‘Got a charger for this?’
Jaap shows him the bagged phone he picked up at Heleen’s rental. Max takes a look.
‘Ancient. Luckily so’s mine.’
He rifles through his kit bag, pulls out a lead and hands it over. Jaap hooks it up and plugs it in. The phone buzzes with pleasure as current surges through its innards.
‘Also this, can you get it to the mainland lab and DNA’d?’
‘Oh man, a pube?’
He takes it anyway.
‘Ready?’ he says after he’s catalogued it.
They’re in a small room at the back of the building, the air clinically cold and the lighting even worse. On a table lies Heleen’s body, and all three step up to it.
Max leans forward, gloved fingers exploring Heleen’s head like scuttling albino spiders.
The spiders find the edge of the tape and start unwrapping it. Max has to lift her head gently to assist them. The tape unspools, a soft noise just audible above the quiet hum of refrigeration, the lowest layer pulling the skin up before finally parting from it. Once it’s all off Jaap steps closer and looks at her face.
The skin that was under the tape, across her nose and mouth, is wrinkled, like she’s spent too long in water, and it makes her look freakishly old. Or like one of those acid-attack victims who sometimes pop up on the news.
‘Nowhere for the perspiration to go,’ Max says, dropping the dangling tape into a waiting evidence bag.
Then Max goes in for the tube, which is still in Heleen’s mouth. He works it loose, knocking it against one of her teeth on the way out, and holds it up for Jaap to see. It’s about fifteen centimetres long and made of white plastic.
Max inspects it. ‘Hey, I was right. It’s a one-way valve, hospitals use them all the time.’
‘What for?’ Arno asks.
Jaap wonders if he’s doing it just to prove he’s OK, because frankly his voice sounds a little shaky.
‘Anytime you want the patient to breathe into something you can use one of these. Air goes through but won’t come back out, means infections don’t spread.’
‘So whoever did this has a medical connection, or can you just buy these things?’ Jaap asks, peering at it, trying to make sense of the whole thing.
‘You can get anything on the internet, I’m sure you can buy these too. Wanna try?’
Max puts down the valve, switches gloves, and then rummages around in his bag. He tosses a small pack right over Heleen’s body. Jaap catches it. It’s an identical-looking valve in a sterile wrapper.
‘Go on, it’s a blast,’ Max says.
Jaap rips it open and inspects it. Then he puts it in his mouth and tries to breathe. Like Max says, breathing out is fine, but in is another matter. If he really tries he can suck a small amount of air in. He stops, his head already spinning.
‘So you can get a little bit through, but it’s not enough to keep you alive indefinitely. And if she’d been running, well, that would simply have jacked her need for oxygen up even higher.’
‘How long from insertion?’
‘You’d have to get someone to run some tests, but I’m guessing it’ll have been hard to survive with one of those strapped across your mouth for more than ten minutes or so.’
Ten minutes. Not long at all in the greater scheme of things.
But a hell of a long time to know you’re going to die.
‘So what did you want to show me?’ Jaap says, putting the valve down, suddenly not wanting it anywhere near him.
‘Yeah, there is something. But first the other stuff. Her wrists had been tied.’ He picks up an arm to show a thin line of bruising. ‘The usual plastic tie, given the diameter of the marks, so no useful bits of fibre to help you.’
Jaap nods. Whilst it’s important to get these details, in his experience they are often overrated; the main way to find a killer is to find out why, not the minutiae of how. The whole CSI thing? thinks Jaap. Way overrated.
‘Also, there’s no sign of recent sexual activity.’
‘Anything else before you tell me about whatever got you all worked up?’ Jaap asks, knowing that none of this was really why Max had called him.
‘Man, you’re impatient, anyone ever tell you that?’
‘It’s been mentioned before. Just get on with it.’
‘I noticed this last night, it was hard to tell under torchlight but I had a look just before you got here and …’
He eases up the victim’s pink T-shirt, the waving kitten bunching up until it’s unrecognizable.
The whole room sucks in a breath.
Jaap’s finding he can’t breathe now. He stares at the exposed midriff.
Lines run across her belly, a criss-cross of old scars and one fresher cut. He tries to count but keeps losing track. There are so many.
For a moment he feels like reaching out and running his finger over the scars, like it’s a kind of Braille which will reveal what he wants to know.
‘I’ve seen this before,’ Max says. ‘Self-mutilation. There are whole forums on the internet for people who do this, they even post photos to egg each other on.’
Liquid suddenly gushes against a hard surface in the corner of the room.
‘I’m not clearing that up,’ Max says, eyes flicking over to where Arno’s bent double, still heaving.