He turned to Sid. ‘I don’t know which pathologist is on duty, but I want McGuire senior here – again, I don’t care what he’s doing – probably golfing if I know him, but he’s to get here. No one else is to go anywhere near that scene till first Professor Carlton has viewed it and second, Dr McGuire. Understood?’
‘But, what about my investigators – half of them are upstairs.’
‘Get them to process the rooms upstairs. What is there – a bathroom and two bedrooms?’
Sid, looking like he might begin to object again, inhaled, and then nodded. ‘Yes.’
Gus looked into the living room, which had a couple of chairs, a large screen TV, and a small table with two chairs at opposite sides. ‘Cellar head kitchen?’ Gus referred to the cramped kitchen area situated at the top of the cellar stairs on some back to back homes.
Again, Sid nodded.
‘Right, plenty for your lot to process, but I don’t want that body removed till they’ve seen it.’
He motioned for another foot plate, which Sid placed to the side and said to Alice, ‘You stay down here. I’ll go up, have a shifty, take a couple of photos to send to Compo, and then you can look.’ Alice nodded.
Stepping on the stair plates, Gus approached the body, deliberately schooling himself to avoid looking at her face. He wanted to remain impartial for the time being. Plenty of time to allow his empathy to kick in once he’d absorbed the crime scene. For now, allowing his emotions to intrude, would only dull his observations. The victim was a woman, naked, hanging from a rope that had been attached to a pulley type system in the ceiling, it’s other end attached to the banister. This would have made it quite easy to hoist the victim up, which meant Gus couldn’t be sure whether their killer chose this method purely for ease, or because they lacked the strength to hang her without the pulley system. Whatever, the thought the killer had put into his or her methodology chilled Gus to the bone. It was precise and cold.
Looking past the woman, not allowing his gaze to linger on her features, Gus studied the pulley system in more detail. It looked like bog-standard one you could pick up in any DIY store and was definitely not the sort of thing most households would have on their ceiling. His gaze drifted back to the floor, before he yelled down to Sid who waited at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Hey, Sid. This pulley – you reckon our killer drilled it in?’
‘Well spotted, Gus. Yep, that’s our take on it. We found traces of plaster dust on the floor indicating that the killer took the time to drill a hole for it – devious fucker if you ask me.’
‘Hmm, wonder why he chose this specific location. Any of the ceilings in the other rooms would have been equally effective, but this sicko chose the stairs.’
‘Could’ve been to give maximum impact when the door at the bottom was opened?’ Alice’s suggestion was valid.
Gus nodded. ‘Or maybe it was just so he could use the banister to tie the rope to after he’d winched her up there.’
This would be one of the things that would no doubt become more apparent later in the investigation. Though he was reluctant to put it into words, Gus suspected that, due to the ritualistic positioning of the body, this wouldn’t be a one-off killing.
The hairs at the back of his neck had stood on end when he’d first seen the way things had been laid out under the victim. Gus’s gaze was drawn to her varnished toenails. Had she had them professionally done for the summer months? The thought saddened him. It was such an everyday sort of activity – one their victim would never do again. Patti, Gus’s ex-girlfriend, used to have her nails professionally done on a regular basis. Something Gus considered a complete waste of money but was wise enough to keep to himself.
On the carpet beneath the body lay a piece of A4 paper ripped from a sketchpad with a pencil sketch of a woman hanging from a rope. It was a skillful drawing, and Gus wondered why the killer had left it there. It wasn’t of the victim, but it clearly held some significance to the killer. What was particularly interesting was that the items sketched by the unknown artist under the woman were the same as those arranged beneath this body; A candle that had burnt down to the wick, but now he was closer, Gus could identify as being lavender scented, a sprig of lavender, a chocolate biscuit – a digestive with a single bite taken from it and a folded sheet of A4 paper. ‘You looked at the folded paper, Sid?’
‘Yep, bossman. Bloody creepy if you ask me.’
Gus lifted it between his forefinger and thumb, gently opening it. On it was printed the first verse of a children’s nursery rhyme.
Lavender’s blue, Dilly, dilly
Lavender’s green
When I am King, Dilly, dilly
You shall be Queen
Gus shook his head. Well, at least the candle and the sprig of lavender now made some sort of warped sense – hopefully Carlton would be able to interpret it.
When Gus lifted the paper with the rhyme on it, he revealed an ultrasound scan image of a foetus. As he registered what he was seeing, a groan escaped Gus’s lips before he could stop it. It looked like, not only was this woman dead, but she may have been pregnant too. Gus’s fists clenched. What a fucking waste. He looked up at the body that
