‘A woman is dead! She was thirty-four years old! Wake up to that fact, will you? Someone drove over her and left her to die! Get off your arses and find something. Do something! Talk to her family again. Talk to her friends again. Get her regulars’ names! Talk to the people who live in those flats. She had leather boots on, a red mini skirt on that showed her arse, her tits virtually hanging out. Someone must have seen her. She was not fucking invisible.’
The two dozen officers in the room lifted their heads in surprise, the sandwiches and rolls, the coffees and canned drinks in their hands, frozen in mid-air. Their senior investigating officer was angry, and it was rare for them to see him this way.
Greg rarely swore at the officers – there was not often a need to – but this investigation was going nowhere six days on, and he had a horrible feeling that they were slacking because Lillian Armstrong was a prostitute and they felt she didn’t merit their full effort.
Peter Spencer had slipped into the room and was making his way to an empty chair. Greg turned on him as well. ‘Bit late, aren’t you? We’re just finished and unless you’ve got something concrete to contribute there’s no point in joining us at all.’
Peter Spencer tapped a finger on a hard-backed envelope. He wasn’t the sort of man to play games, and nor was he interested in scoring points. ‘She wasn’t run over in the parking space where she was found. She was moved into it after she was run over.’
‘We know this, Peter,’ Greg said, interrupting the forensic officer. ‘So, she walked, crawled or was dumped into it?’
‘No. Because of what else we found, or rather what we didn’t, we have a bit of an anomaly,’ Peter Spencer stated.
Everyone in the room was now alert and sitting up straight. They all wanted to know what the senior forensic officer was driving at.
‘Here’s the thing: we know the cars either side of her were parked there all day. The tyre mark on her jacket has left a good imprint. Yet there is no other impression of that tyre mark leading up to her or driving away from her. It just sits on her chest as if it were painted on. The second thing: there’s no blood elsewhere. Her hand was bleeding heavily, so if she was dragged there, there would be a blood trail, but the only blood found is around the body, and because of that and no tyre mark leading up to her, we have to consider that she was knocked down elsewhere and then dumped into that space.’
He had Greg’s attention. ‘What if a motorbike drove over her? In that space, I mean?’
‘But where’s the tyre marks, Greg? Like I keep saying, there are none leading up to or away from the body. She might not have been knocked down in that car park.’
‘Alex Taylor’s tyres should be checked to see if they match the impression found,’ Laura Best suddenly said from her end of the table.
Greg felt his throat tighten.
‘You think she drove over Lillian Armstrong?’ he made himself ask.
She shrugged innocently. ‘Could be, guv. She might have moved her into that space after knocking her down, in order to confuse us. When we looked at her car that day she’d had it cleaned. She might have run the woman over, realised she’d left evidence and had her car cleaned.’
‘You’d need nerves of steel,’ Peter Spencer commented drily.
‘She’d know about blood and evidence being left,’ Laura pressed on. ‘She’s a doctor and probably knows more about forensics than any of us lot. It would be simple just to check if the tyres on her Mini match the impression found on Lillian Armstrong.’
‘Lillian Armstrong weighed 173 pounds,’ Greg said in a voice that managed to convey amazement, and scepticism at the same time. ‘Dr Taylor is not Superwoman. You expect us to believe she drove over the woman, then carried her or dragged her into her own parking space. And then what? Pops off to get her car cleaned?’
‘Yes,’ Laura said confidently. ‘And moving a body for a doctor or a nurse wouldn’t be difficult. They do it all the time using sheets to drag and roll.’
Greg stood up, gathering his thoughts. ‘But how could she risk the woman being found in the meantime? Unless you’re suggesting she hid her in her boot while she got the car cleaned. But if that’s the case the woman would have died. She’d be dead already when the ambulance got there and there’d be no blood splatter up the wall.’
‘All I’m saying is she could have done it. Knocked her down. Wrapped her. Moved her. Taken the wrapping away. The woman then bleeds more and she dies. That leaves Taylor with decisions to make. Leave the body while she gets her car cleaned or else take it with her. But my money’s on her leaving the body. Maybe she even wanted it found by somebody else, taking her out of the picture. But as it happens, she arrives back and it’s still there, so she has to play out her little charade.’
‘And what about time of death?’ Peter Spencer butted in. ‘When the ambulance arrived she’d just died.’
‘That’s because Dr Taylor said she’d just died!’ Laura said excitedly. ‘She’s a doctor. They’re going to accept her stated time of death.’
‘But as you say, Dr Taylor had blood all over her. She would have been seen!’ Greg objected.
‘Not necessarily. It’s dark by four. A lot of these car washes are self-service now. You wind down a window, put your money in the slot and drive through. No one need have seen her. Then she comes back and sees an ambulance, so she drives away again or she comes back and finds the woman dead as she left her and she can still carry out her little charade of calling for help.’
Laura was indeed impressive, and Greg felt helpless as she made one argument after the other.
‘So why tell us about the tyre mark on the woman’s chest? It doesn’t add up.’
‘She had to tell us. She knew we’d find it. This story is a lot more believable than any of her stories,’ Laura answered back. ‘Abduction—’
‘I’m confused here,’ Peter Spencer cut in. ‘Why do you think the doctor’s involved in the first place?’
Greg answered for Laura: ‘DC Best has a theory that Dr Taylor is suffering from some form of Munchausen’s. Creating scenarios to gain attention.’
‘It’s been done before,’ Laura argued. ‘Back in October, I met Dr Taylor for the first time. She said she had been abducted, taken to a theatre in the hospital and threatened with surgery or rape and then miraculously her colleagues found her in the hospital car park and brought her into A & E. Unharmed, except for a small bump on her head. No sign of a rape or surgery. We were sceptical to say the least. A couple of weeks later Greg gets called into A & E because she says a patient who just died on her was murdered.’
‘Who was that?’ Peter asked.
‘The missing nurse, Amy Abbott,’ Greg answered. ‘She was brought in by ambulance haemorrhaging, died shortly afterwards. The pathologist said it was a self-induced abortion.’