Dead To Me (3 page)

‘Hello,’ Gill greeted them all.

The girl was under a duvet, face partly visible, wedged between a sofa and a squat, dark-coloured coffee table. The table was slightly askew and tilted, one leg broken. The technicians would already have filmed and photographed the room before anyone else was allowed in, creating a record of the scene as close as possible to how it had been found. Phil Sweet, the CSM, was logging details and supervising everyone. Gill had worked with him maybe half-a-dozen times. He raised a gloved hand in acknowledgement. ‘Go round that way.’

Gill did as Phil said; using the stepping plates she skirted around the easy chair that stood near the kitchen door, close to where two markers indicated drops of blood, and past the coffee table to get closer to the victim.

She stared at the body, at the girl’s head angled slightly back and to the right, touching the base of the sofa. There was a slick of blood on the carpet beneath her, some dark stains on the edge of the duvet. Gill didn’t need a second opinion, this was a homicide. She straightened up and got out her phone to ring the coroner. The body legally belonged to the coroner and their authorization would be needed to order a post-mortem.

‘Who called us?’ she asked Phil as she selected the contact number.

‘Boyfriend; came in and found her like this.’

Gill nodded. Because he had been at the scene, the boyfriend would have to submit his clothes for examination as potential evidence and give a witness statement to assist the police.

‘Hello, Mr Minchin, Gill Murray here from MIT,’ she identified herself to the coroner. ‘I’m out at a job in Collyhurst: young, white, adult female. I’m thinking we’ve got ID, not formal as yet, looking like a stab wound. I’m after doing a forensic post-mortem?’

‘Be my guest. I’ll take the details.’

Gill told him the rudiments: the address and the apparent name of the victim: Lisa Finn. Her next call was to the pathologist, Ranjeet Lateesh. No one would touch the body or disturb anything at the scene until he’d arrived and been able to examine the body in situ.

She watched one of the CSIs start work with his fingerprint kit on the doorway and door handles into the room. The silver sooty powder he was smothering over the surfaces would be a bugger to clean off again afterwards.

‘Shoulder bag in the kitchen, bus ticket in there shows her on the bus at half-ten this morning. But we didn’t find her phone,’ Phil Sweet told them.

Gill groaned. The phone was a rich mine of information in any inquiry; traffic to and from helped them build not only a timeline but a network of contacts, and the content of texts would sometimes flag up animosity or threats. They’d have to approach the provider, who would be able to give them a log of incoming and outgoing calls and texts, but not the content of any texts, and not the pictures or music or videos or address book on the handset. With a little more time, the provider would also be able to give them the cell site location data and pinpoint where the phone was when calls were received and made. In effect, a tracking device.

‘They covered her up,’ Gill said. Wondering about that, whether it was a question of a perverted sense of respect or plain fear. It’s an instinctive response to hide a body, hide and run. There hadn’t been a duvet on the bed. Did the killer stop to fetch it? Wasting precious moments? No cover on the duvet. Gill could see patches of blood where it had soaked into the fabric along the top edge; there were older stains too, and the polycotton material was bobbled with use. Didn’t look as though the thing had ever been washed. She could see the pieces of foil under the coffee table, the small plastic tube, the lighter. Knew laundry wasn’t high on the priority list for a druggie.

When Ranjeet arrived he began by making an assessment of the scene as he found it. And agreed with Phil Sweet and Gill that the duvet should be tape-lifted for any potential forensic evidence before it was removed. Once that had been done and everybody was satisfied that they had thoroughly documented the scene as it was found, it was time to lift the bedding. A CSI took each end, aiming to remove the article as carefully as possible and cause minimum disruption. A CSI provided a large evidence sack for the duvet, sealed it and allocated a reference number.

Gill got her first good look at their victim. She wore an open, kimono-type housecoat, which was rucked up beneath her. A bloody incision marked her left breast close to her sternum and ribbons of blood had flowed from there down her side on to the floor. Blood on her right hand too, which lay on her belly. Nails bitten down. The housecoat was a floral design: white background with blowsy vivid pink-and-green flowers on. No knickers. She didn’t have much pubic hair. Not shaved, Gill thought, just immature – a teenager. Her hair was two-tone, partly covering the left side of her face, a bad bleach job growing out. Her mouth and nose were peppered with pimples. A row of silver-coloured earrings edged each of her ears; they made Gill think of the clasps they put on paint tins to keep the lids on. Her left arm was twisted at a peculiar angle, the hand forced under the forearm and pressed up against the strut at the base of the coffee table. Gill thought she’d probably hit the table as she’d fallen.

Ranjeet made notes in his smart phone and the CSIs got busy with the cameras.

‘Penetrating wound between the ribs,’ Ranjeet said, ‘massive blood loss. I suggest we tape-lift the body and swab in situ, then undress the body; rest post-mortem. We can move the table now.’

Gill stepped away, went to the window, looking out at the back, a tiny yard walled by broad, horizontal planks for fencing. Perfect climbing territory for a house burglar, but this girl had nothing worth taking. Unless somebody came to steal drugs. The telly in the corner by the window wasn’t a flat screen but an old monster, impossible to move without transport.

As they moved the table, the victim’s left arm slumped, gravity pulling it down, unfolding. ‘No sign of rigor,’ Gill said. If the body was still pliable and there were no obvious signs of decomposition, it meant the time of death was recent. Rigor came on a few hours after death and lasted for between one and three days, depending on the external conditions.

Ranjeet continued his examination. ‘Wound to the left arm,’ he pointed out, ‘probably defensive.’

Gill squatted down, careful not to get her feet in the puddle of blood congealing around the girl’s torso. The cut was a couple of inches below her wrist, along the edge of the bone. ‘The weapon?’ Gill asked.

‘No sign,’ said one of the CSI guys. Gill looked at the cut and at the tattoo that braceleted the girl’s wrist in gothic script. ‘Who’s Sean?’ she said.

‘Boyfriend,’ Phil supplied.

Ranjeet took the body temperature. He nodded at the result. ‘Thirty-five point nine, still warm.’ A CSI began the process of placing and removing tape on the girl’s body and then taking swabs from the mouth, nose and vagina.

Gill and Phil discussed what further actions should be taken to retrieve crime-scene evidence, among them recovering the remaining bed linen from the bedroom.

‘Undress her now.’ A large plastic sheet was placed to the side of the dead girl and then the body was lifted as carefully as possible and laid on it. The CSIs removed the housecoat, the back of it drenched in blood, and put it in an evidence bag.

‘We’ll be ready to lift her soon,’ Ranjeet said. The stretcher and the body bag were prepared. Any further examination of the body would be done at the mortuary as part of the post-mortem; they wouldn’t turn her over here and risk destroying evidence.

So, Lisa Finn, thought Gill as she prepared to leave, what the hell happened to you?

4

THERE WAS ALWAYS
that buzz when they picked up a job. A spurt of something in the gut, a kick-start to the heart. ‘You’re a ghoul, Janet,’ Ade had said to her one time.

‘I’m a detective,’ Janet said, ‘this is what I do, this is what I’m good at. We find the bastards, we get them sent down.’

The DCI had asked Janet to do the death message and to take Rachel with her. The worst thing about delivering the bad news was the sheer unpredictability of the reaction you got. One woman laughed, another threw up. Some people simply refused to believe you, arguing the toss, insisting that so-and-so was fine, they had seen them last night, they’d spoken to them on the phone. You had to sit them down and spell it out in big fat letters: D.E.A.D. Repeat it until they stopped blethering on:
she was going on holiday, he’s only twenty-two, she’s got an operation next week, she’s got children
. As if these facts – mundane, domestic, particular – could gainsay the truth. As if death could be reversed because
he’d got an interview for Morrisons tomorrow
.

Other people went numb, they listened and they nodded and didn’t utter a peep. They were polite and cooperative, but when you looked in their eyes there was no one home. They were absent, hiding. Then there were the ones that shot the messenger, tried to shut the door on them, and if they couldn’t do that in time, told them to fuck off, even lashed out, pinching, slapping, shoving.

Janet once had a cup of tea flung at her. A woman whose son had been killed in a homophobic attack. Five of them kicked him to death. When Janet broke the news, the woman had flinched, twisting her head to and fro as if trying to escape the facts she’d just heard, then reached for her mug and hurled the contents at Janet. The tea was hot but not boiling. Though she reared back, Janet had not cried out. She had simply wiped at her face and repeated her condolences, then assured the woman that they would find the people who had done it and put them in prison for life. And the woman had sat, shaking uncontrollably, the sound of her teeth chattering clear and loud in the stuffy room.

Where the victim was embroiled in violent crime already, the next of kin often knew before you said a word.
He’s dead, isn’t he? The stupid fucking bastard
. And behind the ruptured words all the years of effort and loving and arguing and fighting and the bitter knowledge that this was how it would end and now it had.
I told him. Never listened – silly sod wouldn’t have it
.

Most were shocked, bewildered, sometimes tearful. It was important to keep things simple, straightforward, to give the minimum amount of information possible, because at that point in time
dead
,
murdered
, was all they needed to know. That in itself was overload. The torrent of whys and hows and whens and who and
why, why, why
came later.

‘I’ll do it, if you like,’ Rachel said, in the car. ‘I’ve done a couple.’ It was pitch-dark now, the temperature dropping; there’d be freezing fog on the hills.

Janet glanced at her. ‘No, you’re fine,’ she said, after a pause.

Rachel considered whether to argue for it. She wondered if Janet was going to be one of those greedy gits who kept all the good stuff for herself so it would take Rachel twice as long to get the experience she needed. Women were still a minority in the service, especially at higher ranks, and most of the ones Rachel had worked with were good teachers, making sure other women coming after them had the same bite of the cherry as their male colleagues, encouraging them to specialize, to set their sights on moving up. There was a lot of mentoring went on. But Janet Scott? Maybe Rachel was a threat? Rachel considered asking her to stop so she could have a fag, but what if she said no? She’d have one after they’d informed the family, Janet could hardly drive off and leave her there without proving herself to be a right cow.

Denise Finn lived in Harpurhey, a short bus ride from Lisa’s, a two-up, two-down. Garden terraces, the estate agents called them, flying in the face of all the evidence. They had no gardens, only titchy backyards that originally housed the outside bog.

The street was still, quiet when they got out of the car, people tucked in, keeping warm. Here and there, where the curtains hadn’t been drawn at upper windows, the neon blue of televisions and computers flickered and swam. The windows at Denise’s were dark, but the hall light was on and the diamond of glass in the front door glowed yellow.

There was no bell or knocker, so Janet rattled the letter box.

Rachel looked up; no stars in the sky, just the blanket of fog. They heard movement in the house. Then a shadow rippled behind the glass in the door.

‘Denise Finn?’ Janet said when the door opened. ‘I’m DC Janet Scott, Manchester Metropolitan Police, and this is DC Rachel Bailey. May we come in?’

‘Why?’ the woman asked. She looked to be in her fifties, her face lined, nose and cheeks criss-crossed with broken veins, jawline softening, grey hair mixed with the brown. Her hair was frizzy, brittle. Her glasses magnified her eyes. She wore a black sweater that had seen better days and navy joggers.
10 Years Younger
, thought Rachel, prime candidate. Ten years older once she’s heard what we’ve got to tell her.

‘We’d like to come in,’ Janet said, moving forward, giving the woman no choice but to back away and turn, taking them through the front room, past the open stairs and into the back where the television was showing
Emmerdale
. The house smelled of cigarettes and chip fat and some floral chemical, air freshener perhaps, that made Rachel want to gag.

Denise stood there. ‘What’s going on?’ She picked up the remote, muted the television. ‘Is it our Lisa? Is she in bother again?’

‘Please, Mrs Finn, sit down,’ Janet said.