‘Preservation of life was my priority,’ he says, in a way that must make his mum really proud. ‘I had to check for a pulse, I’m afraid. The witness was a bit .?.?.’ He makes a drinking gesture with his right hand. ‘Well, she wasn’t sure she was actually dead.’
Vickery shoots a deadpan glance towards a young girl perched on the back of an ambulance wearing stripper heels and an emergency foil blanket, and then looks back at our unmistakably dead body. I want to point out that there’s a whole world of difference between being politely informed of a body over the telephone and literally stumbling over one when you’re brain-fried from Jagerbombs and panicking about train times, but I keep my own counsel.
Steele flicks her head towards the ambulance. ‘Have a word afterwards, Kinsella. You’re more her age. You might get more out of her.’
I nod and we step into the forensic tent. Vickery leads the way.
Outside it’s about as pitch-black as London ever gets but inside, with the all the LED lights and flashing cameras, the full Technicolor horror of this woman’s last hours takes centre-stage. I hesitate to look down for a few seconds, silently counting one, two, three, in small sharp breaths before I clock Steele looking at me – irritated or concerned, I’m not sure. It’s usually a blend of both. On the count of four I give in to the inevitable and lower my gaze to see something you couldn’t really call a face anymore, more a tawdry Halloween mask – blood blanketing the head, hair completely matted, apart from a few blonde tufts that seem to have survived the flood, throat scored with long thin slashes as if someone was sharpening a knife. I crouch down and closer to the body I smell something. A fruity, floral perfume that must have been sprayed in the not-too-distant past, and a whiff of something like fabric softener on a well-cared-for coat.
Scents of a recent life.
More depressing to me than the acrid stench of death.
My stomach revolts and I stand up quickly. Too quickly. I try to cover myself by pretending to offer Parnell my slightly better vantage point but Steele sees through me. I’m not usually that deferent.
She slips her mask down. ‘You OK?’
Define OK. I haven’t cried, vomited or momentarily passed out, which is more than can be said for what happened at Bedsit-gate but OK? Far from it.
A stint with the Bean Counters flashes before me.
‘I’m fine, Boss.’ I even manage a small smile, hope that it reaches my eyes.
‘Do we have an ID?’ asks Parnell, cocking his head this way and that, trying to make sense of her face.
‘No, but there’s a receipt in a pocket so we’ve got that photographed and sent over. Renée’s onto MISPER already but frankly they’re going to need a bit more than “female” and “blonde” to go on.’ Steele wafts a hand in front of her face. ‘And with all the blood, it’s hard to give them anything approaching a precise age at the mo. Hands look young-ish but then so do mine I’m told, and I’m no spring chicken.’
‘She might not be a missing person as far as anyone’s concerned,’ says Vickery, peering closely at the woman’s neck. ‘She hasn’t been dead that long.’
I swallow hard, will my voice to come out normal. ‘So how long do you reckon, Mo?’
We’re not exactly on ‘Mo’ terms but it’s got the right air of casual.
Vickery cranes round, addresses Steele, ignores me. ‘What I reckon is that she certainly wasn’t killed here. There isn’t enough blood to suggest an attack took place here and the faint lividity is patchy which confirms she’s definitely been moved. Unfortunately, what this also means is that without knowing the conditions of the primary crime scene, it’s very hard for me to estimate exact time of death.’
‘Educated guess?’ says Parnell.
Vickery lets out a well-practised sigh then gently prods the woman’s jaw as we all peer closer. ‘As you can see, rigor is in its very early stages. There’s a little stiffening around the facial muscles that would suggest two to three hours perhaps, but it all depends on whether she’s been outside from the get-go or whether she was kept indoors for a while and then dumped. Rectal temperature is thirty-four degrees, but again this doesn’t tell me anything definitive unless I know where she’s been. Stomach contents should narrow it down a bit. And lividity is still quite faint which suggests we’re looking at less than four to five hours.’
‘Cause of death?’ says Steele, sarcastically hopeful.
Vickery gives a wry smile. I’m not sure she’s capable of any other type. Every facial expression seems to be undercut with either contempt or bemusement.
‘Take your pick. We have a nasty wound to the front of the head. Possible petechial haemorrhaging which might explain the circular contusion around the neck, but I won’t be able to get a proper look until we clean up the slashes to her throat – which incidentally, I don’t believe will be the cause of death. They’re nasty but a bit too shallow. No way they’ve gone through to the larynx.’
‘Hesitation marks?’ I suggest. ‘Someone trying to pluck up the courage?’
A begrudging nod. ‘Possibly. Or could be old-fashioned torture.’
‘Possibly’ and ‘could’. The watchwords of every crime scene.
Steele sighs. ‘I’ll take a guess on cause of death for now, Mo. Educated or wild-as-you-like.’
‘As you wish, but I won’t be held to anything.’
As if we’d dare. Even Steele treads carefully around Mo Vickery, which is pretty telling given that, rumour has it, Steele once told a Deputy Assistant Commissioner to ‘take a chill pill’.
Vickery steps outside the tent and Parnell and Steele swiftly follow, instantly gulping in the Arctic air. Something keeps me rooted though and for what seems like a moment but can only be a few heartbeats, it’s just me and her – this blood-drenched everywoman in her sensible winter coat and low-heeled Chelsea boots.
I move when the tone of Steele’s cough reminds me Vickery’s patience isn’t so much thin as emaciated.
‘My guess would be she was strangled,’ Vickery’s saying as I join them. ‘Struck on the head with a blunt instrument, then strangled while subdued. I say subdued because people fight like hell when they’re being strangled and there doesn’t appear to be any obvious defensive wounds. Also’ – she hinges forward at the hips, a yoga pose I recognise for stretching out the spine – ‘this girl has long nails so I’d expect to see marks on her palms if she was conscious at the point of death. Clenching is very common during strangulation.’
‘She could have been tied up, drugged?’ offers Parnell.
Vickery hinges up, loses her balance slightly. We pretend not to notice. ‘Drugged, possibly. Tied up, unlikely. There’s no obvious marks to the wrists but I’ll know more once I get her on the table.’
The thought of taking her to the morgue seems to deflate Parnell, as if keeping her here under the pre-dawn stars and the promise of a new day makes her somehow less dead. Similarly deflated, and conscious we’ll soon have an audience – a few bathroom lights are already flickering along the west of the square – I go to speak to the witness.
Close up she’s even younger and twice as pissed.
A paramedic with a slight overbite intercepts me. ‘Tamsin Black, nineteen. We’re not getting much sense, I’m afraid. Think she might have imbibed a bit more than just booze, if you catch my drift.’
I like the way he says ‘imbibed’, like a Jacobean aristocrat, so I give him a warm smile that just about stays within the boundaries of ‘crime scene appropriate’. ‘When will I be able to talk to her?’
‘You can try now, love, but I wouldn’t bother. She’s puking more than talking.’
On cue she wretches, a futile little jerk that produces little but amber-coloured bile.
I glance at the paramedic’s name badge. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, Phil, but I’m impressed she had the wherewithal to phone it in, in that state.’
Phil looks nervous, rubs his overbite. ‘Looks like she had the wherewithal to post it on Facebook too. I saw it flash up on her phone. Sorry.’