Blood Work Page 12

  She pointed at the blue staining on the body of the dead woman. 'Blood will collect in those parts of the body that are in contact with the ground. Most commonly the back and the buttocks when the person is lying face up. The skin is pale because all the blood that keeps it pink drains into the larger veins. It can take minutes or hours after death, but livor mortis will manifest itself on the skin.'

  She pointed to a close-up photograph of the discoloration on the woman's face. 'These purplish blemishes are what embalmers call post-mortem stain. It takes a few hours but after that the blood becomes what we call fixed. That is, it won't move to other parts of the body if the corpse is moved. So we can use that to also determine where the murder took place. And, in this instance, together with the other factors such as the arterial spray in the immediate area, we can say pretty definitely that the woman was killed in the place where she was discovered.'

  Kate walked back to the desk and took another sip of water. She was aware that Delaney was watching her but determined to keep professional.

  'There is a condition, at the time of death, known as primary flaccidity.'

  'Bob Wilkinson knows all about that,' a female officer called out from the back of the room, and laughter erupted. Kate smiled, the grim photos on the wall behind were testament to the seriousness of the situation but the laughter didn't mean anyone in the room wasn't focused on the dead woman, and finding justice for her. Black humour was just a coping mechanism, after all.

  She held up a hand. 'All right, settle down. Constable Wilkinson is already no doubt well aware that there are medications available on prescription for his particular ailment, so there is no need for embarrassment nowadays.'

  Bob Wilkinson scowled, taking the ribbing in good heart.

  Kate waited for the laughter to subside and then continued. 'A dead body will usually stay in full rigor mortis for anything between twenty-four and forty-eight hours. After that the muscles start to relax again and secondary laxity,' she smiled apologetically at Bob Wilkinson, 'or flaccidity occurs. And it will usually follow the same pattern as it began.' She gestured behind her. 'Not applicable in this case of course. Another way of gauging how long a person has been dead is by taking the core temperature. And again we have to factor in the ambient temperature. The unseasonably cold weather last night meant that the woman's body will have cooled a lot faster than if she had been murdered at home for example. Wherever her home is.'

  Kate glanced back at the mottled face of the ravaged woman and wondered if anyone was waiting for her at that home. A distraught parent or worried boyfriend. She assumed she wasn't married as she had no wedding ring, or indications that she had ever worn one.

  At the back of the room, meanwhile, Delaney was watching Kate as she pinned different photographs of the murdered young woman to the display board, and talked about the forensic analytical techniques. But those details washed over him, hardly taking in what she was saying. She was discussing putrefaction as another method of establishing time of death. But again it wasn't strictly relevant as putrefaction didn't take place until the second or third day after death and Delaney had seen enough corpses in his time to know about the telltale signs of green discoloration, and the putrid odour that accompanied it. An odour that told him they were already far too late for the victim and had given the murderer a good few days' head start on them. The first twenty-four hours were often critical in a murder case and if the body was putrefying before it was discovered it wasn't a good omen.

  Kate turned to the room. 'We know the victim is a young female, we know she was murdered sometime in the early hours of last night and we know we are dealing with an extremely sick individual.'

  A murmur went round the room again, sensing that Kate had finished but she held her hand up for quiet once again.

  'One more thing.' She walked over to the display panels again and pointed at a blown-up photo of the young woman's neck. 'There is an unusual puncture mark on her neck.'

  'Vampire you think, Doctor?'

  A laugh went around the room again. But a nervous one. After all, the woman had been murdered in the dead of night, under a full moon, was dressed like someone out of Bram Stoker and had a couple of pagan symbols on her belt.

  Kate let the laughter subside. 'I have no idea what to think.'

  The previously recorded news highlights were playing on monitors throughout the building. Melanie Jones smiling at the camera. It was a practised smile, full of hope, innocence and genuine wonder at the world. A smile that belied the news that she had just been reporting. A third teenager stabbed to death in south London that week. An eighty-three-year-old woman raped and murdered in Nottingham. The foreclosure of a car works in the Midlands that was putting five thousand people out of work. At Sky News the policy was that the viewer should want to kiss the messenger not kill her. And a lot of people wanted to kiss Melanie Jones. The news is a bitter pill, after all, and Melanie Jones provided the sweet, sweet sugar that helped the medicine go down.

  At the moment it was her line producer, Ronald Bliss, that was going down. His head nestled between her thighs as she sat legs akimbo on the toilet in the ensuite in his office. She wasn't smiling now. She was looking at her nails. There was a slight chip on her left index finger. She looked across at her handbag which was propped up against Ronald's knees. She'd have loved to get her polish out of it and fix the nail, but thought it might not go down too well. She looked at her watch. He'd been at it for five minutes, breathing heavily through his nostrils and sounding like a St Bernard in labour. Bliss was five foot six and several stones overweight and Melanie hoped the heavy breathing wasn't a prelude to a heart attack. She looked down at the top of his head; he was only thirty-eight but already his hair was thinning badly. She could see the pink of his scalp through the strands of his ginger hair, and frowned slightly. Someone should tell him about dandruff shampoo, but that was his wife's job, not hers. She looked at her watch again, she'd give him a couple more minutes for form's sake then make a few whimpering noises and give him a quick wank, which should keep him happy for a week or so and her own promotion prospects on line.

  A buzzing in her jacket pocket and then her phone rang. She took it out and was about to click it off when the man below mumbled, 'Answer it, I like to hear your voice.'

  Melanie curled her lip at him and answered the phone, suppressing a yawn.

  'Melanie Jones.'

  She listened for a while and then went very still. 'Call me back in fifteen minutes. I can't talk now.' She closed her phone and patted her producer on his head, just once and wiped her palm on the sleeve of her jacket.

  'Sorry, Ronald, I think I just came on.'

  The man looked up, a shifty tremor in his glassine eyes. 'I don't mind.'

  'Next week, eh.' She shifted her thighs, squeezing him backward and leaned over to pick her thong. Silk, diamanté-studded, eighty-five pounds from Agent Provacateur. She stood up and the man looked at her hopefully.

  'Could you at least leave me the knickers?'

  The call she had just received could very well turn out to be the best break of her career and so she was suddenly feeling very generous. She tossed them into his eager hand.

  'I want them replaced.'

  She closed the door behind her. The look of gratitude in her boss's eyes was proof, if she needed it, of just how weak men can be.

  Kate walked down the corridor, wrapping the long scarf around her neck and heading for the stairs. She was happy to have put the briefing behind her, her mind wasn't on it. Much as she felt for the murdered woman, she had her own problems today. She headed down the broad staircase and walked to the police surgeon's room. She dreaded what she was about to hear. When she had worked as a police surgeon Kate had had to deal with many cases of rape. She knew that the cases reported were just the tip of the iceberg too. She'd been giving a lecture not many weeks past addressing the issue. She'd been horrified to look at the women against rape website and seen that if anything the situatio
n was getting worse year by year. Ninety-eight per cent of domestic violence goes unreported. Two women a week murdered by their partner or ex-partner. One in six women in the country has been raped and yet only six per cent of reported rapes result in a conviction. And now, most likely, she was one of the statistics. She had no evidence that the man in her bed had assaulted her last night; it was a gut feeling, and the news that he had done it before just made her all the more certain that she had been violated. The thought of it made her feel nauseous again, her stomach lurching as though she were on a particularly choppy Channel crossing. She paused at the water cooler outside the police surgeon's office to take a drink and try and stop herself from hurling her lunch on the smooth tiles of the corridor.

  Melanie Jones was standing outside in the car park of the London Apprentice. She was holding a large glass of red wine in her left hand and a Lambert & Butler Superking dangled from her perfectly painted lips.

  'Shit,' she said looking at her mobile phone, which was staying frustratingly quiet. 'Ring, you bastard!' She sucked in a lungful of smoke and paced over to look at the river.

  The recent heavy falls of rain had sluiced mud from the banks of either side of the Thames, and the strong winds had stripped dead leaves and detritus from Eel Pie Island, further upriver, to wash down and swirl in the dirty, brown water. Melanie looked at it, her lip curling. Bloody thing was like an open sewer. It was a metaphor for London she thought, she couldn't wait to put the stinking city behind her. The phone call earlier though, if it was genuine, was a career-making opportunity and could have her in America sooner than you could say world exclusive. That had been her ambition ever since she had done a presenting course at Bournemouth University a few years ago. She was born for Fox News. As a teenager she had wanted to be a model, but she was too curvy as an adult, too womanly. Her legs were long for a woman but too short for a supermodel. She'd taken Ulrika Jonsson as her inspiration. So she had started off as a weather girl before being talent-spotted by a Sky News journo at a fund-raiser for victims of the Boxing Day Tsunami. She'd rogered him senseless that night on a king-size waterbed and as a consequence he had made the right calls for her and just like that she was in with Rupert Murdoch. Not that she'd ever met the man, but maybe all that would change, and soon. The phone buzzed in her hand and she almost dropped it, her palms suddenly moist with perspiration. She already had the title of her book in mind. Intimate Conversations With a Serial Killer.

  She took a deep breath and pushed the answer button, her voice like gunpowder soaked in honey.

  'Melanie Jones. Talk to me.'

  Caroline Akunin was standing at her window drinking a cup of white tea when Kate walked into her office. She found herself standing a lot more often these days, the baby was definitely making its presence felt. Sitting behind the sturdy police desk for any long periods of time was just not possible any more. She ran a thoughtful hand across her stomach and smiled sympathetically at Kate as she came in through the open door.

  'I hope I haven't kept you waiting?' Kate asked.

  'Of course not.' The police surgeon's perfect teeth flashed in a dazzling smile.

  'I had a briefing to attend first. It went on longer than I thought.'

  Caroline Akunin gestured to the chair in front of her desk as Kate shut the door behind her. 'Why don't you sit down, Kate?'

  Kate sat in the chair and gestured at the woman's prominent belly. 'How's it going? The pregnancy.' It seemed to her an inane thing to say but suddenly she wanted to talk about anything other than the reason she had come. Now she was sitting in the police surgeon's office she didn't want to hear anything that would confirm her worst fears. If you don't name the bogeyman he can't get you, after all. That's what her mother had always told her. But, as in a lot of things, she had lied.

  Caroline smiled again; Kate could easily see why her Russian husband had fallen in love with her. 'You know how it is. The first nine months are the worst.'

  Kate forced herself to return the smile. The truth was she had no idea how it was. Motherhood was not high on Kate's agenda. Just thinking about the modern world, the pollution, the global warming, the disaffected hopelessness and the violence of youth, the gun deaths and knifings, the rape, assault and mutilation of women throughout the country, the fear, as essential and as constant a part of London life now as the Victorian smog used to be, and she didn't think it ever would be. Who would want to bring a child into this world? But as she looked at her friend Caroline's beatific face, a living sculpture in maternal happiness, she knew she could never convey the darkness of her thoughts to her, so she changed the subject back to what she feared the most.

  'What can you tell me about what happened last night?'

  Caroline Akunin sighed and pulled another chair across closer to her friend. 'I can tell you what our tests have shown so far.'

  'Go on.'

  'There are no physical signs of rape. No bruising, no abrasion.'

  'I know that.'

  'Of course, sorry.'

  'Don't apologise, Caroline. Just tell me straight. I need to know.'

  'Okay. Well, there are no pubic hairs.'

  'None at all?'

  'Just yours, Kate.'

  'And there are no traces of semen?'

  'None.'

  Kate blew out a sigh. 'Thank God for that, at least.'

  'I guess.'

  Kate leaned her head back and looked at the ceiling. 'Doesn't mean, of course, that nothing happened.'

  'No, it doesn't.'

  'Any traces of lubricant?'

  'Nope.'

  'Lubricant- and spermicide-free condoms are readily available.'

  Caroline nodded. 'Let's face it, Kate, he could have put a condom through a dishwasher before he used it.'

  'Reused. Nice image.'

  Caroline shrugged sympathetically.

  'Don't tell me there's traces of Fairy Liquid power-ball?' She tried to smile but couldn't manage it this time.

  'There's nothing, Kate.'

  'What about date-rape drugs? Rohypnol, one of those?'

  'I'm still waiting on the blood work.'

  Kate clenched her hand angrily. 'There must be something he used, Caroline. Something has to show up. If this was taken to the CPS they'd laugh in our faces.'

  'Let's see what the blood tests show.'

  'You said he's already been charged?'

  'Cautioned, charged, released on police bail and due in court this week.'

  'Can you give me the details?'

  Caroline stood up and shook her head sadly. 'Sorry, Kate. You know I can't do that. Completely against the rules. Client confidentiality and all that. Not to mention that it could jeopardise the case.'

  Kate looked up at her, sensing there was something she wasn't saying.

  Caroline smiled apologetically. 'You'll have to excuse me for a moment. One of the downsides of being pregnant is that you have to go to the loo every five minutes.'

  'Okay.'

  'I might be some time.' She grinned at Kate again, more broadly this time. 'Why don't you make yourself at home? Read something.' She gestured at her desk on which were stacked a pile of magazines and a single, blue folder. Kate looked at the name on the folder, Helen Archer, and smiled gratefully back up at the police surgeon.

  'Thanks, Caroline.'

  'Take your time.'

  Caroline left and Kate pulled the folder towards her, took out the documents and started to read.