‘I’m not sure what you want—’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t be too much for my team to handle,’ she said, wading through the slow-moving stream. The water reached above her ankles. No threat to the leather biker boots but the bottoms of her black canvas jeans were sodden. She didn’t mind. Water dried.
‘It’s not that, Inspector. I’m just not sure what you’re hoping to…’
His words trailed away as they rose out of the brook on the other side and discovered the source of the insect activity.
A fully clothed woman with a smashed-in face stared, unseeing, up to the blue sky.
A hundred flies hovered above the blood-covered face.
‘Can you tell us what you hope to learn from this one, Professor?’ Kim asked as her team finally caught up with them.
The professor’s face had drained of all colour while his eyes remained fixed on the body.
There was a long pause before he finally answered. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but I can’t tell you a thing because this body is not one of ours.’
Five
‘Kev, go find me anything to help us cordon off this area. Stace, go back to the Portakabin and look at the footage to see if there’s anything at all that helps us.’
The professor shook his head, slowly, his eyes still fixed on the body. ‘The CCTV doesn’t cover…’
‘We’ll see,’ she said, nodding towards her team. They turned and headed up the hill. For her, the shock of the discovery had worn off and now it was time to get busy. The professor still appeared to be reeling.
Thoughts of the cases on her desk faded from her mind. The victims in every one of them were still alive, injured but still breathing.
From the corner of her eye she could see that the two figures in the distance were moving towards them.
‘Bryant, keep them away. I don’t care what they’re consulting on. This one’s not for public view.’
‘On it, guv.’
Her phone was still in her hand. Her first call had been to Keats, who was despatching a forensic team immediately. She had moved everyone to the other side of the brook where they would remain until that team arrived.
‘Detective Inspector, is there anything I can do?’ Professor Wright finally asked from the other side of the water. As he wasn’t forensically trained any observations would need to be made from outside the immediate area.
Kim shook her head although she noted that the colour was slowly returning to his washed-out complexion.
She scrolled through her list of contacts and pressed to call. Woody answered on the second ring.
‘Sir, we have a body,’ she stated without preamble. Greetings and salutations were not normally high on her priority list, but in a case like this they were non-existent.
She heard the smile in his voice as he responded, ‘Oh, Stone, your humour…’
‘No, it’s a live one.’
Kim heard the paradox of her statement but he’d know what she meant.
She continued. ‘Female, difficult to age as her face has been badly beaten. Fully clothed and she hasn’t been here long.’
‘Okay, stay with it. I’ll draft a holding statement for the press. Have you called Keats?’
She kept her irritation in check. Of course Keats had been her first call. The pathologist was bringing a forensic team to analyse the scene and offer her clues to help find the person responsible. Woody was drafting a press release. Priorities.
‘Yes, sir,’ she responded. ‘First call.’
Maybe she hadn’t been able to tame every bit of irritation.
His voice was curt. ‘Full briefing later.’
He ended the call, and Kim shrugged and put the phone in her back pocket.
She turned to the professor, whose complexion was now approaching a normal hue.
‘Any idea how long she’s been here?’
He coughed and met Kim’s gaze. ‘We know that warm-weather bodies attract blowflies by the hundreds in a matter of minutes. On a day like today it would only take a few hours for the nose, mouth and eyes to be filled with fly eggs.’
The previous day had been warm but she couldn’t see any evidence of the grainy yellowish eggs as yet, indicating the body had been left sometime during the night.
The professor continued. ‘We’ve had thousands of pregnant females swarming around a body shortly after its arrival and, as you know, one female can lay hundreds of eggs at a time.’ He paused. ‘It’s interesting that the flies are targeting only her face.’
‘How so?’ she asked, glancing across to Bryant in the distance talking animatedly with the other visitors. He was taking his time, no doubt advising them to keep away.
Kim’s attention returned to the professor, who was still talking.
‘… indicate there’s no other wound. If they smell blood that would be their target location.’
Give the man a prize, Kim thought. Already she could estimate that the body had been dumped during the night and there was unlikely to be any other wound on it. At this rate she could give Keats the day off.
‘Oh, thanks for joining us, Bryant,’ Kim said as her colleague returned. ‘I told you to warn them off, not take them for a meal.’
He stopped short of the stream and spoke to the professor. ‘Lack of coffee makes her snarky.’
Kim shot him a look.
‘Cavalry’s here,’ Bryant said, glancing up the hill.
Keats, the diminutive pathologist, charged towards them. He paused at the stream before wading through. A group of forensic scene investigators flanked him. West Midlands Police had a team of more than a hundred civilian technicians who would photograph, sketch and collect all evidence before the pathologist was able to remove the body.
Suddenly Keats stopped dead, raising his hand above his eyes before waving at someone in the distance.
The pause was brief and he landed beside her within seconds.
A smile lifted his pointy beard. ‘Oh, Inspector, only you could find a body here.’
‘Keats, how about you just—’
‘Does she know?’ Keats asked Bryant.
She caught her colleague’s quick shake of the head.
‘Know what?’ she asked.
‘Oh, excellent,’ he said, smiling. ‘Now, let me see our victim.’
Kim looked to her colleague for clarification.
‘Bryant…?’
He held up his hands. ‘I’m gonna go find coffee. You’re going to need it.’
She had the sudden feeling that everyone had been told a joke and she was the only one not to get it. She couldn’t help thinking it had something to do with the two consultants now standing in the middle of the field.
She shrugged and then turned to the professor. ‘I need to ask you to leave the area.’
‘I understand. It’s a crime scene. I’ll go and check on my other visitors.’
Kim took the protective footwear being offered to her.
‘So, Detective Inspector—’
‘Keats, don’t even start with me today. This was supposed to be a reward,’ she said, snapping on blue gloves.
They often bickered at a crime scene. He called it banter. She called it a pain in the arse. Last year, Keats had lost his wife suddenly after thirty-five years of marriage. The loss had hit him harder than he’d allowed anyone to see. But she had known. And so she let him have his fun. Now and again.
The technicians worked around her and she blocked out the surrounding chatter. For a moment Kim was as still as the body. Everything faded away as she focussed her senses on the woman before her. The only thing that mattered was the clues she still held. Anything other than the victim disappeared from her mind as she allowed her gaze to start at the partly exposed feet.
The woman’s toes peeked from gladiator sandals with two strap fastenings above each ankle. Only one of the straps of each sandal was tied.