According to its label, the dress was sold by Dorothy Perkins. The name sounded familiar to him, so he thought it was probably a high street brand. Bliss asked Carolyn to stand up. When she got to her feet, he held the dress up against her.
‘You think the size on the tag is right?’ he asked her.
‘I’d say so, yes. This could be two whole sizes bigger than me, so I think this is a genuine fourteen.’
Next came the shoes. The brand name looked to have been on the inside heel, but had been worn away. But when he turned the shoe over, he saw on the instep a figure and some lettering. On closer inspection, it was a sticker that had not been peeled off. It told him the shoe was a size seven, made in China from manmade materials.
‘We can get an accurate measurement from pathology,’ he said. ‘But a seven would be pretty big for a girl as petite as our victim, wouldn’t you say?’
Carolyn nodded emphatically. ‘Absolutely, sir. They also look to be a wide fit, which again would suggest they belonged to somebody much larger. Perhaps the owner of the dress.’
To Miller, the bra still looked as if it could be right. Bliss had no clue. However, as one of the cups had also contained the two business cards tucked away inside the lining, he had to ask searching questions about their find. Until this juncture they’d had no reason to ask whether their victim was the one who had secreted the cards away, but it was now a matter for urgent re-examination.
The exhibits officer had already given her opinion regarding the size of the lacy red crotchless knickers. Bliss had another question. ‘The bra and knickers don’t match. I don’t mean to be indelicate, Carolyn, but… I’m right in saying that’s quite common, yes?’
She smiled. Nodded. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘For a regular woman going about her regular day,’ he added, thinking out loud. He recalled the escort agency photographs online. ‘But not for an escort about to meet her client. Sorry, I’m rambling. I can’t be sure what that tells us.’
So wrapped up in the moment was he that Bliss had failed to notice colleagues drifting into the incident room. Behind him, Chandler cleared her throat and said, ‘What have I told you about messing around with ladies’ underwear, Jimmy?’
Bliss started, dragged out of wherever his mind had wandered. He turned, saw the team eyeballing him, and gave an embarrassed smile. ‘To wait until it’s been worn at least half a dozen times without being washed before sniffing it?’ he shot back.
Chandler’s look was one of disgust. ‘At the very least. So, what’s on your mind?’
‘Sorry about that. I was miles away. Let’s begin at the beginning. Starting with handing out these coffees.’
***
Bliss assembled the team, which today included both DCI Warburton and Detective Superintendent Fletcher. He and the DSI exchanged nods as she made her way over to her usual spot at the back of the room. Prior to the slow slicing case, Fletcher had been seeking promotion. She’d missed out on the job at nearby Hinchingbrooke, which would have given her overall responsibility for Peterborough and the teams at Thorpe Wood. Bliss still wondered if his behaviour had cost her that step up, or if she was merely biding her time. He hoped it was the latter; he liked having her in that position, but not if she was stuck there against her will, with him the reason for it.
‘We have a surprising turn of events,’ he said, kicking off the briefing. ‘Due to the eagle eye and great instincts of Carolyn Miller, our exhibits officer for Operation Phoenix, we have another piece of the puzzle. Only trouble is, this one doesn’t help us, as far as I can tell. In fact, in some ways it takes us further away from completing the entire picture.’
Bliss went on to explain their findings. ‘I know some of you arrived at the tail end of our musings at the time,’ he said. ‘But it’s important that we are all on the same page here. So far we have been working on two main theories: firstly, that our victim, Majidah Rassooli, was murdered for plying her trade on the side; and secondly, that she was strangled to death by a punter. Those were our order of priority in respect of actions so far. I won’t argue if anybody suggests we came up with the theories and tried to run the investigation along those lines. Yes, it would be great if we could do things the other way around, but every so often you get something more obvious. This looked like one of those cases.’
‘Are you now saying it isn’t, sir?’ Hunt asked.
‘No. Not quite. I’m saying this fresh evidence has thrown a bloody big rusty spanner into the works. We were thinking along the lines that one of the agencies Majidah worked for had discovered she was hooking on the side. Stripping her naked and piling up her clothes didn’t sit quite right, but we seldom know all the circumstances. I never liked the alternative theory, of a punter who got out of hand. It felt too contrived, too much work afterwards. The location never quite did it for me, either.’
‘Which makes this odd matter of the clothing being the wrong size even more peculiar,’ DCI Warburton said.
‘Precisely, boss. That would
