Death Bed (6 page)

S
am hesitated at the door to the morgue. Her face had lost its characteristic healthy glow and her expression was strained.

‘Are you alright?’ Geraldine asked with sudden understanding. ‘Not everyone can take it. My last sergeant was really quite squeamish and it’s OK - ’

‘I’m fine, really,’ Sam interrupted her. ‘I don’t mind the place. It’s all part of the job. It’s just the smell that I can’t stand, and when it’s in a confined space it gets me right in the stomach.’

She pulled out a pungent nasal decongestant stick and applied it liberally before pulling on her mask and nodding to indicate she was ready.

Geraldine gave her a sympathetic smile before slipping on her own mask. She hadn’t forgotten the horrible stench inside the forensic tent in the alley. Although she was prepared for it, when the door opened she was immediately hit by a sickening odour of putrefaction overlaid with antiseptic. Her face mask couldn’t completely block it out. She glanced back at the sergeant who was staring straight ahead.

The round shouldered pathologist, Gerald Mann, was bent over the cadaver. He glanced up when they entered, eyes bright beneath wispy white eyebrows as he nodded in recognition. He reminded Geraldine of her childhood Father Christmases.

‘What do you think?’ she asked as she approached the slab, trying not to breathe in too deeply, while Sam hung back.

‘This is not a pretty corpse, Inspector, and the circumstances of her death are frankly barbaric. We are looking at a woman in her early twenties at most, probably younger, who was beaten and left to die in her own excrement.’

‘She was chained by both her wrists and her ankles. Look here, the imprints of the links are clearly visible, quite large and made of iron not steel. There’s a residue of rust here, and again here. The flesh on her wrists was quite extensively damaged from chafing, so I’m guessing she was shackled for - ’ the pathologist broke off, frowning, ‘well, at least a couple of days, but probably considerably longer. It looks as though she tried to free her right hand, because the skin on that wrist is more severely damaged than the other and the bruising extends up her hand where she tried to force it through the manacle. She was lying flat on her back on a fairly soft surface, probably a bed. We found some fibres of white cotton in her hair and under her nails that could have come from bed sheets. They’ve gone off for analysis.’

He was silent for a moment.

‘What can you tell us about the missing finger?’ Geraldine prompted him.

‘It’s impossible to determine whether the right index finger was cut off while she was alive, without examining the site where the injury was inflicted. There’s no blood on her clothes but she’s wearing short sleeves so that’s not conclusive, and there’s no way of ascertaining the extent of the bleeding, if any.’

Geraldine studied the dead woman’s face, misshapen with swellings, one eye closed beneath an inflamed lid, the other seeming to stare straight back at her in wordless rage.

‘Can you be more specific about the beating?’

‘She suffered a powerful blow to the side of her head with some hard object, resulting in a fatal cerebral bleed. Her nose was broken, her cheek bones smashed. Her arms and shoulders suffered severe bruising probably from the same blunt instrument, or there may have been a series of impacts if she was thrown around, perhaps in the back of a van, or even dragged downstairs, before she died.’

He pointed to the woman’s shoulders.

‘So it was the blow to the head that killed her?’ Geraldine asked after a brief silence.

‘Her skull was fractured by a severe blow. Cause of death was cerebral bleeding but the shock might just as easily have killed her anyway in her weakened state. She was severely dehydrated and her stomach was empty. There was nothing in the duodenum or the intestinal tract, in other words she hadn’t eaten anything for at least two or three days before she died. She was absolutely filthy, and soiled herself several times before she died.’

He heaved a deep sigh.

‘So young.’

‘Was she raped?’

‘There’s no sign of any violent sexual encounter although she had recently been sexually active, and she had an abortion some years ago when she must have been quite young, possibly underage. She wasn’t raped, but it looks as though she was chained to a bed before she was battered to death.’

‘When did she die?’

‘I can’t say for certain. She was left outside during the night but had already been dead for at least twenty-four hours before that. The plastic bin bag offered some insulation of course, but we don’t know the conditions she was kept in before last night.’

He pointed at the greenish tinge that spread across the dead woman’s abdomen up to her chest and down her upper thighs.

‘Discoloration has spread but there’s no blistering. I’d say she’s been dead for two or three days, maybe longer.’

‘Can’t you be more specific?’

He shook his head.

‘I could hazard a guess at three days, but without knowing the circumstances under which the body was stored, and the temperature it was kept at, I can’t give you an exact time of death.’

He turned back to the body.

‘She wasn’t wearing any shoes but the skin underneath her feet isn’t scratched or torn so it doesn’t appear that she walked anywhere barefoot. It looks as though her killer removed her shoes. And her finger, of course, which was sliced off with a small razor sharp saw.’

Geraldine frowned impatiently.

‘This was presumably a personal attack, but until we know who she was that line of enquiry remains closed to us.’

‘Why not just kill her at once and be done with it? Why torment the poor girl like that?’ Sam asked, unable to hide her frustration. ‘It doesn’t make sense to tie her up then starve and beat her if he was going to kill her anyway.’

‘Unless he wanted her to suffer,’ Geraldine replied. ‘Or perhaps he never intended for her to die and it all went horribly wrong.’

The pathologist shrugged and touched the dead woman’s disfigured hand gently.

‘It was certainly horrible.’

Sam shuddered.

‘What are the chances she was still alive when her finger was cut off?’

‘As I said, I can’t form an opinion with any confidence as the body was moved, so there’s no way of telling if the wound bled.’

The pathologist paused.

‘There’s another thing. Two of her molars were recently extracted, almost certainly after she died. There would still be traces of blood on her gums if the teeth had been removed while she was alive. Now, what would anyone want with a finger and two of her back teeth, I wonder?’

‘Maybe he started to remove her teeth and fingers hoping to conceal her identity but didn’t have time to finish the job,’ Sam suggested.

‘Or he could have taken them as a trophy,’ Geraldine said.

She didn’t add that if that were true, they were more than likely looking for a multiple murderer - one who had already killed or would kill again, someone who found a perverse gratification in keeping ghastly mementos of his victims.

‘That’s crazy,’ Sam said, and it occurred to Geraldine that, for all her bravado, the sergeant was still very young.

‘Tell me about it,’ she replied softly.

A
fter visiting the morgue on Monday morning, Geraldine went back to her office in Hendon to spend a few hours gathering all her data together, before returning to the police station in Islington. It was annoying having to spend so much time travelling through London traffic, but there was no help for it. At least she was learning to find her way around without Sam Haley to drive her. Islington was a large station very close to where she now lived. She hurried in the back entrance, and was directed to the conference room where the senior police officers were gathering to discuss the case. Detective Chief Inspector Reg Milton was already there, deep in conversation with an elegantly dressed black woman. Geraldine wished she had thought to go home and change. She could easily have done so, her flat was very near. She sniffed softly, trying to detect whether the odour of the morgue was still clinging to her clothes and hair, just as the memory of the dead woman haunted her thoughts.

There was a flurry of activity at the door and half a dozen people came in together and sat down. Everyone introduced themselves around the table before the meeting opened. Geraldine knew the borough commander and head of Islington police station, Chief Superintendant Andrew Rogers, by reputation, and had met him briefly in the past. He nodded at her as she introduced herself. Geraldine knew they had to pay careful attention to the local community. At the same time, she couldn’t help thinking they might achieve more if the meeting were less formal, and restricted to police personnel. This felt like a publicity campaign rather than a briefing for a murder investigation. Also present were the Safer Neighbourhood Inspector, who would be familiar with local crime hotspots and villains. Finally, a woman from media and communications was there to draft a press release and keep them apprised of any press interest. So far the woman’s death had only been briefly reported in the news but it was just a matter of time before the papers caught hold of it and started ferreting around. There had been a lot of fuss in the media about police victimising black youths. Reporters would be quick to whip up a furore if the police were slow to find the killer of a black woman. The tone of the meeting seemed to suggest that failure in this case would be politically incorrect, as though the victm’s colour somehow made a difference. Geraldine wanted to cry out in protest. The victim was a human being. The colour of her skin made no difference.

The meeting dragged on, seeming to focus more on concerns about public perception of the police than the case itself. Geraldine read out her report on the post-mortem findings, but that only led back to a discussion about the press release.

‘We’re still no closer to knowing who she is then?’ the Safer Neighbourhood Inspector asked. ‘You know what the media are going to make of that.’

He nodded at the press officer, the woman the detective chief inspector had been talking to when Geraldine arrived.

‘Was there nothing on the body to give us any sort of clue as to her identity?’ she enquired.

‘Her prints and DNA have been sent off, but there was nothing else to tell us anything. She had nothing on her but her clothes – totally nondescript, jeans and a t-shirt, common cheap High Street brands. No shoes. No watch,’ Geraldine said. She refrained from adding, ‘No right index finger and no name.’

As if on cue, a constable came in with a message for the detective chief inspector.

‘We had a call this morning, sir, from a woman who thinks she might know the identity of the Tufnell Park woman. Her flatmate’s gone missing and matches the description of the deceased. She’s about the same age, and - ’

‘How long has this woman been missing?’ the borough commander interrupted impatiently.

‘We’re not sure yet, sir. A constable’s gone round to question the woman who reported it.’

‘What’s the missing woman’s name?’ the borough commander demanded. ‘Has the body been positively identified yet?’

‘We’re following that up, sir. The call’s only just come through. The missing woman’s name is Donna Henry and we’re trying to contact her mother, who only lives at Baker Street so we’re hoping we’ll get her in soon to view the body.’

The commander nodded and the constable withdrew. Geraldine thought it was going to be difficult for anyone to identify the dead woman, her face was so bruised and swollen, but she kept her concerns to herself.

After the meeting she went straight to the morgue. Mrs Henry arrived soon after, expensively dressed in a clingy grey cashmere suit and real pearls. Well-spoken and surprisingly calm about the coming ordeal, she was convinced the dead girl couldn’t possibly be her daughter. Geraldine wondered if her own mother had felt the same confidence about her daughter when she had given Geraldine up for adoption at birth. She remembered every word of the short letter her mother had written to the adoption agency: ‘I know she’ll have a better life without me.’ But the young mother couldn’t have
known
.

She led Mrs Henry into the viewing room. The body had been cleaned up, and there was no whiff of putrefaction in the room to taint Mrs Henry’s delicate perfume. The dead girl’s face had been smoothed down, her nose and cheek roughly reconstructed, her split lip covered so that it was clearly visible only if you looked closely, and with her eyes closed it wasn’t immediately noticeable that one eyelid was puffy. Despite her obvious injuries, it was now possible to see that the dead girl must have been quite beautiful when she was alive.

Mrs Henry glanced down at the dead girl’s face, winced, and shook her head just once before stepping back.

‘That’s not Donna.’

She turned away dismissively, seemingly unconcerned about her daughter’s disappearance.

‘No, that’s not my daughter. Donna will turn up. She always does. I never know where she is from one week to the next, but I’ve brought her up to make sure she has enough money on her to get a taxi if she’s out late, so she can always get home safely.’

She spoke as though having money for a taxi was a cast iron guarantee against misfortune. Geraldine hoped for her sake she was right as she showed Mrs Henry out.

Meanwhile they were back to square one with the investigation. If the anonymity of the victim was worrying for those concerned about the public image of the police force, it was also frustrating for the detectives working on the case. Twenty-four hours after the discovery of the body they should have been questioning the victim’s family, sifting through possessions, consulting known contacts, and putting together a timeline to plot her movements immediately before she died. They were all impatient to move the investigation forward, but time was passing and they were getting nowhere.

G
eraldine was pleased to be away from her desk as she and Sam drove back to Tufnell Park. She wanted to keep busy. The alley was still being searched but they had no idea where the woman had been killed, and with every passing hour, the trail leading to her killer would be growing colder. If he hadn’t left the area already, he would be busy covering his tracks while they rushed around, clueless and increasingly uneasy.

They had attempted to talk to the occupants of properties in Tufnell Park Road on either side of the alleyway that morning, but only one old woman had answered the door to the flat above Dave Crawley’s. Grey-haired and bowed, she didn’t speak much English.

‘Yes?’

Geraldine had held out her warrant card and introduced herself.

‘We’d like to ask you a few questions.’

‘Yes?’ the old woman had repeated.

‘We want to ask you a few questions.’

The woman had shrugged.

‘He not here.’

She had begun to close the door.

Geraldine had waved her warrant card in front of the old woman again.

‘Police.’

The old woman’s eyes had narrowed in understanding as she pulled back in alarm.

‘What you want, missus? He not here.’

‘Were you here last night?’

‘Night? Night?’

‘Here. Home.’

Geraldine had pointed at the floor.

‘Were you here last night?’

The woman had smiled suddenly, revealing strong yellow teeth.

‘Ah home. Yes.’

She nodded, pleased to have understood.

‘Home. I live in house. Yes. And the man. Is my son.’

‘Did you - ’

Geraldine sighed.

‘Last night. Did you hear anything unusual?’

The old woman had shaken her head and made a tutting sound with her tongue, vexed at not being able to understand.

‘He not here. And I no speak good. He not here. He work.’

‘Thank you. We’ll come back later.’

‘Yes, missus. Thank you.’

None of the other neighbours had been at home during the day. It was a different story when they returned in the evening. They started again with the flat above Dave Crawley and this time a young man came to the door.

‘You again? Ma said you’d be back.’

He leaned against the door jamb staring at Geraldine through a greasy black fringe.

‘This is about the woman found in the alley, isn’t it? Have you got him yet?’

He spoke fluently but with an obviously Eastern European accent.

‘Have we got him? Who do you mean?’

‘The killer. Has he been arrested yet? The man who killed that woman in the alley.’

‘What makes you think it was a man?’

He shrugged.

‘You just assume, don’t you? I mean, it’s always a man, isn’t it?’

‘Did you notice anything unusual last night?’

‘No.’

‘Did you see any unfamiliar cars in the street?’

‘No.’

‘Did you hear any cars stop outside some time after midnight?’

‘No.’

They rang the bell of the ground floor flat beside the alley and a youth of about eighteen came to the door. He introduced himself as a student and after a fleeting hesitation invited them in.

‘It’s the police asking about that woman they found,’ he announced as he led them into a small living room.

Two other young men looked up from a game of chess and Geraldine and Sam posed the same questions to all of them.

One of the lads thought he might have heard a car draw up outside during the night, but he couldn’t tell them what time he’d heard it or anything else about it.

‘Can you describe the sound of the engine?’

He shook his head and his eyes flicked back to the chess board.

‘It was just a car.’

‘Could you tell which direction it approached from?’

‘No.’

‘Can you remember if it came from Junction Road or the other direction?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What time did you hear it?’

‘I don’t know. It was just a car, you know. I don’t even know if I heard it. I was asleep. I might just have imagined it.’

Or made it up to try and sound helpful, Geraldine thought. Time waster. The chess players returned to their game.

‘Sorry we couldn’t be more help,’ their flatmate apologised as he showed them out.

They questioned the neighbours who lived opposite, but no one had seen or heard anything.

‘Why is everyone so bloody unhelpful?’ Sam grumbled. ‘It’s like no one cares that someone’s been killed. No one saw or heard anything!’

‘To be fair, it’s unlikely anyone would notice a rubbish bag being dropped in an alley in the middle of the night.’

‘Well, it would make our job a whole lot easier if someone had seen, and made a note of the car number,’ Sam replied with a grin, her usual good temper restored.

A team was examining CCTV film, listing registration numbers of vehicles that had driven off the main road along Tufnell Park Road and cross referencing them to see if anyone with a history of violent behaviour had been driving in the area on Saturday night, but it was a long shot. The killer probably hadn’t been driving a vehicle registered in his own name, and the number plates might not have been legitimate. The chances of identifying the killer that way were slim. And they still didn’t know the victim’s name.