Holt catches up with me just as I buzz the mortuary to let me in. He takes a moment to catch his breath, adjusting his jacket and checking his hair is still in place. His phone is welded to his hand as if expecting a call any moment.
‘I’m not staying. Just dropped by for the first few minutes to see what Alex has to say. Got a raid going down tonight. Need to brief the team.’
I get the message. Holt is a DI. He’s constantly juggling more cases than is humanly possible, especially after all the cuts to policing, but he’s got his priorities wrong on this one. Besides, I’ve a bone the size of my femur to pick with him.
‘Sue Warren, Janie’s mother, was on the quay and she was in a right state. She had no idea if it was Janie or not. No one had bothered to tell her.’
Holt can’t ignore the accusation in my voice. Someone should have found Sue Warren long before she got wind it could be her daughter dead on the waterfront.
‘We had the wrong address for her.’
‘That’s not good enough. The poor woman was out of her mind. I had to break it to her that it was her daughter and I got one of the house-to-house team to bring her to the hospital.’
Holt prickles at the subtext – this is your job, not mine, only you’d already cleared off – and goes on the defensive.
‘These things happen and, anyway, DC Trotter met her here and did the formal identification.’
I’m not happy, but I’ve made my point so I move on.
‘So, how’s the interview going with Janie’s boyfriend?’
‘Good.’
He isn’t going to tell me any more. I’m not on the team. Unlike Stride who included CSIs at every stage of the investigation because no one understands a crime scene like a CSI, Holt’s approach is strictly need-to-know and a CSI who hung her colleagues out to dry in court doesn’t.
The door opens. It’s Gary, the assistant mortician. Normally, he greets us with a grin, and a jokey ‘not you lot again’ followed by a quick plug for his latest thrash metal gig, but today all we get is a brief nod as he leads us into the white-tiled postmortem room.
Alex Blandford, the Home Office pathologist, is already there, scrubbed up and bent over Janie Warren’s pale naked corpse, inspecting the red mark around her neck.
Lying on her back, her hair drawn aside, her face no longer lined by life and her body shrunken by drugs, she looks much younger than her nineteen years. A large, slightly wonky track, like a child’s drawing, runs the length of her chest where she’s already been opened up and sewed back together.
Alex greets me with a broad smile. It’s been a while.
‘Hi, Ally. Good to see you. It’s been a long time.’
‘Hello, Alex, how are you? How’s Marjorie and the boys?’
Over the years and over corpses at various stages of decomposition, Alex and I have got to know each other well. Nothing drives you to cling to the normality of your life more than a sudden death. I’ve lived Alex’s sons’ GCSEs, A levels and degrees, his wife Marjorie’s developing skill as a calligrapher and his irrational love for Harriet, his breakdown-prone Triumph Spitfire. In return, he’s lived Megan’s first day at secondary school, dental braces and my disasters on Tinder. It’s kept us sane.
Alex grins.
‘She’s still nagging me to retire and then moaning that I get under her feet if I’m off for more than three days. How’s Megan?’
‘Still fifteen.’
He laughs.
‘Don’t worry. It doesn’t last forever.’
Holt taps his phone against his palm, impatient to move on.
‘So, what have we got, doc?’
‘Yes. Right. We’ve narrowed the time of death to between twelve and two.’
Holt can barely believe his luck and throws me the smuggest of looks.
‘Excellent. That fits with what we’ve got so far. CCTV shows Janie and her boyfriend, Chris Banstead, walking along the quay towards the statue at 11.17 p.m. and then, at 12.28 a.m., you can see the boyfriend running away back towards town.’
As Alex explains how ambient temperatures and body temperature mean it’s entirely possible Janie’s life was extinguished nearer to twelve-thirty than two, I set my camera case on the stainless-steel counter that skirts the room. Flipping the catches, I remove my battered Nikon, click the close-up lens into place and slip the strap over my head.
‘So, what about the cause of death?’ says Holt.
Alex removes his pen from the breast pocket of his green tunic and circles the marks on the neck.
‘It’s as I thought, death by asphyxiation. He used his hands too. See, here – you can even make out the thumb marks on her front of her neck.’
Focusing the camera on her neck, I fire off some shots. Then I stand back and look at Janie’s face. Something’s different about her, but I can’t work out what.
‘Any other injuries?’ I ask.
Alex scans Janie’s corpse, like he might have missed something.
‘No. She had recent sex, but it doesn’t appear to be forced.’
Holt nods.
‘The boyfriend has already admitted to having sex with her under the statue. Apparently Cherish is some kind of fertility symbol. Can’t see it myself.’
For once, we agree. How a serpent coiled around a decapitated woman could possibly represent new life is beyond me.
‘She didn’t try to fight off her attacker, then?’ I ask Alex.
‘How could she if he had her by the neck?’
Alex raises an eyebrow at Holt’s dismissiveness towards me. There’s a rule in criminal investigations. We’ve all dealt with the bizarre and the unfathomable in our time which means no comment or question is too ridiculous to voice.
‘It doesn’t appear so,’ he says. ‘We couldn’t find any defence injuries. Often a victim will claw at their own neck to try to get their attacker off them, but that doesn’t seem to be the case here. We’re still waiting for the toxicology report, but if she was drunk or on drugs that might explain why she didn’t fight back.’
‘I’ll finish the photos and do the nail scrapes.’
‘Sure, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope. They were the cleanest nails I’ve seen in a while. No skin or blood. Not even any dirt.’
I kneel down, eye level with Janie’s body, and fire off a few frames of her hands and enlarge them on my camera’s display.
‘You’re right, her nails are spotless.’ I turn to Holt. ‘Doesn’t that strike you as odd?’
Holt shrugs.
‘Nothing strikes me as odd in this job.’
‘She’d just had sex. The last thing on her mind would be the state of her nails.’
‘Perhaps the sex was less than satisfying.’
I ignore Holt’s facetiousness and my own urge to ask if he’s speaking from personal experience.
‘What if someone else cleaned her nails? After she was killed. Someone who’s forensically aware.’
Holt rolls his eyes.
‘The CCTV on the corner of Argyll Street and Quayside shows the only people on the quay were Janie and Banstead.’
Then I realize what’s bothering me about Janie’s face. It’s been wiped clean of make-up. On the steps beneath Cherish, her eyes had a flick of eyeliner at each corner and her lashes were coated in mascara.
‘Did you or Gary clean her face up when she came in? I’m sure she was wearing make-up on the quay.’
Alex shakes his head.
‘No. Gary might have done although he’d normally wait until you’ve been in. Anyway, we’ve bagged up her clothing for you. Gary’ll let you have it on your way out.’
Holt’s phone buzzes.
‘Thanks, Alex. I need to get going. If anything else crops up, let me know.’
Phone clamped to his ear, Holt steps out of the room. That’s it for him. Job done. Case closed. Onto the next one. It doesn’t matter what I think. He’s the SIO. This is his show.
I unclip the lens from my camera and place it back into its foam compartment.
‘How are things really, Ally?’
I’m about to brush him off with a ‘fine’ but he deserves better. He’s asking because we’ve known each other for years and he cares.
‘Pretty rough for a while now.’
I swallow back the urge to tell Alex how people I’ve worked with – some I thought of as friends – now blank me in the corridor or how when I enter a canteen, others get up and leave or how I’ve even been sent to jobs that don’t exist.
He senses my discomfort and I’m grateful he doesn’t pursue the cause.
‘I saw the news. Seems like DI Stride was playing fast and loose with a few other cases too.’
‘Yes. I heard it wasn’t just Sian Jones’ murder.’
That’s often the way with corruption cases. Once uncovered, they tend to spawn. DI Stride cut his teeth on corruption long before Mainwaring entered the dock.
‘You did the right thing, you know.’
‘Did I? Then how come I’ve been exiled to the back of beyond?’
‘That’s the police service for you. Happy to catch criminals, but not so grateful when it’s one of their own.’ He pauses. ‘I know you, Ally, you’ll be fine.’ I don’t respond and Alex changes the subject. ‘You’re not convinced the boyfriend killed Janie, are you?’
‘That obvious, huh?’ I smile, relieved to be back on safer ground.
‘Well, you never were one to keep your opinions to yourself. Good to see that hasn’t changed.’
I look down at Janie’s face, pale and serene, like the angels Bernadette used to tell me about when I was little, the ones bursting with love and jubilation. But there’s no joy here, just despair.
‘Something doesn’t sit right with me.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I photographed her when her boyfriend beat her up. He lost his rag, but he used his fists. Even when he was completely out of control, he didn’t try to throttle her.’
‘You know, two women a week are murdered by a current or former partner. The killer is most likely to be her boyfriend.’
‘You’re right. Maybe I’m looking for something that isn’t there.’
‘There’s something else you should know. She had a miscarriage, fairly recently.’
‘A miscarriage?’
Yes, of course. I remember now. The last time I saw Janie, all smiles, waving my concerns away. ‘It’s fine now. We’re good. Chris says he was just a bit stressed, we’re even trying for a baby.’
The classic response. A baby will make everything better. Only it doesn’t and I seized my last chance to tell Janie to get out.
‘They never change, Janie. You must leave him. He needs help.’
And then I did something I never do. Not in all the DA cases I’ve attended. I shared my story. It was the only way I was going to persuade this young girl she was in danger.
‘A long time ago, I was with a guy who used to hit me. He always promised to stop, but he never did and the last time he almost killed me. Please don’t go back to this guy.’
His name was Sean and it was my loneliness, that miserable state that tramples all reason, that brought him into our lives. He’d always had a reputation for being a bit handy in a fight, but saved his punches for the pint spillers down the pub. Then, one day, he turned on me and life became a cycle of slaps and sorrys until Megan and I escaped. I told Janie this, but she just gave me a look that said he never really loved you and wasn’t really sorry for what he did, not like her Chris.
And now she’s dead.
This time it’s my phone that buzzes. It’s an automated text from Megan’s school.
‘Oh shit.’
‘What is it?’ asks Alex.
‘Megan didn’t register for class this afternoon.’
Alex smiles and shakes his head at some distant memory, although I don’t remember either of his kids bunking off school.
‘Remember, it doesn’t last forever.’