It was just after nine-thirty as Laura McGanity looked around at the scene in front of her and tried to shake away the nerves. Someone had died, and now it was for her to show that she deserved her sergeant stripes. Nine months in uniform, working in the community, but now she was back where she wanted to be, on the murder squad. And even though this was a tragedy, she felt a familiar excitement as she took in the blue-and-white police tape stretched tight around the trees and the huddle of police in boiler suits holding sticks, ready for the slow crawl through the undergrowth, looking for scraps of evidence – a footprint, a dropped piece of paper, maybe a snag of cloth on the thorns and branches. This was it, the start of the investigation, the human drama yet to unfold.
She had pulled on her paper coveralls, put paper bootees over her shoes, and now her breaths were hot against her cheeks behind the face mask. But Laura knew the excitement wouldn’t last long, because in a moment she would face the lifeless body lying in a small copse of trees behind the new brick of a housing development, just visible as a flash of pink in the green. Then the tragedy would hit her, but for now it was all about concentration, so that she didn’t miss something crucial.
Joe Kinsella came up behind her, poised and still, his face hidden, the hood pulled over his hair. His eyes, soft brown, showed a smile, and then he said in a muffled voice, ‘C’mon, detective sergeant. Let’s see what there is.’
Laura smiled back, invisible behind the mask. The title still felt new, but as Joe set off she realised that the back-patting would have to be put on hold for the moment.
The ground sloped down to a small ribbon of dirty brown water that ran into underground pipes that carried it under the houses. Sycamore and horse chestnut trees filled the scene with shadows. Ivy trailed across the floor like tripwire, but Joe strode quickly through it, crunching it underfoot, in contrast to the soft rustles of Laura’s suit as she trotted to catch up. Laura was grateful that it was dry, or else she imagined she would have found herself skidding towards the small patch of pink by the edge of the stream.
The body had been found by teenagers, looking for somewhere to do whatever they did in the woods, and since then the area had swarmed with police and crime scene investigators, the ghoulish and idly curious hovering on the street. There was a detective posing as a journalist, mingling with those craning their necks to get a view, snapping pictures of the onlookers, in the hope that the killer might be among them, having come back to marvel at his work. That had been Joe’s idea.
As Laura reached the body, she saw that her inspector, Karl Carson, was there. Karl was large and bombastic, shiny bald, no eyebrows, his blue eyes glaring from the forensic hood.
‘Looks like we’ve got another one, McGanity,’ he said, his eyes watching her, waiting for her response.
Laura sighed. That word, another. It made everything harder, because it meant that the murder wasn’t just a family falling out, or maybe a violent boyfriend faking it as a stranger attack.
Laura watched as Joe got closer to the body and kneeled down. She knew that he wasn’t looking for forensic evidence, but for those little signs, hidden clues that reveal motivation. That was Joe’s expertise: not the what, but the why. Laura was still new to the team, but she had worked with him before, and so he had eased her into the murder squad. It was good to be back doing the serious stuff. She had moved north a few years earlier, away from her detective role in the London Met, and had done the rounds of routine case mop-ups and a short spell in uniform to help grease the push for promotion, but this was where she felt most at home.
Laura kneeled down alongside Joe, and as she looked at the body, she saw that Karl Carson was right, that it confirmed everyone’s worst fear, that the murder three weeks earlier wasn’t a one-off. There were two now.
The victim was a young woman, Laura guessed, in her early twenties, more there than the skinny hips and ribs of a teenager but with none of the sag of the later years. There was a tattoo on her left wrist. A pink butterfly. The body had been hidden under bark ripped from a nearby tree, and when it had been disturbed, the kids who found her had been swamped by bluebottles. Laura gritted her teeth at the smell – a mix of vomit and off-meat, and even outdoors, with her nose shielded by a mask, the stench still made it through. As she looked at the floor, she could see the shifting blanket of woodlice and maggots spilling onto the ivy leaves, their work of turning the corpse into just mush and bones interrupted. The body’s stomach was distended by the gases brewing inside, and Laura knew that she didn’t want to be around when it was rolled onto plastic sheeting to be taken from the scene, because whatever was inside the stomach was going to come tumbling out of the mouth.
Laura peered closer to try and see the face, so that she could see more of the person and less of the corpse, but it was dirty and disfigured, and so they wouldn’t get a better idea until the post-mortem clean-up later. Laura tried to be scientific and dispassionate, but she knew that the sight of a healthy young woman who had been mutilated was something that would come back to her in quieter moments.
Laura took a deep breath, more heat through the mask, and tried to take in what she could.
The woman was naked, the clothes taken away, no sign of them torn up and thrown to one side. Just like with the other one. There were bruises on her body, grazes and scrapes that might have come from a struggle, along with small cuts on her stomach and legs, but it wasn’t those that drew her eye. It was her mouth. It was stretched, with soil and leaves jammed in so that it looked like the dead woman had choked on the ground, her cheeks puffed out. There were bruises around the neck, so Laura guessed that it was another strangulation case. Laura looked down at the woman’s hips, and she didn’t need to look too closely in order to see the dirt trails and scratches where soil and leaves had been jammed between her thighs.
It was the tears that made her angry though. The woman’s face was dirty, but there were streaks where her tears had run through the dirt as she choked on the leaves and looked up at the man who ended her life.
‘Is it another one of our own?’ Laura said.
Carson just shrugged that he didn’t know.
The first victim had been the daughter of a Blackley police officer. Gangland revenge had been ruled out, because her father was just uniform, seeing out his career patrolling in a van and doling out advice to young officers who would soon overtake him. Tales of the woman’s private life had made everyone think that it was a jealous ex-lover, or a frightened husband worried about his affair leaking out.
‘What do you think?’ Carson said.
Laura saw that his eyes were fixed on her, and she knew that it was a test. Carson was checking whether Joe had been right to ask for her to be on the team.
She took a deep breath and had another look along the body.
‘She was alive when all of that was jammed in there,’ Laura said, and pointed to the woman’s genitals.
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Those scratches and scrapes along the woman’s legs have drawn blood,’ she said, and pointed towards trails of ragged skin that had since dried brown. ‘They will have been caused when he jammed the leaves and dirt up there, inside her, and so it must have happened when she was still alive. The dead don’t bleed.’
Carson gave a nod. ‘Why is that important?’
‘It makes it more likely that she was killed here rather than just dumped,’ she said. ‘And we might get some of his DNA from her thighs or face.’
‘Provided he wasn’t wearing gloves.’
Laura raised her eyebrows. ‘That goes without saying.’
Carson nodded. ‘What about the clothes?’ he said. ‘She didn’t walk down here naked.’
‘He’s got some forensic awareness, because he realised that his DNA would be all over her,’ Laura said. ‘He took the clothes away to stop him from being identified, which makes it more likely that he wore gloves, as a precaution. And he’s cool.’
‘What do you mean?’ Carson asked.
‘Look around,’ Laura said, and she pointed towards the houses that overlooked the scene. ‘All it would take is for someone to look out of their bedroom window, or even hear the struggle, and we would be down here. An eye-witness is the best we can hope for right now, unless he’s slipped up.’
‘Anything else?’
Laura looked at the body, and as she felt Carson’s stare bore into her, she tried to think of something she might have missed. Or maybe he was just trying to make her spout wild theories to use against her later. She wasn’t the only woman on the team, but she still felt like she had to prove herself for spoiling the macho party, and she’d heard the little digs that she was Joe’s new favourite.
Then it struck her.
‘If she was alive when he was filling her with soil, it meant that she wasn’t being raped when she died,’ Laura said. ‘If all of that was in there, he couldn’t have been, and so whatever he did afterwards was just to degrade her.’
Carson tilted his head and Laura saw the skin around his eyes crinkle. It looked like there was a smile there. Test passed.
Laura looked at Joe and saw that he was still staring intently at the corpse.
‘What is it, Joe?’ Carson asked.
Joe didn’t respond at first. That was just his way, quiet, contemplative, but then he rose to his feet, his knees cracking, and looked down.
‘This isn’t going to end,’ he said, his voice quiet.
‘Why do you say that?’ Laura said.
‘Because he has attacked before, and once you start, you don’t stop,’ he said.
‘We know he’s done this before,’ Carson said, his brow furrowed. ‘Three weeks ago.’
‘No, even before then,’ Joe said, and gestured towards the body with a nod of his head. ‘The signature is so fixed. The debris and soil in the vagina, the mouth, the anus. Too much like the last one. But why does he do it? No one just chances on that, the perfect method. Signatures grow and develop. This one? It’s a replica of the first.’
Carson sighed behind his mask. ‘This is sounding like a long haul,’ he said, almost to himself.
Joe shot worried glances at Laura and Carson. ‘We haven’t got the time for that,’ he said. ‘We need to catch him quickly, because the gap will shorten.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
Joe nodded. ‘These murders are three weeks apart, but identical methods were used. He’s found his style and likes it.’
‘Why is all that dirt in there?’ Laura asked.
Joe looked down at the body, then he looked at Carson, and then at Laura.
‘I don’t know,’ he said slowly. ‘And we will need to work that out if we are going to catch whoever did this, but I do know one thing: he’s going to want to do it again.’