Two one-inch red lines stretched across the back of her lower thighs.
Kim took out her phone and clicked a couple of photos.
‘I need to check her stomach.’
Doctor Singh placed Jane onto her back and lifted the sheet up to her midriff before raising her nightgown.
The line stretched just above her belly button. Kim snapped a couple more photos.
She reached for the sheet to cover Jane back up and then paused. A tiny red cut to the skin of the lower leg caught her attention. She moved around the bed, taking photos of the woman’s legs from the knee down.
‘Significant?’ Doctor Singh asked.
Kim smiled. ‘Now it’s my turn to say I don’t know.’
He acknowledged her answer. ‘Is that all?’ he asked.
‘May I just have a minute more?’
‘Of course,’ he answered before turning away.
He drew back the curtain and stepped towards the patient opposite.
Kim put the phone back into her pocket and placed her hand back onto Jane’s wrist. ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, but I want to catch the person who did this to you.’
Once more Kim felt the scar tissue beneath her touch.
This woman had suffered in the past, and now she was suffering again.
‘I promise you will not be a Jane for long.’
Twenty-Six
Jane could feel a soft pressure on her hand. She wasn’t sure if she was in some kind of dream.
Sometimes there were voices and sometimes not. Sometimes there was a soft bleeping sound that was swallowed only when the darkness came again.
In her stomach there was fear. It began in her belly button and worked its way out.
The blackness around her kept moving, rearranging itself then snatching and stealing her thoughts.
There was pain echoing around her body. She didn’t know from where but the blackness took it away. The darkness consumed it along with her and then spat her back out.
At times she was at one with the darkness
She wondered if this was death and if so how she had got here. Was it possible to feel pain in death? And if she was dead was this her eternal state?
Any further thought or realisation was taken away by the dark.
She wanted to open her eyes but the blackness took her before she could.
If she was alive she knew she was in hospital. She knew that someone was holding her hand.
She tried to open her eyes.
She knew she had something to say.
The panic rose up to her throat before the blackness took her again.
Twenty-Seven
Instead of heading back out to Bryant’s car, Kim went straight to the morgue.
Keats was sitting at his desk, head bent in studious concentration.
‘Ahem…’ she said.
‘I know you’re there, Inspector. It’s a stomp I would recognise anywhere, but I’m hoping if I ignore you, you’ll go away,’ he droned without raising his head.
‘Yeah, you and most people I’ve ever met, but I need your help.’
He looked up and narrowed his eyes suspiciously. ‘Are you mauling me, Inspector?’
She stifled the smile that played at her lips. He knew her too well.
Blowing smoke up the behind of the pathologist was not worth her time. She knew from other people’s experience that it didn’t work. He would either help her or not.
‘Three years ago a male was found at Fens Pools,’ she said.
‘You’ll need to be a bit more specific than that.’
‘His fingers had been cut off.’
‘Aaah, yes, I remember it. I didn’t do the post-mortem, but I recall the case. Still unidentified?’
Kim nodded and sat down. ‘I have the reports, but I could do with a bit of expert translation.’
He tipped his head. ‘Only if you stop being so damned pleasant to me. It’s a little bit frightening without Bryant to protect me.’
This time the smile escaped. ‘Okay.’
He looked above her head and then began tapping away at his keyboard. ‘I have five minutes until my next customer arrives, so make it quick.’
Kim recalled the post-mortem report she had pored over at home and recalled the one thing that had struck her as curious.
‘The only wound visible was a knife mark above the left chest, two – maybe two and a half – inches long, possibly a stab wound?’
He glanced back at the screen. ‘Well if it was a stab wound, it wasn’t deep. The cause of death was definitely drowning.’
‘The fingers were removed after death, is that right?’ she asked.
Keats nodded and continued to read.
There had been no pain or torture inflicted by the killer to prolong the agony. The removal of the digits had been purely functional.
‘What can you tell me about him, Keats?’ she asked.
‘Shush,’ he said and continued to read for a couple of minutes. ‘In layman’s terms, his age was estimated at mid to late fifties. He wasn’t a heavy drinker but was definitely a heavy smoker. He ate too many fatty foods and didn’t take enough exercise. No obvious broken bones, tattoos or other distinguishing characteristics.’
Pretty average then, Kim thought. Except that every finger had been severed from his hand. Yeah, there was no escaping that particular fact.
Kim sighed. She had not learned much at all.
She stood. ‘Thanks, anyway, Keats. I’ll—’
‘Not so fast, Inspector. Just take a quick look at this.’
She stepped around to his side of the desk. The image on the screen had been zoomed, and she wasn’t sure what it was she was looking at.
She tipped her head sideways. ‘Is that the chest wound?’
Keats nodded. ‘And there’s something there that looks a little odd.’
Her ears pricked up. Odd was good.
As she stared she began to see what he meant. She’d attended enough crime scenes to know how knife wounds normally looked on the skin. Regardless of the type of knife used the cut was consistent and clean. Close up, this one appeared lumpy and uneven, as though the knife had been dragged across the skin.
‘It looks more like a cut than a stab,’ Kim observed.
Keats nodded. ‘And I think I know why.’
He zoomed in one more time. ‘I think he was cutting scar tissue.’
‘You think he was opening an old wound?’ Kim asked, as thoughts began to form in her mind.
‘Or taking something out…’
They looked at each other as the realisation hit them both.
‘Pacemaker,’ they said simultaneously.
Twenty-Eight
‘How is she?’ Bryant asked as she reached the car.
‘Unresponsive right now and the doctors aren’t really committing to anything in terms of her recovery.’ Kim paused. ‘Head towards Brierley Hill,’ she said as she processed everything she’d learned in the last hour.
‘She has the same marks on her back and thighs as Jemima,’ she continued.
Bryant shook his head as he drove. ‘Never seen anything like that. It doesn’t make sense.’
Kim agreed. They already knew that the restraint was a handcuff to the wrist, so what could those straight lines mean?
‘There’s something else,’ she said as he crossed a set of traffic lights. ‘Her legs are covered in little nicks and cuts.’
‘Well, that makes sense. She was pulled over a gravel path and up a hill to the dump site.’
‘She would have been pulled around on her back, like Jemima. These marks are on the front of her legs, just like Jemima. It’s like a shaving rash.’
Bryant rubbed at his chin. ‘Yeah, I get it sometimes.’
Kim pondered. ‘Why only sometimes?’
‘If I want a closer shave I’ll go against the grain. Gets a cleaner look but irritates the skin more.’
So now she had both girls scrubbing the polish from their nails and giving their legs a close shave. Who the hell did they think they were meeting?
‘Hang on, turn right here,’ Kim instructed as they passed through Brierley Hill.
She continued to direct him until they arrived at a warden’s office at the junction of Pensnett Road and Bryce Road.
‘Ummm… guv…’ Bryant said.
‘Are you coming?’
He followed her past the warden’s office to Fens Pools.