“Nice to meet you,” said Kerry, but Gemma could sense her irritation with the niceties. “I understand you’ve found some irregularities with our unexplained death,” Kerry went on.
“You could say that,” Kate answered. “Let’s take a look.” She slipped on her headset and a pair of gloves while they stepped right up to the glass. “I wanted you to see what I found on my external exam before I opened her up.” Her voice was amplified now, as if she was in the room with them, and she gave Gemma a little sideways smile. No doubt she remembered occasions when Gemma had been a little squeamish.
When Kate lifted the sheet from the form on the nearest table, Gemma recognized the face she’d seen in photographs. She thought she’d been prepared for that, but still it shocked her to see the resemblance to the woman she’d met yesterday, Reagan Keating’s mother, Gwen. It made Reagan, as the living, breathing person she had been, seem suddenly very real.
“My guess is that your young woman suffocated,” Kate went on. “First, she has classic petechiae.” She pulled back an eyelid with her gloved finger, but Gemma couldn’t actually make out the tiny red dots in the eye caused by bleeding of the capillaries.
“You’re sure she wasn’t strangled?” asked Boatman.
“There are no marks on her throat. Of course it’s possible that something may show up on the internal exam, but I’m inclined to doubt it.” Kate glanced up at them. “There were trace fibers in her nose—fibers that match the skirt of her dress.”
Gemma thought about it. “Couldn’t she have wiped her nose with her skirt?”
“Hard enough to cut the inside of her lip with her tooth, and to leave bruising in the tissue on the inside of her mouth?” Kate shook her head. “I don’t think so. There was another fiber caught on the edge of the same tooth, and there was a tiny spot of blood on the hem of her skirt.”
“So you’re thinking that someone held her own skirt over her nose and mouth? Any signs of a struggle?”
“There was a bit of grass under her fingernails, but no foreign tissue or fiber. There are other scenarios that might account for the cut and bruising in her mouth and the fibers in her nose. But that’s not all I found. Look at this.”
Kate folded back the sheet and pointed to faint purple marks on Reagan Keating’s bare left shoulder. “Bruising. There’s more on her right thigh.”
Gemma tried to visualize the scene. “So you’re suggesting someone knelt on top of her, holding her down while they smothered her with her own skirt?”
“Someone right-handed,” Boatman put in thoughtfully. “Using their right knee and left hand to keep her down. But wouldn’t that take a great deal of strength?”
“That would depend on a good many other factors.”
“Including the girl’s physical condition.” Boatman frowned. “You said her blood alcohol was high. So she was drinking.”
“That’s an assumption. But, yes, according to the initial tests, I’d definitely say she would have been impaired. And of course we won’t know about drugs until the tox screen comes back.”
“Was she sexually assaulted?” asked Gemma.
“No. Although there were signs of fairly recent intercourse, but not immediately before she died.”
“Still,” mused Gemma, “she might have had an argument with a boyfriend.” She was thinking of the blue-eyed blond in the photos on Reagan’s corkboard.
Kate shrugged. “It’s possible. But I can tell you that argument or no, whoever smothered her straightened her clothing and composed her body afterwards. She didn’t lay herself out like a sleeping princess.”
Kincaid stood on his own doorstep, the sound of the taxi’s tires fading away in Ladbroke Road. This little part of London might have been a ghost city. Not a car moved in the silent streets. There was not even a dog walker or pram pusher to disturb the leafy peace. The air was filled with birdsong, and the trees in the big garden were coming into the full, ripe green of summer.
Fishing out his key, he unlocked the cherry red door and stepped inside. The house was even quieter than the street. Then Geordie gave a startled yip, as if he’d been awakened from a nap, and a moment later the dogs trotted into the hall, tails wagging and noses quivering. “Some use you’d be if I really was a burglar,” he said, scratching Geordie behind the ears, and giving Tess a quick rub on her wiry head. The house felt odd, too, devoid of human presence but haunted by the smell of coffee and burnt toast.
He knew he’d left Gemma in the lurch that morning. He also knew that any irritation she harbored would vanish when he told her Hugh was ill. He’d meant to ring her as soon as he reached the house, but now found he didn’t think he could cope with hearing her sympathy. Not yet, at least. He’d ring her from the car, once he was well on the way, once he’d had a little more time to get used to the idea.
With midday traffic, it shouldn’t take him more than a couple of hours to reach southern Cheshire. His parents and his sister lived in the market town of Nantwich, but the nearest hospital was in Crewe, five miles away.
The dogs followed him upstairs as he went to throw a few things in an overnight bag. A clean shirt, his shaving kit, a warmer jacket. Just because it was balmy in London didn’t mean it would be warm farther north. He stood for a moment, wondering what he’d forgotten, and felt the house settle around him. It was odd that the empty house made him feel the presence of Gemma and the children so strongly. It was as if their daily lives had left an imprint in the air, while he felt insubstantial.
His whole life seemed suddenly insubstantial, as if everything that mattered to him might vanish like smoke on the wind. He could not imagine his dad ill. He knew his parents were getting older, of course he did. But Hugh Kincaid had more energy than anyone he knew. Always full of the next project, the next enthusiasm.
His mum had said Hugh’s heart problem was minor—perhaps he was letting his worry over Denis color his concern for his dad. That was one thing, at least, he could hope he was right about.
All the way into Brixton, Melody worried over whether to tell Gemma about her father’s veiled hints concerning Denis Childs’s past. Just what had Ivan been getting at? And why had there been no news from Gemma or Duncan?
She’d decided to take the tube, and on the walk up to the Notting Hill Gate station she’d stopped in a newsagent’s and bought, not only the Chronicle, but all the major dailies. Thumbing through them on the train, she found brief mentions of the attack on Denis, but only the Chronicle had asked for information from witnesses.