‘Well, there weren’t any.’
‘He said the so-called classic signs were absent.’
‘Great. So how does he know she was suffocated?’
‘He found pressure marks at the base of her neck.’
‘She was
‘Will you let me explain, guv? This wasn’t a strangling. These marks were here.’ He tapped his own shoulders where the collar of his T-shirt met his neck. ‘About here, on each side, where the killer pressed into the flesh with thumbs and knuckles. You wouldn’t have seen because of that hooded jacket she was wearing. The pressure was through her clothes.’
‘To obstruct the arteries?’
Halliwell shook his head. ‘You’re getting ahead of me again. Dr Sealy said in his opinion she was suffocated with a plastic bag pulled down over her head and held there until she stopped struggling, which happened rapidly.’
There was an interval of silence while the method registered with Diamond. ‘An ordinary plastic bag?’
‘Except most carrier bags have little holes punched into them.’
‘Right. This one was airtight?’
‘She was already seated,’ Halliwell went on, ‘so the killer would have entered the box from behind and slipped the bag over her head.’
‘Simple as that?’
‘Not quite. You and I might think she died from lack of oxygen, but sometimes a neurochemical reaction kicks in and the death is from cardiac arrest. He said in cases like that, the skin turns pale rather than congested and there aren’t any of the signs you’d normally expect in asphyxia.’
‘As I noted at the scene,’ Diamond said with more than a hint of self-congratulation.
‘It was a quick death, apparently, and the panic in the victim very likely contributed to the speed of it.’
Diamond exhaled sharply. ‘Nasty.’
‘And it didn’t require much strength.’
‘Surely she’d have grabbed at the bag and tried to pull it off.’
‘Very likely, but the force downwards is stronger than her trying to get a grip and push it up. By grabbing the bag she was tightening the pressure against her nose and mouth. And she wouldn’t have been heard. She was out of sight of the audience, anyway.’
‘She may have scratched her attacker.’
‘I wouldn’t mind betting he – or she – wore gloves.’
Halliwell had sketched the scene vividly enough for Diamond to visualise how the killing may have worked, and it was gruesome in its efficiency. ‘And there’s no other way to read these marks?’
‘He said not. The bruising on the shoulders was definitely man-made, recent and prior to death.’
‘We didn’t find a bag at the scene.’
‘Well, the killer wouldn’t have left it there.’
He had to agree. ‘You’re right, Keith. This wasn’t the work of someone careless.’
‘Will you tell the press?’
A difficult question. It had crossed Diamond’s mind already, without any prompting from Halliwell. The police are trained to be selective with information. Sometimes details known only to the killer are held back for tactical reasons. The news that Clarion Calhoun was dead would get banner headlines. To reveal that she’d been murdered in this manner would put the media machine into overdrive and make his task that much harder to perform. Yet if they weren’t told, they’d ferret out the truth in a matter of hours. He could see no advantage in playing the long game. ‘I’ll lay out all the main facts.’
It was agreed that Halliwell would brief the CID team shortly before Diamond broke the news to the press. ‘Tell them to put their private lives on hold. It’s overtime for everyone.’
He kept the press conference down to under twenty minutes. His stark opening statement made the strong impact he intended and gave the hacks their juicy quotes. The questions that followed were mostly reactive to the crime rather than targeted to the investigation. He dealt with them in short answers and came out feeling less battered than sometimes.
In the CID room he braced himself for a more searching examination. Everyone was there, buoyed up by Halliwell’s briefing. Even Georgina had come downstairs to listen.
‘It’s the most public murder enquiry we’ve ever had in this city,’ Diamond told them. ‘We must be razor sharp. Speaking of which, where’s John Leaman?’
A hand went up at the back of the room.
‘You’re in charge of the search of the theatre. The box where she was killed has been gone through by the crime scene people, but the rest of the building hasn’t. Comb the place for the murder weapon, the plastic bag. The killer may have dumped it in some bin thinking it wouldn’t be noticed. Take as many coppers with you as uniform can spare. If you see anyone acting suspiciously, report it to me. Inge?’
‘Guv?’
‘Go through all the statements we took in the theatre last night. Look at everyone’s movements, especially during the interval. We have three obvious suspects, Shearman, Melmot and Binns. Each of them knew ahead of
