whoever’s responsible for this, they weren’t searching for anything.’
A sudden thought struck Ryder and he leaned around Harriet to speak to the fingerprint specialist. ‘Excuse me. Can you do the closet door first?’
Harriet grasped his arm and attempted to drag him backwards. ‘Get away from the door, Pierce, you’ll contaminate my crime scene. God, you’re an impatient bugger.’
Harriet disappeared inside Vanessa’s room shaking her head as Flowers reappeared in the corridor with Terry in tow.
Ryder lowered his voice and spoke to both men. ‘Harriet said Libby was strangled with a piece of Velcro.’ He looked at Terry. ‘Where do you find Velcro down here?’
‘Velcro? Man, anywhere and everywhere.’ Terry turned around and went a little way back up the corridor and lifted a jacket off its hook. ‘Mine has Velcro around the neck to attach the hood.’ Coming back to Flowers and Ryder, he held the jacket open for them to see, pointing out the pieces of Velcro stitched into the garment. ‘There’s also a panel down the front covering the zipper, and it’s around the cuffs so you can pull the sleeves in tight.’
‘He would have needed a piece this long.’ Ryder held up his hands a little less than shoulder width.
Flowers pointed to the front of the jacket. ‘That piece would be long enough, but who could be bothered unpicking it? Why not use something else?’
Terry snapped his fingers, his eyes lighting up. ‘Hang on.’ He strode back down the corridor, stopping about halfway along. Squatting, he took something from an open bag.
When he joined them again, a piece of purple Velcro dangled from his fingers. ‘This is one of my ski straps.’
‘Harriet,’ Ryder called, the hairs on the back of his neck standing on end as he took the material from Terry. He wound the ends around his hands then tested the tautness of it. As Harriet appeared in the doorway, he held his fists aloft.
Dragging down her mask, she stared hard at the ski strap. Then her gaze met Ryder’s over the strip of purple Velcro. ‘That’d do it.’
‘We’re looking for one of these,’ Ryder told Benson a few minutes later. He demonstrated how they worked, winding the piece of Velcro around the top of Terry’s skis and showing Benson how it kept the tips together. ‘They always come in pairs. The second one goes around the tails,’ he said, pointing to the opposite end of the ski. ‘It prevents them from coming apart when you carry them.’ Ryder propped the skis against the wall. ‘Start here in Long Bay, then search the ski rooms at the inn and in the lodges. We’ll start with the public areas first then go room to room if we have to. Harriet will wait and take them back with her.’
‘Yes, Sarge.’
‘Oh, and Benson, you don’t have to worry about the hired skis. The rental shop doesn’t have straps.’
‘Got it.’
‘So, what’s your take on this?’ Flowers asked when Benson had left. ‘Do you think the murderer lives in the building?’
‘That was my first thought. That why I wanted the hunt for the murder weapon to start here. How would an outsider know which room was Vanessa’s?’
‘They wouldn’t. There aren’t any names on the doors.’
‘I thought that too, but check out these jackets.’ Ryder reached up and touched the sleeve of Vanessa’s ski-patrol jacket. ‘Here’s Vanessa’s. And hanging on the same hook are the rimless mirrored goggles she wears.’ He pointed further along the hallway. ‘Now look down there. There’s only one other patroller apart from Vanessa, and his jacket’s right there. See how much bigger it is?’
‘And down here,’ Ryder nudged Vanessa’s boots with his foot. ‘These badarse-looking ski boots with the orange flame on the side? They’re hers. Any observant person with half a brain could work out that this was her room.’
‘And the exterior doors have no locks.’
‘Right. The place is wide open.’
Flowers blew out a breath. ‘That makes our job a hell of a lot harder.’
Ryder nodded. ‘I still think it’s more likely that the person who murdered Libby lives in this building, but we can’t rule out anyone in the village.’
‘Including Libby’s former boyfriend?’
‘Well, I think he’s probably in the clear.’
A whir of helicopter rotors cut through the quiet then steadily grew faster and louder as it rose from the helipad behind the inn. Ryder hoped Vanessa hadn’t been standing at the windows when Libby’s body was carried out.
‘Fucking hell,’ Flowers said as the noise receded. ‘You just don’t know when your number’s up, do you? Vanessa was so lucky she was with you last night, Sarge. But … not Libby.’
Ryder nodded. ‘Libby was in the wrong place at the wrong time. There’s nothing more to it than that.’
‘I have to admit, Pierce, you’re good,’ Harriet said, emerging from Vanessa’s room again. ‘There’s a well-defined print on the cupboard door. Looks man-sized, too. We would have got to it, but,’ she frowned, ‘what made you ask for the closet to be done first?’
‘It’s a shot in the dark that he might have taken off his gloves, so don’t get too excited. There’s barely room to put your feet on the floor with the trundle pulled out like that. I nearly overbalanced when I was in there this morning. If the killer did the same, there’s a chance he could have thrown out a hand to save himself.’
‘Well, we have the best in the business lifting it off with tape right now. And, when we’re done, can we please have the room taped up again?’
‘You want to keep it as a crime scene?’
‘For now. Just in case I have to come back and take bits and pieces of furniture to the lab. Shouldn’t be a problem. No one will be in a hurry to move in.’ Without another word Harriet disappeared back inside the room.
Ryder looked up at the ceiling, trying to imagine what the building was like when it was bottom station for the old chairlift. ‘That print could be anybody’s,’ he said to Flowers. ‘It might be months since that cupboard was wiped over or polished.’
‘Why would someone want to hurt Vanessa?’ Flowers mused.
Ryder told him about her run-in with Bruno, and the irresponsible skier she chased down the mountain. ‘I don’t know, but I’m convinced it’s linked to the Delaney case.’ Ryder unbuttoned the pocket of his jacket and pulled out the Tiffany cigarette case. ‘Log this in, then ask Nigel Miller about it. I want to know whether Celia bought it for herself, or if it was a gift from him. Remember, she’d asked Nigel for a divorce. Maybe it was a gift from her new lover.’
‘Will do, Sarge.’
‘If you don’t make any headway, contact Tiffany. A company like that—who knows how far their records go back.’
‘Too easy.’
‘Detective Ryder.’
Ryder turned at the urgency in Terry’s voice. He was hurrying towards them, a two-way radio in his hand. ‘What’s up?’
‘Perisher terminal just called. One of our grooming machines is parked down there.’
‘What!’ He’d shut down the resort the minute Inspector Gray had given him the go ahead. ‘How on earth? Why am I only hearing about this now?’
‘They’ve been flat out at the desk turning people away and explaining why the village is shut down. They only just noticed it.’ Terry jiggled the two-way nervously in his hand. ‘There’s more bad news. I’ve done the roll-call. Bruno’s gone.’