‘Stuck on the A38 somewhere.’
‘If it’s Nesbit he won’t be happy.’
‘It is Nesbit, and no he didn’t sound too pleased when he called to tell me he was late.’ Layton paused and looked down at Savage’s feet. ‘The field is a complete bog. Got some wellies in the back of the van if you’d like?’
Savage said she would and Layton dug out a pair of yellow boots as well as the obligatory white coverall. Her feet slid around inside the over-sized boots, but as she walked down the side of the field she was grateful for them. The cattle had made much of the pasture a quagmire and the saturated ground oozed underfoot.
She followed the blue and white tape down to where it was tied to a small aluminium step ladder the CSIs had put up to span the fence. A few metres farther on fence posts and netting lay in a flattened tangle and Savage noticed tyre tracks leading from the pasture into an earthy field where green shoots of wheat or some other crop poked up through the soil. The tyre marks crossed the neat tramlines of tractor tracks and curved left down towards a small patch of woodland at the bottom of the valley.
Savage climbed over the ladder into the next field and followed the tape again. As she neared the trees the clouds seemed to crowd overhead, darkening the sky even more. A stile led into the copse and to its right some more fencing had been removed. She walked through the opening into a little grove with towering old oak trees and slender young ash.
A sudden flash of harsh white light from a camera lit up a white crime scene tent and through the open end Savage could see a pale body lying like a sleeping nymph from a fairy tale. Two people stood next to the body on plastic stepping plates, one taking the pictures, the other with a small video camera. She recognised the photographer as Rod Oliver. His silver hair and craggy, weathered face showed he was getting on in years, but he knew his job. A year or so ago he had gone independent and filled in his spare time doing wedding shoots. Two more disparate sets of clients were hard to imagine. At the far edge of the clearing another figure in white combed the scrub with a long metal probe, teasing the long grass and nettles apart. Savage didn’t go any closer but she could see the corpse belonged to a young woman, late teens or early twenties. White skin, no clothing, hands by her sides, legs apart. She didn’t appear dead, just as if she was resting for a while. Her angelic face stared skyward towards heaven, but although the nakedness hit Savage like an electric shock, there was nothing else of note.
She looked around at the woodland. On a summer’s day with a picnic and a family and laughter and smiles this would be an idyllic place. Today an autumn chill seeped from the ground and the wind whistled through the trees. The scrub and brambles appeared to be creeping into the clearing, trying to cover everything, to wipe out all traces of humanity and reinstate the wilderness.
Oliver noticed her and walked back along the row of stepping plates. He told her what he knew.
‘At first sight no obvious cause of death, although there is a strange cut mark on the belly. I would hazard a guess drugs are involved. Also, clever young Matt spotted a couple of indentations in the moss between her legs.’
Oliver introduced the pale-faced guy with the video camera as his assistant. Savage didn’t think Matt looked young or clever, but when you went independent you would have to keep a tight rein on costs, she thought.
‘There’s a substance on the pubis and stomach resembling semen,’ Oliver continued. ‘I’d say somebody knelt and ejaculated over her. Although it’s not my job to speculate, of course. Doc Nesbit will be able to confirm the drugs angle.’ He nodded back towards the edge of the copse where a figure in a full white coverall plodded their way.
‘You’ve seen everything, Rod,’ Savage said. ‘You probably know more than half the guys in the business. And it is a business now, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, for me at any rate. Although I must admit I find it hard to put in an invoice after I have been to a scene like this. Doesn’t seem right somehow.’
Savage knew what he meant. She often struggled with what the job involved, but with her the emotion didn’t involve guilt about the money. Her own guilt was about how much she enjoyed the excitement. Not this bit of course, not the death and the misery, but the rest of the process; from not having a clue to having them bang to rights. Sometimes it seemed inexorable and unstoppable as if mapped out by some greater being and all she had to do was follow a path leading to the criminals. Savage didn’t have much time for religion, but there was something comforting about the fact that right beat wrong and justice always prevailed. Well, nearly always.
Savage heard a cough behind her and turned to see Dr Andrew Nesbit, the pathologist. His half-round glasses identified him as much as his slight stoop, which he claimed he had developed from bending over too many bodies. Nesbit was old-school and beneath the coverall Savage knew he would be wearing a tweed jacket and tie, an outfit in which he could be — and sometimes was — mistaken for a country doctor. He had a polite bedside manner, full of charm and grace, but this was lost on his patients since invariably they were dead.
‘How’s that little MG of yours, Charlotte?’ Nesbit said.
‘She is tucked up in my garage for the winter, thank you very much. Still costing me though. New sills done in the summer.’
‘The AA badge must be the only thing you haven’t renewed.’
‘V funny Doc. But you are right, totting up the bills does make me feel like I have bought five cars’ worth of spare parts.’
‘What about your boat? I saw the picture in the paper back in the spring. You, Pete and the children.’
Savage remembered the Herald had done a feature on Pete before he set off for the South Atlantic, a photo shoot with the whole family on their tiny yacht. The journalist had been tickled pink by the contrast between the little coastal cruiser and the ocean going warship.
‘Took the children out a few times in the summer, but managing the boat on my own is a struggle and I can’t seem to persuade Stefan to join me. If he isn’t cold, wet and leaning over at forty-five degrees he doesn’t think he is sailing.’
‘Samantha is growing up fast. And turning into the splitting image of you with all that red hair. Very beautiful.’ Nesbit smiled, a twinkle in his eyes.
Savage blushed, even though she knew Nesbit’s words were small talk intended to make everyone feel relaxed in a stressful situation.
‘Ah, well.’ Nesbit shrugged. Then he moved past Savage and walked over the stepping plates and into the tent to examine the body. ‘I overheard you telling Charlotte about drugs,’ he told Oliver as he bent over. ‘No way I can confirm that here of course. And looking at the body now I am not sure you are right about there being no sign of obvious trauma.’
Nesbit knelt, opened his bag, put on some nitrile gloves and took out a flat wooden spatula. He pressed the rounded end against the girl’s stomach, opening the cut Oliver had pointed out.
‘The incision on the abdomen is deep, the hole goes right in. Hasn’t bled though. Strange.’ He moved his hands up and touched the girl’s breasts and then probed her right arm. ‘The skin doesn’t seem quite right either and there is an odd smell, more a fragrance.’
‘Soap?’ Savage suggested. ‘Could she have been washed?’
‘Possible, the skin is a bit puffy,’ Nesbit paused. ‘But there is something worrying me. Can’t quite figure it at the moment.’
‘Do you think she was killed somewhere else?’
‘Appears that way. Note the lividity in the buttocks and upper thighs? She was in a sitting position at or soon after death because the blood has pooled there. Quite unusual.’ Nesbit looked around, eyes drinking in every little detail. ‘No sign of a struggle taking place here, but I noticed several sets of footprints in the moss.’
Nesbit pointed towards the path and Savage spotted some indentations in the bright, green carpet, a trail leading to and from the girl’s body. They would have to work out which belonged to the killer, which to the farmer, and which to the PC who had first attended the scene.
‘Finished for the moment?’ Nesbit asked Oliver.
‘Yes, got a camera full, close-ups of all of her from tip to toe.’
‘Good.’ Nesbit took a digital thermometer with a remote probe from his bag and called across to the CSI. ‘Can you help me, please?’
Nesbit instructed the CSI to roll over the body and then he bent and inserted the probe into the girl’s rectum. While Nesbit did this Savage reflected on the fact that dignity and suspicious death were incompatible and that there would be far worse to come on the post-mortem table. Nesbit told the CSI to let the body lie flat again and he
