sheeting?’
‘I believe so, but by the time we get it in place-’
‘It will be needed. Has anyone told you this is number five in a series of suspicious hangings in this area? Obviously not. You’re going to be here some time. Has the pathologist been called?’
Gledhill nodded. ‘He’s on his way. And the forensic physician came by and certified death before you arrived.’
‘Who did you get?’
‘The pathologist? Dr Sealy.’
‘You’ve made my day. Is there anything to tell us the identity of the body?’
‘Too soon. There was nothing in her pockets. No note.’
‘You’ve searched the area for a bag, I expect?’
‘Without success. We thought her shoes might be recovered, but we haven’t found them.’
Diamond relented a little. Gledhill and his team had not been entirely inactive. ‘Do you have a paper suit my size? I’d like a close look.’
Kitted out, and with Halliwell in support, he approached using the access path Gledhill showed him. That body looked pathetically frail.
The photographer had left a folding set of steps. Before mounting them Diamond examined the hands and feet. The toenails were painted and undamaged, the soles clean. She hadn’t walked here without shoes.
The woman was suspended about a metre clear of the ground on the white cord or cable the thickness of a pencil, like the sort used for clothes-lines — similar to the cord found on the other bodies he’d seen. He looked up to where it was lashed to the stone crossbeam using the eye of a bowline knot. Then he mounted the steps and examined the ligature. He didn’t care to look at the face at this stage.
The cord was tight around the neck, making a deep indentation. There would be no giveaway secondary mark.
‘What do you know?’ he said to himself. ‘It’s another slip knot.’
30
‘W here are the media?’ he asked Gledhill.
‘Who do you mean — the Chronicle?’
‘Radio, TV, press. They should be here by now.’
‘That’s up to them. Press relations aren’t my concern.’
Diamond turned to his ever-reliable second-in-command. ‘Keith, this has got to have publicity. We need to know the identity of this woman as soon as possible. Make some calls.’
Gledhill stopped being indifferent. ‘Is that necessary? I don’t want television crews tramping all over the scene. They’ll find us soon enough.’
‘Did you look at the left hand?’
‘Of the deceased? Not specially.’
‘There’s the mark of a ring there.’
‘A wedding ring?’
Diamond gave him a how-would-I-know look. ‘It’s just the mark, but it’s the third finger of the left hand. The chance is high that she was married. If this follows the pattern of the other hangings, the husband is due to die next, and soon. As of now I don’t have a clue who he is.’
Gledhill leaned closer, as if he hadn’t heard right. ‘Do you think somebody is murdering couples?’
‘I’d put it more strongly. I’d use the word “executing”.’
‘But why?’
‘If I knew that, we wouldn’t be here.’
The crime scene people improvised some screening as Diamond had suggested, using plastic sheeting draped over lengths of cord.
Bertram Sealy arrived and said with a stupid grin to Diamond that they couldn’t go on meeting like this. The usual banter between pathologists and police didn’t sit well, not when Sealy was making the quips.
‘Where’s the gorgeous Ingeborg this morning?’ Sealy went on. ‘I could do with her support on the steps.’
‘Get a life, Doctor.’
Gledhill produced another paper suit and Sealy went to work without assistance, speaking into his tape- recorder.
Halliwell was through to the BBC news room in Bristol.
‘Tell them I’m briefing the press as soon as they get here and it’s a big story,’ Diamond said. ‘The same to ITN and the papers.’
He stepped outside the plastic sheeting and was pleased to find that most of the onlookers had gone. He tried picturing what had happened, the killer arriving with his victim, by car almost certainly. If the MO was the same as before, she was dead already. The object was to arrange a fake hanging. Anyone would think she died on the end of a rope. Not so. She was on show, dangling there, because this was how the killer wanted it to appear.
In the small hours of the morning this part of the city, set back from Marlborough Lane, well north of the main artery, the Upper Bristol Road, would have been quiet. The killer had thought this through. He’d backed his vehicle right up to the arch on the broad pavement without fear of being seen. Even if the occasional car passed, he wasn’t conspicuous and the tyres hadn’t left a mark on the stone surface. He’d slung the end of his plastic washing-line over the crossbeam and made it secure. Did he stand on the roof of his vehicle to do it? If that were the case, did he have a van, or a four-by-four or a saloon? A man in the business of rigging up gallows would surely have worked out the most convenient transport.
Then came the more risky part of removing the corpse from the interior and tying the cord round the neck. He’d judged how high the noose had to be. He must have. It was calculated so that the body would swing. He’d positioned her on the roof, or the boot, or the bonnet, and then driven away and left her suspended.
This all required planning. It was likely he’d done a dummy run to assess the task. But why go to all that trouble? Why take the risk of discovery? Most murderers go to great lengths to conceal their victims. They don’t seek to display them.
Pondering these questions, Diamond returned inside the enclosure. Dr Sealy had stepped down — unaided — and was ready to report the preliminary findings.
‘A woman under forty, I’d say, but not much under. Slimly built, about five six in height. No shoes, otherwise dressed casually. Manicured hands and feet. Nothing in the state of the nails to indicate a struggle. The undersides of the feet are clean, suggesting she was transported here. No obvious wounds.’
‘Did you take the temperature?’ Diamond asked.
‘Nasally, yes. And before you ask, the temperature doesn’t tell us much. There are too many variables. My first impression is that she was dead before she was brought here. I’m assuming she was brought here. If this were suicide we’d have a chair or something at the scene, something she’d stepped off. It’s true that the pillars have a base with a ledge of sorts, but too low down to have supported the feet. The noose is interesting, tight round the neck and tied with a slip knot.’
‘Which we saw up at the viaduct,’ Diamond said.
‘Yes,’ Sealy said in the surprised tone of a schoolmaster getting the right answer out of the class idiot, ‘but I’m trying to consider this incident in isolation. As I say, a slip knot, so tight that it would probably have throttled her if she had been alive. Before she was suspended, I mean. Quite what it conceals, if anything, I won’t know until after autopsy.’
‘You’ll do that today?’
‘That’s my firm intention.’
‘I’d like more photos of the face, for recognition. Can we draw the hair aside?’
‘If the man with the clipboard allows.’
