implemented.
The road was completely sealed off from the roundabout. Nothing and no one could get in or out. Workers in businesses along the quay had been given a few hours of enforced leisure and gawping. Phil didn’t think they’d mind.
Over the other side of the river and on the bridge, gawkers were gathering. Phil had ordered the erection of a white tent over the body, both to preserve the crime scene and to deter onlookers. As always, he wasn’t sure if doing that didn’t just make them even more curious.
A full team of CSIs was scrutinising the deck of the boat and working their way out to the quay and the road. Taking impressions left on the ground, scraping surfaces, bagging and cataloguing anything that struck them as potentially interesting. Not for the first time, and definitely not for the last, the blue-suited, booted, masked and gloved figures reminded Phil of a haz-mat team stopping the spread of a lethal virus. Which in a sense, he supposed, was what they were.
As Phil watched, his hand instinctively went to his ribs. Nothing. No pain. It had been absent for months but it still surprised him.
He had been victim of panic attacks since he was a boy. He knew what had caused them originally – the children’s homes he had grown up in weren’t known for their nurturing atmosphere. In fact, they were at the cutting edge of Darwinism. They were bound to leave some scars, whether physical, mental, emotional or all three. When he had finally settled down with Don and Eileen Brennan, his foster-parents, later his adoptive ones and, ultimately, the only people he dared call Mum and Dad, the panic attacks had ceased. But during his police career they had made return visits. Usually mild, but sometimes crippling. Always at moments of great stress. Like a huge iron fist was wrapping itself round his ribs and squeezing as hard as it could. Squeezing the life out of him.
He knew some officers who would have milked the situation, seen a doctor, taken paid sick leave with union backing. But Phil wasn’t like that. He had told no one, preferring to cope himself.
But he hadn’t had one in months. Not since…
Not since he and Marina had set up home together. Not since he’d became a father.
But he still felt his body for the attacks. Braced himself for their return. Because it was only a matter of time until something happened, some dark trigger tripped and that iron fist would have him in its grip once more. Only a matter of time.
But not today. And not now. Or at least not yet.
Nick Lines, the pathologist, was examining the body in place. He called to Phil.
‘I’m about to turn her. Want to see?’
Phil hurried back up the gangplank, on to the boat.
Nick Lines was only slightly more animated and lifelike than the corpses he worked with. Stripped of his paper suit, and despite the warmth, he stood dressed in a three-piece suit, pointed shoes, his tie loosened at the neck. He was tall, thin and bald; his glasses, perched on the end of his nose, might have looked fashionable on someone else. He wore the kind of expression that might have got him a part-time job either as a professional mourner or the kind of character actor in horror films who warned teenagers not to stray off the path into the woods. This expression, Phil knew from years of experience, hid a razor-sharp intellect and an even sharper – and dryer – wit.
Nick, together with a CSI, turned the body over.
‘Oh God…’
‘Hmm…’ Nick was masking any revulsion he may have felt by appearing to be professionally interested. For all Phil knew, he might have been.
Phil pointed. ‘Are those… hook marks?’
Nick peered at the back of the woman’s body. There were two huge wounds underneath her shoulder blades where something large and sharp had been gouged into her flesh.
‘Looks that way. By the way the flesh has torn, she must have been hung up to be tortured.’
‘Great.’ Phil felt his own stomach pitch. Emotions hurled themselves around inside him. Anger at what had been done. Revulsion. Sorrow. And a hard, burning flame in the pit of his stomach that made him want to catch the person who had done this. He stood up, turned away from the body. ‘So what have we got to go on, Nick?’
Nick stood also. ‘Not a lot. Female, mid-twenties. Tortured, sexually mutilated, murdered.’
‘In that order?’
Nick glanced at the body. ‘Your guess is as good as mine at the moment. But if I had to stick my neck out I’d say, judging by blood pooling and lividity, the sexual mutilation was carried out after the killing.’
Mickey Philips and Rose Martin came onboard. Rose had her notebook in hand, open.
‘You’d better stand near the side, Mickey,’ said Phil. ‘In case you go again.’
Mickey Philips was about to argue then got a look at the body. He moved over to the side.
‘Cause of death?’ asked Rose, her face rigidly composed.
Nick shrugged. ‘Take your pick. Knife wounds, chain wounds… she was comprehensively worked over.’ He sighed and, for the first time that day, Phil saw genuine concern break through the man’s brittle mask. ‘And from the looks of it, whatever the weapons were, they’d been… augmented.’
Phil fell silent, contemplative. He knew what that meant. Hammers. Nails. Razors. Blades. Julie Miller, if it was her, hadn’t died easily.
Phil swallowed. ‘Time of death?’
Nick looked round at the sky, back to Phil, a gesture that made him look like he was thinking but was more about regaining his composure. ‘It’s a hot day, Phil. Clearly, she was killed elsewhere and brought here. From what I can make out of the internal blood pooling and lividity in her body she was lying on her back for some time. Best I can do at the moment.’
Phil turned away, walked down the gangplank. The image of the dead woman seared on his retinas. The hatred someone must have felt to do that…
Nick called out to him. ‘I’ll let you know when I’ve got anything.’
‘Thanks, Nick.’
Phil called Mickey and Rose to him. Looked at the pair of them. His new team. He hoped they were as good as… Just hoped they were good. ‘Right,’ he said, ‘this is it. I should imagine this case is going to be high priority so I need you to be on top of your game here. Pool information. Support each other. No mavericking, right?’
They both nodded.
‘Right,’ said Phil. ‘Here’s what needs to happen. The Birdies should be here soon. They can-’
Mickey Philips laughed. ‘The what?’
‘Birdies,’ said Phil, impatient at the interruption. ‘DC Adrian Wren and DS Jane Gosling. Hence, the Birdies. Adrian can follow Nick to the mortuary, do chain of evidence. Jane can get started with you, Mickey, on the door- to-door.’
Mickey Philips looked around. ‘Over there?’
‘Start with the businesses here. Someone might have been in early, seen something. Then after that…’ He looked across the river. ‘The flats over there. Coordinate with uniforms. Rose, you handle that. You’ve done it before, see what Julie Miller’s neighbours have to say.’
Rose nodded. Phil looked saw the eagerness in her eyes. Ready, burning to go. He hoped that energy wasn’t misplaced. He didn’t want her making mistakes. Either of them, for that matter.
‘I’ll get Milhouse to set up the incident room back at Southway, get a mobile one put here, couple of uniforms manning it. Bit of presence, you never know.’ He looked between the two of them.
‘What about where she was killed, boss?’ said Mickey. ‘Should we be looking for that?’
‘Initiative is good,’ said Phil, ‘and I approve, but, as our esteemed leader DCI Fenwick would say, that would be creating a needle/haystack interface.’
Mickey, surprised at Phil criticising his superior, smiled. Phil also noticed that Rose’s attention sharpened at the mention of Fenwick’s name. He caught the look, filed it away with the other stuff.
Phil continued. ‘We think we know who she is. Once that’s confirmed, hopefully the where and the why will follow.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anni should be joining us soon, so that’s one more body.’ He looked between the pair of them. ‘Any questions?’
If they had, they were keeping them to themselves.
Phil breathed in, out. No pain. His ribs felt fine.
