‘Sorry I missed the autopsies.’ Ruby closed her office door as the buzz of her team’s activity filtered through. ‘Traffic was a nightmare leaving prison. It seems like everyone wanted to visit their nearest and dearest today. Can you give me the lowdown?’
‘Nae bother,’ Vera said, a hint of a Scottish accent travelling down the phone. ‘Your DI was able to make it after all. I’m putting together my report now, but I’m happy to give you the salient points in the meantime.’
Ruby smirked. DI Downes was a pure delegator. DCI Worrow had requested the presence of a member of the team, and Downes had volunteered Ruby to accompany her, citing he had an urgent appointment elsewhere. Appointment, my arse, Ruby thought. He was able to wriggle out of it quickly enough when push came to shove. She knew him well enough to recognise his little habits. Lately, he had been hinting that he would like her company, and not just in police time. She liked Jack, and it would have been easy to fall into a relationship with him, allow it to develop into something more. He rarely made demands on her, accepting her for who she was. But it wouldn’t have been fair on either of them. Both their heads were filled with ghosts; his with his wife who had died the year before, and hers with Nathan Crosby, a man she was better off without.
Taking a gulp of tea, she listened as Vera ran through her observations. ‘Given what your DI has said about him, I don’t think Danny Smedley is your suspect.’
‘For Ellie’s murder?’ Ruby said, recalling their Snow White girl.
‘For either of them. Smedley’s MO is rape, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, but such things have been known to progress to murder,’ Ruby said, wondering where this was going.
‘But Lisa wasn’t raped,’ Vera said, matter-of-factly.
‘What makes you so sure?’ Ruby said. ‘I mean, I know there’s usually bruising but what if he did it after she passed out?’
‘Lisa was a virgin. Evidentially, she hadn’t had sex with anyone, let alone our killer. She died from asphyxiation. The thumb marks on her windpipe demonstrated the killer knew exactly where to press for maximum results.’
Ruby rubbed her forehead. What started off as a straightforward case was now proving to be anything but. ‘But I saw the bruises on her body.’
‘There are signs of a struggle and, given the girl was naked, there’s nothing to say the killer wasn’t disturbed before he did the deed.’
‘Yet he took the time to remove her earrings and the rest of her jewellery without making a mark.’
‘Exactly,’ Vera agreed. ‘Such things are often ripped off. There’s no sign of that.’
‘But Danny Smedley’s remanded in custody. He confessed to her rape and murder.’
‘It’s not up to me to tell you how to do your job, but I don’t believe he murdered Ellie. Whoever killed this girl knew how to handle a scalpel.’
‘Yes,’ Ruby said, ‘there was mention of a scar on her chest.’
‘It’s too fresh to be a scar, the stitches were still in place,’ Vera said. ‘They’ve gone to significant efforts to change her appearance too. Her hair has recently been clipped short, and her bodily hair – all of it – was removed.’
‘When you say all. . .’ Ruby said, her words trailing away as she tried to comprehend the news.
‘I mean all. Eyebrows, eyelashes, arms, legs, pubic hair, the lot. The closeness of the shave would suggest a cut-throat razor was used or perhaps wax,’ she mused, ‘although I’d be more inclined to go for the blade.’
‘That must have taken a fair bit of time,’ Ruby said, scribbling the words undisturbed location on a piece of scrap paper.
‘Not only that, but they’ve then glued on false eyelashes and drawn on a pair of eyebrows to boot.’
Ruby took another sip of tea. It tasted bitter as it hit her throat, but it was down to Vera’s words rather than the quality of teabags. What sort of ghoulish makeover was this? She grasped for a semblance of normality. ‘Couldn’t she have done that herself? She was a working girl, and there’s a bit of a trend for the fake look at the moment.’
‘It’s doubtful. Ellie was hair-free in places she could never have reached on her own. And then there’s the skin bleaching. It would have stung like hell in her intimate areas. This was more than the disposal of forensic evidence, they’ve gone way beyond that.’
Ruby nodded into the phone. ‘Any signs of a struggle?’
‘The welts on her wrist suggest she was restrained.’
Echoes of the door-knocker killer found their way into Ruby’s memory. Despite having solved the case, she could not rule out a copycat killer. ‘Any rope burns? What about her ankles? Any lesions in her mouth?’
‘No cuts. No rope burns – more like thick belt marks, and only on her wrists. She’s got a few puncture marks and faded bruises, but that’s not uncommon for a girl with her way of life. The trick is separating what happened before she met the killer. We can only surmise.’
‘Any forensics on either of the girls?’
‘It’s early days. It’s my estimation that Ellie may have been in captivity for a couple of days before she was murdered. Blood tests have been requested, but it wouldn’t surprise me if she were drugged throughout.’
Ruby sighed, hoping that was the case if only to spare her the horrors of her ordeal. ‘Time of death?’ She knew how much Vera hated being pinned down on such things.
‘Ach! I guessed you were going to ask me that. Lisa wasn’t dead very long before being discovered. But Ellie. . .’ She exhaled loudly. ‘Sometime in the last twenty-four hours. Will that do you?’
‘It definitely rules out Danny Smedley,’ Ruby said. ‘Although I won’t be letting him off the hook just yet.’
‘Looks like you need to cast your net wider,’ Vera said. ‘When your suspect finished cleaning up Ellie, and I mean deep cleaning, he conducted a little invasive surgery, hence the stitches on her chest.’
Outside a siren blared through the streets of London, and Ruby raised her voice to be heard. ‘Surgery? I presumed she’d been injured and he’d stitched her up after she died.’
‘More like he took a keepsake. He’s removed some of her internal organs, her liver and lungs to be exact.’
Ruby frowned. She didn’t like the sound of this. ‘And done what with them?’
‘Your guess is as good as mine. DI Downes is going to brief the team when he gets back.’
Ruby shuddered, thinking of a horror movie she had recently watched. ‘I hope we don’t have one of those cannibal killers on the loose.’
‘I think you’d best be researching the origin of your story first.’
Ruby recalled the black wig, the ivory white skin. ‘The Snow White theme?’
‘Yes, we found the remnants of an apple in her stomach. We’re analysing the remains for poison.’
Ruby sighed. If the apple was poisoned, it meant that Ellie would have been conscious for part of the attack. So much for being spared. ‘No signs of sexual attack?’
‘Not forced, although she was sexually active. But that’s hardly a surprise given her profession. Oh, and there’s one more thing.’
‘What’s that?’ Ruby said, adding to her notes.
‘She had rat droppings in her hair so perhaps you need to direct your search into areas that would be likely to carry vermin.’
Ruby thought it over. The killer’s invasive deep clean could not have been solely born from the need to dispose of evidence. But why go to so much trouble to bleach skin and remove hair, then allow vermin to invade the body? Unless Ellie had been left alone for periods of time in a place where rats frequented. Questions flooded her mind, but Vera was still talking.
‘Whoever the killer is they took great care in transforming her. She was almost unrecognisable from the photo that DI Downes supplied. Perhaps it was one of her clients who held a grudge, but then I’m not going to tell you how to do your job.’
‘Let’s hope it was a one-off,’ Ruby said, a dragging feeling growing in her stomach. With briefing due in half an hour, it was going to be another late night.