CHAPTER ONE

 

 

HER JAW WAS still aching, but the moment she entered the cramped bedsit the pain was banished by curiosity and the chill of dread.

“Finally, an inspector calls.”

Detective Inspector Helen Ogilvy heard the joke, but she didn’t respond. She was staring at the woman who’d made the joke, kneeling close beside the body laid out on the threadbare carpet. Too damn close.

Her right hand swept back her jacket and her fingers made contact with the pistol holstered at her hip.

“It’s fine, Helen. She isn’t coming back.”

Helen frowned. She didn’t draw her weapon, but left her hand resting on the grip as she stepped forward. She couldn’t take her eyes off the body. The cause of death was pretty obvious; the bloodstain pooled around a tear in the young woman’s t-shirt, from an impaling or bullet wound. Her head was intact, though, her face unblemished. She looked young, almost childlike; death had a habit of making victims seem younger. There was a return to innocence, even for the guiltiest of people.

The victim’s eyes were open, and they’d grown pale and glassy. Her blood was already pooling, judging by her pallor, making the smattering of freckles on both cheeks more prominent than they’d been in life. Under the bright pink hair dye, Helen guessed the girl had been a redhead.

“What the hell is going on, Rita?”

“What’s going on is that you should have been here half an hour ago.” Rita McDonald, forensic pathologist, was smiling, but then Rita was always smiling.

Helen winced; the pain was starting to fight back. “I had to go to the dentist.” She wanted to rub at her jaw as she said it, in the vain hope this would ease the ache, but to do that she’d have to take her hand away from the gun, and she wasn’t ready to do that just yet.

Rita cocked her head to one side. “He pull it out?”

Helen nodded.

“About time, you should have had it done last week when it started hurting.”

“I was busy.”

Rita snorted. “You don’t know what busy is.”

From most people that would have been hyperbole, but Rita took multi-tasking to a whole new level. As well as her work with the police she taught at the local university and still had time to raise two kids and sing in a gospel choir.

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on or not?”

“Spoilsport,” said Rita. She sighed. “Okay. Victim is Trinity Brown, twenty years old, second-year economics student at EMU. Her chaperone went off at eight-fourteen. Ambulance must have been close by because paramedics were on site at eight-sixteen. They affected a hot entry and found the body right here. They confirmed death and secured the body for transit.” She nodded towards a thick leather hood and restraints lying on the floor.

“By eight-twenty they realised something wasn’t right. That’s when I was called in. Stroke of luck, really, as I was due to go off shift at eight-thirty.”

“You’ve been up all night?”

“You think I always look this rough? Thanks.”

Helen hurt too much to want the usual banter with her friend. “You shouldn’t have taken the hood and the restraints off.”

“I’m not stupid, I was careful. And I’ve got this.” She held up a bright yellow Taser.

“That doesn’t always slow them down.”

Rita waved a dismissive hand in Helen’s direction. She clambered awkwardly to her feet. “What are you, my mother?”

Now Helen did smile; she was twelve years Rita’s junior. In many ways they were chalk and cheese, but they’d been friends almost as long as they’d been colleagues, three and a half years.

Rita had been born Rita Lo in Hong Kong, and moved to the UK just before the handover back in 1997. She was short and pear-shaped, and Helen tall and slender. They’d heard about every Laurel and Hardy (or C3P0 and R2D2) joke people had to offer.

From an early age Helen had had to endure a regular chorus of ‘why the long face?’ and a litany of other horsey related jibes, and after several years waiting for her breasts to develop as her friends’ had, she finally had to accept that what she had was as good as she was going to get.

When it was down, Helen’s chestnut hair hung well past her shoulders. A guy at uni had once told her she looked ethereal, which might have had more impact if he hadn’t had to shout it drunkenly over the jukebox.

Really it didn’t suit police work, but she couldn’t bring herself to ever cut it—frankly she’d disappointed her mother quite enough already—and so she kept it braided and pinned into an elaborate bun, a trick she’d learned at medical school.

In contrast, Rita’s hair was pulled into a rough ponytail. As usual numerous strands had already escaped and many more looked on the verge of freedom.

Helen felt slightly ridiculous with her hand still on the pistol, so she finally removed it. Without thinking, she glanced down at the body and began to rub her left forearm.

“Do you know what the longest recorded delay before reanimation is?”

“Surprise me.”

Rita grinned. She had a delicate button nose and when she smiled it tended to twitch like a cat’s. “Doctor Takahiro Ishikawa performed an intensive study on terminal cancer patients in Kyoto. He clocked one resurrection at nine minutes and twelve seconds. Even anecdotally I’ve never heard anyone other than an internet whack job claim more than fifteen minutes.”

Helen checked her watch. It was almost 10am. She looked up at Rita, wondered if her friend’s smile was widening in response to the frown she felt creasing her own forehead. “She died over ninety minutes ago.”

Rita nodded enthusiastically. “Yup.”

“Was her chaperone faulty...?” She was clutching at straws and she knew it.

“Even if it was, the paramedics confirmed death, as did I, about”—Rita yawned—“seventy-five minutes ago.”

“Don’t try and make me feel guilty, the chief could have sent someone else.” Helen dropped to her haunches beside the body. She reached into her pocket and withdrew a pair of thin latex gloves. Knowing Rita, she’d put her own gloves on before she even entered the room.

“’Fraid the boss insisted on you.”

Helen was halfway through snapping the first glove on and paused to look up. She didn’t ask the question that sprang to mind; likely Rita wouldn’t have a clue why the chief super had insisted on her. She put the second glove on and began to examine the body. She was tentative, but once she confirmed that rigor was setting in she felt more at ease.

“Okay, looks like a single gunshot wound to the chest.” She touched the area around the wound. “Judging by the stippling and powder burns I’m guessing it was at close range.”

“I’d concur.”

Helen continued her examination. The victim was fully dressed—jeans, t-shirt and trainers—so either she was an early riser or she’d come in after a really long night. The t-shirt had a logo, but Helen could barely make anything out; likely the bullet had stopped her heart in moments, but there’d still been enough blood to completely soak the fabric. She saw the word THE, and further along the tail end of another word: BOW.

“You said her name was Trinity?”

“Trinity Brown, yes.”

Helen examined the girl’s face, now only faintly paranoid that the eyes would shift and teeth would snap at her fingers.

“Her mascara’s streaked, as if she’d been crying.” She shrugged. “I guess I’d cry too if someone was about to murder me.”

She placed both hands under the girl’s head and gently lifted it away from the floor, turning it first one way and then the other. “No blunt force trauma to the back of the skull, no other indication of any damage to the head.” Helen laid her head back down tenderly. She glanced up at Rita. “Some internal damage to the brain?”

Rita shrugged. “It’s possible, but it takes a lot of damage to the brainstem to terminate a resurrection. I’m sure there’d be some external sign.”

Helen shivered. She stood up. Her knees cracked, but she almost welcomed it, it took her mind off her throbbing gums for a moment. She began to prowl the small room, talking to Rita as she did so. “No one heard the shot?” She was stood by a narrow single bed. The bedspread was tucked into place, which again suggested Trinity had just got home. Had her killer arrived with her?

“Nobody in the house even heard the chaperone. Seems one of the other residents has a penchant for early morning death metal and a driving ambition to lose his hearing before he’s thirty.”

“Convenient.”

Rita shook her head. “I saw uniforms taking a statement from him earlier. Trust me, he didn’t look like he could dress himself, let alone plan a murder.”

Helen grunted. On the wall beside the bed she noted tell-tale marks where something had been tacked to the wall. There was a miniature junkyard of detritus on the bedside table—coins, rings, tangled chains—and two photos. Still wearing her gloves, Helen picked them up. One showed a middle-aged couple standing in a garden, the other looked like it’d been taken in a club: Trinity with her arms around a young man, cheek to cheek, blowing exaggerated kisses towards the camera.

She put the photos down.

The rest of the room didn’t yield much. Clothes hung from a rail by the window; there was little or no food in the kitchen, but a half-empty bottle of cheap vodka was on the draining board next to an upturned glass. Even as she searched the room she tried to keep the body in the periphery of her vision, just in case.

The only thing of interest in the bathroom was dust, or rather a clear patch in the dust, left by something that had been taken away—a pill bottle?

Back in the living area Trinity still hadn’t risen from the dead, and Rita was stretching her arms above her head and yawning.

“Charming. You off home to bed now?”

Rita looked shocked. “Are you kidding me? I’m going with her. Do you have any idea the last time I performed an autopsy on a body with its head still attached that wasn’t thrashing about? I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

“Loon,” said Helen pulling off her gloves. “By the way, you doing okay?”

Rita’s smile faded for just a moment. “I’m fine, but thank you for remembering.”

Helen felt a twinge of guilt, because it had taken the yellow band around Rita’s left wrist to remind her of the date. She may have left Hong Kong more than twenty years before, but Rita still had family back there. Seven years ago, Chinese security forces had disrupted a protest at the Happy Valley racetrack. They’d killed twenty unarmed protesters, including one of Rita’s cousins. For a short time it had dominated the news, but within two weeks the dead had started to rise and the tragedy had been swallowed up by the greater catastrophe facing the entire world. These days, few remembered the Happy Valley Massacre.

“If you need to talk, just call me,” said Helen. “Right now I’m heading back to meet with the Chief.” Via a chemist for some paracetamol, she added silently. “You’ll give me a shout when you have anything new?”

Rita nodded.

Before she left, something caught Helen’s eye, an incongruous-looking framed motivational print among the posters tacked to the wall. It showed three women: one in surgical scrubs, the next decked out as a barrister, and the third in cap and gown. Below them was the legend: Be Someone!

Helen glanced down at the body one last time, then headed for the door.