Cath Staincliffe: Hit and Run

‘It’s not you – it’s him,’ she told him. ‘You’ll get there. He can’t put it off forever he’ll have to promote you. He did the same with me.’

Richard sighed, slapped at the wall in frustration.

‘You’ll get it, you will.’

She recalled her own promotion to Chief Inspector. Not the most favourite day of her life. Oh, the promotion had been a triumph – it was what followed that had floored her. Going home to celebrate with her husband Pete, only to find him in bed – yes, their bed – with the home help. End of celebration, end of marriage. She’d given Pete a second chance, felt obliged to, seeing as she was six months pregnant with baby number four, but Pete had picked Tina the cleaner instead. Work had kept Janine sane then. A place apart from all the miserable pain of splitting up.

Richard sighed harshly again, shook his head, still annoyed.

Janine looked at him. ‘So, you going to stay here and have a paddy or shall we get on with it?’

He glowered at her for a moment, and then relented, knowing she was right. He jerked his head in assent.

‘I’m off to the post-mortem,’ she told him. ‘Pull everyone in for two. Incident room one.’

When his mobile rang, Chris Chinley was flushing out a central heating radiator in the backyard of the house where he was working. The black sludge guttered out from one end as he poured water in the other. Not been cleared for maybe forty years, full of silt and grit.

He grunted at the ring tone and lowered the radiator, balancing it against the weathered brick wall. Only a small yard in spite of the size of the house: three storeys, four bedrooms, high ceilings, each with the original plaster rose and covings.

Chris pulled his phone from the back pocket of his jeans, already anticipating another customer. Business was booming. A shortage of plumbers had coincided with soaring demand. People wanted two or even three bathrooms in a property, ensuite to the master bedroom, showers and bidets, sometimes a jacuzzi. He’d actually done a hot tub the previous month, in Hale, Cheshire – richest area outside of London.

He didn’t recognise the caller number on display. ‘Chinley’s,’ he said.

Chris listened to the voice on the phone. He swallowed hard, ran his free hand over the coarse, close-cropped hair on his skull. Shaking his head, he stared down at the flagstones, watched the pitch-black water stutter from the radiator, thin to a trickle, then snake along the cracks between the flags and into the gutter that ran out to the alley at the back.

Post-mortems were never pleasant but Janine attended them whenever she could. It helped her maintain a good working relationship with the pathologists but, more importantly, it was something she felt she owed the victim. To bear witness. The aroma of the river still clung in the air. The woman lay, still wrapped in the rubbish bags, on the dissecting table. Her face was a horrible mess; Janine took it in with a glance and cast her gaze elsewhere.

She listened intently while Susan worked on the woman’s body, sharing in the meticulous process of description and observation as first the external, then internal examinations were made. Susan photographed the body, took measurements and made notes of its appearance before cutting away the wrappings and removing the plastic gym weights. After taking more photographs and x-rays, including dental x-rays, she took samples from the wounds on the face and thigh, scrapings from under the nails and a number of hairs. Then she began the process of dissection: opening the body and examining, removing and weighing the major organs. Susan took blood samples from the heart, tissue and fluid from the lungs and a sample of stomach contents for toxicology. She swabbed the orifices.

The smell affected Janine more than the sight of these things. The unmistakeable offal odour of liver and lungs. And the sound of the saw, when Susan opened the skull.

Janine thanked her when the procedure was over and offered to get her a snack from the canteen.

‘Something to keep me going?’ Susan said wryly.

Janine smiled, acknowledging the tactic. She wanted the report in time for her briefing.

‘Chicken korma on granary, black coffee, banana.’ Susan removed her gloves with a flourish.

Janine bowed. It was the least she could do.

By two o’clock the photographs of the body and the riverside site were already up on the boards in the incident room. A video loop was running on a monitor, detailing the recovery of the corpse and location shots of the immediate vicinity. Maps on one wall depicted the river and push-pins in blue indicated locations that would be searched to try and determine where the body had entered the water. Three of these pins had already been replaced with yellow ones – these places had already been visited and nothing had been found.

The incident room was on the fifth floor of the building, windows on three sides giving a clear vista out across the city centre and nearby Salford; rooftops, canals, the quays and the wide Manchester sky; here and there the distinctive outline of a landmark building: the prow of the Lowry, the triangular peak of Urbis and a sea of cranes bobbing and wheeling in the never-ending business of construction.

Janine moved in front of the boards, signalling to those milling about that they were ready to begin. Over twenty people occupied the room, most in civilian clothes, one or two uniforms. The hubbub of chatter died down as people slid into seats and opened their notebooks. Keeping detailed records at every stage of an enquiry was a detective’s lot: nothing was said, acted upon or looked into without an entry into an officer’s daybook. It became second nature, ingrained.

Janine smiled in welcome. ‘I’m DCI Lewis; some of you have worked with me before.’

‘Thought you looked familiar,’ Butchers said, ‘something’s different though.’ He mimed a bump on his stomach.

‘Still got yours, haven’t yer?’ Shap shot back at him, nodding in the direction of Butchers’ paunch. Butchers glowered, sat up straighter.

Janine continued, introducing the senior officers to the room. ‘Detective Inspector Richard Mayne, Sergeant Butchers and Sergeant Shap. Any uncertainties about procedure, any questions or problems,’ she told the DCs, ‘these guys,’ she gestured to the two sergeants, ‘are your first port of call. This will be our dedicated incident room. So what have we got?’ She turned to the boards. ‘Unknown victim was seen in the river at Northenden just before eight this morning. First priority is to try and identify her. Our second to establish where she was killed.’

‘It’s likely that the body entered the river to the east,’ Richard said, pointing to the wall map and indicating the large area they were searching, ‘so that narrows it down,’ he added dryly. ‘We’re searching all known access points within a five mile area.’

Janine raised the report she held. ‘The post-mortem confirms the victim was in her early twenties. Malnourished as a child and since. Pregnant, about two months.’ She noted the rustle of unease at that bit of information. ‘Signs of recent sexual activity. Cause of death – strangulation. Time of death estimated to be within twenty-four hours of her discovery The trauma to the face occurred post mortem, as did the removal of skin from the thigh. And I don’t think he was collecting souvenirs.’

‘Someone wants her incognito,’ said Shap.

‘Heavy; rectangular object used on the face, possibly a brick,’ Richard elaborated. ‘The lab will do a drugs and toxins screening.’

‘They’ve also recovered some tissue from under her fingernails; we’re running DNA on that. Anything else?’ She invited contributions from the floor.