What sort of person could do this to another?
Alex stood for a moment to ease the pressure on her calves, but found herself unable to turn away. Turning her face from the victim seemed disrespectful, as though doing so would mean leaving the girl alone in this state of degradation, abandoning her when she most needed someone to stay. She might have a weak stomach, but Alex refused to walk away from someone in need, and quite often the dead needed her help more than the living.
‘Who did this to you?’ She spoke softly, as though the dead young woman – this girl –might somehow find a way to respond.
Did she know her killer? Most did, and random attacks tended to be frenzied. This seemed premeditated, methodical. Why were her nails torn from her hands? Was she alive at the time? Why was she brought here?
There was a gust of breeze as the pathologist re-entered the tent.
‘Don’t take it the wrong way, but I was hoping not to see you again so soon,’ Helen said.
Alex’s path had crossed with Helen Collier’s during two other recent cases, and Alex shared her sentiments. She had been hoping for a quiet new year, but was beginning to think ‘quiet’ was destined to be something unknown to her and the rest of the team.
‘Barbaric, isn’t it?’
Alex said nothing. A pair of lifeless eyes stared up from the hollows of a water-eaten face.
‘The fingernails,’ Helen said, crouching beside the body and tentatively taking the left hand in her own. ‘I’d say this was done while she was still alive.’
Alex winced. ‘The markings to her wrists, you mean?’
The flesh at the young woman’s wrists was cut in angry stripes suggesting a struggle to free herself from wherever she had been held. Alex scanned the length of the young woman’s body – her top half in just a muddied bra, her bottom half wearing a pair of leather-look leggings that had been torn in the river – and felt sadness sweep over her. How frightened must she have been when facing her own death? How brave she had been to continue to struggle, even when she must have realised she was fighting a battle she couldn’t possibly win. There was no question of whether she was already dead when her body had been put in the river. The deep cut of her throat clearly marked her final moments.
‘Looks as though she put up a good fight. As much as she was able to, anyway.’
Helen Collier crouched at the body. ‘Here,’ she said, gesturing to the young woman’s head. ‘Her hair’s been cut.’
She worked her fingertips gently beneath the head, moving it slightly to one side so that Alex was able to see the tangled hair that lay stuck to the girl’s scalp, matted with dirt from the riverbed. ‘I’m no hairdresser, but I’d say that’s been cut off at a ponytail.’ She lifted her gloved hands to the back of her own head and motioned a snipping action, as though Alex had been otherwise unable to imagine what she’d meant. ‘I’d say your killer kept himself a souvenir.’
‘How long do you think she’s been in the water?’
Helen lowered the dead girl’s head, letting it rest back on the ground. ‘Not as long as someone was hoping. The stage of decomposition suggests no more than two weeks. These,’ she said, moving a gloved hand to the scraps of plastic tethered to the victim’s wrist, ‘were probably intended to keep her down longer. Presumably long enough for the body to decompose altogether.’
They discussed the remnants of the carrier bags attached to the victim’s wrists. It seemed likely they had been loaded with weights – rocks, perhaps – in order to pull the body beneath the water and conceal all evidence of the crime. That would explain the choice of point of entry where the girl’s body was placed into the river. This was one of the deepest parts, and in most cases where bodies were submerged in water they resurfaced at or near the place where they had entered.
If the woman had been put into the water here, how had someone managed to get her to this point? The park was inaccessible to public vehicles. It would have been impossible for someone to carry a corpse this far into the park without being seen, even at this quieter time of year. The gates were locked at ten o’clock, meaning no one was able to gain access at night.
Helen seemed adamant that the body would have entered the water close to the place where the young woman had been found, but how had that been possible?
Alex looked back at the dead girl lying on the riverbank. Her heart swelled with a sickness she knew would stay with her until they caught whoever had been responsible for the brutalities inflicted upon her.
Until they did, this face would remain with Alex, the horrors of the girl’s final minutes haunting her.
Chapter Four
There were six people at the support group that evening: two volunteer leaders and four group members. Everyone was sitting in their coats because the hall was so cold; the three-bar electric heater that had been pulled as far as its lead would allow was offering little but the smell of burning dust, and the row of windows that lined the far wall was intent on letting in the cold, despite the ancient velvet curtains pulled to shut them out.
Sean Pugh gave a spurt of chesty coughs, as if to demonstrate how cold the place was.
‘Rachel,’ Tim said, giving the shy girl at the far curve of their circle a smile. ‘Hope you’re feeling better this week.’
Rachel’s pale face coloured pink at the acknowledgment, and Tim turned his attention to the rest of the group.
‘Would anyone like to get us started?’ he prompted. ‘What sort of a week have we all had?’
‘Shit.’
Tim turned to Carl. Six feet two on a short day, Carl Anderson’s legs seemed to fill the space in the centre of the circle.
‘Why’s it been shit?’
Carl shrugged. ‘Groundhog Day, innit? Same shit, different day.’
‘How’s the new job going?’
Carl gave another shrug. ‘All right.’
His words may have been few, but Carl’s anger radiated in an aura around him. The other members of the group seemed indifferent to his festering rage; all except Rachel, who was careful to keep her distance and always made a point of sitting to the side of him, and never opposite where she would be forced to look directly at him for prolonged periods of time.