Culverhouse breathed heavily as he approached the door of Unit 5, St David's Way. If what he had been told was correct, he knew he wouldn't be taking too many deep breaths once he was inside. The thick D-shaped Formica handle was cold to the touch, the draft excluder whooshing and squeaking slightly against the floor tiles as the door opened.
It was the smell. Always the smell. It never left you once you’d smelt it. Often, when he was lying in the bath or sitting at his kitchen table, he’d breathe in and would still smell it. It stuck in your nostrils forever. You got a nose for a dead body after a while, and this one smelt very dead indeed.
‘Knight, wait outside for the pathologist. He shouldn't be far behind,’ Culverhouse said, trying hard to breathe in through his nose and not his mouth. He didn’t want to have to taste it as well as smell it.
Wendy was only too pleased to acquiesce. She’d also seen and smelt her fair share of dead bodies and wasn’t particularly keen to be the first person inside.
Culverhouse decided against getting too close; he could see plenty from here. He could see the tops of the feet, the skin bubbled and blistered around the edges of the cavernous openings which revealed every individual metatarsal and a distinct lack of flesh. A chemical smell hung in the air, barely masking the odour of the decomposing body itself. The eye sockets had peeled back, revealing the deep smoked-salmon-coloured flesh and remnants of what was once an eyeball. The hair was non-existent; most of the scalp had burnt through to sheer white bone.
‘Looks like an acid job, sir,’ the young constable said. He’d been the first on the scene and, despite his youthful innocence, seemed far less bothered by the mutilated body than Culverhouse.
‘Hydrochloric,’ Culverhouse added.
‘You can tell?’
‘Yeah, it's a hobby of mine, you great berk. Of course you can tell. I've seen plenty of bodies in my time, Constable.’
‘Do you reckon it might be our missing girl?’ he asked, showing an interest in the goings on at CID, keen to impress his superiors.
‘How the fuck do I know? Silly me, I didn't think of commissioning an e-fit of what she might look like with half her fucking face melted off. Hopefully the pathologist won't be long and he'll be able to tell us for sure. Who found it?’
‘The owner of the business, sir. A Mr Donald Radley.’
‘Any sign of forced entry to the unit?’
‘He says not. Everything was locked up as it was left. No broken windows, and the alarm wasn’t activated.’
‘Who else could have had a key or access to the alarm?’
‘Any of the senior staff, conceivably. There's a front door with the alarm system wired up to it, and only one door at the back. That's got a commercial recycling bin jammed up against it and that hasn't been moved in a while. Took us ages to get the thing open, so there’s no way anyone’s been through there recently.’
‘Nice little fire hazard,’ Culverhouse said.
Janet Grey, the pathologist, entered the room, her high heels clip-clopping on the stone floor of the warehouse. ‘DCI Culverhouse. Always a pleasure,’ Grey said sarcastically.
‘Janet.’
‘So, how long's the body been here?’
‘No idea. The owner says it definitely wasn't here last night,’ Culverhouse said.
‘He's sure about that?’
‘I think it's safe to say he'd probably notice, Janet.’
‘Only asking. You'd be surprised what the eye misses.’
‘Quite possibly so, but I don't imagine his bleedin' nose would've.’
Janet Grey was, by now, far more interested in the body than in conversation with Culverhouse. Culverhouse always admired anyone who took a real interest in their job and had a passion for their work, but it disturbed him slightly that her face seemed to light up every time she attended a suspicious death.
‘Mmm, interesting,’ she said. ‘Blunt trauma to the front of the face and ligature marks around the neck. Probably from a pair of hands, I'd say. Fortunately the acid didn’t take out too much of the neck tissue. It’s mostly the head, hands and feet. I’m no psychologist or profiler, Jack, but I’d say this is something to do with identity.’
‘What, that the killer didn’t want the person identified?’
‘Oh, no, I doubt that. We can always identify a body. Certainly one with far less left of it than this. We’ve got dental records, DNA, all sorts. What I mean is that I’d suggest the killing was motivated by identity in some way. Getting rid of the face and extremities, including the fingers and fingerprints. It’s a classic sign.’
‘Beaten up, strangled and given an acid bath, though? Bit extreme, isn't it?’
‘Depends how badly the killer wanted to get rid of him.’
‘Him? You mean this isn't our missing girl?’
‘Definitely not. Look at the hips. Far narrower than any woman I've ever known. Women have much wider, child-bearing hips. The shape of the skull gives it away, too, to the trained eye. I can't say for sure until I get it into the lab and on the table, but I'm willing to bet there's not a uterus in there, either.’
‘So who's this then?’
‘That's not for me to say, Jack, but it's not your missing girl.’