Cath Staincliffe - Bleed Like Me

Gill showed her warrant card to the man staffing the crime scene perimeter at the entrance to the drive. He signed her in and she ducked under the tape and followed the designated path that had been marked out along the lane. To her right, parallel to the side of the pub, was a long single-storey building, roof long gone and the internal walls reduced to piles of stone. Probably stables for the inn, during its heyday. The car park at the back was almost deserted. Just a small grey hatchback parked at the far side.

The ground was hard-packed earth, rutted where heavy vehicles had churned up mud. Much of the lot was overrun with weeds, cow parsley and dandelions and nettles, suggesting it wasn’t prone to heavy use.

Either side of the main double doors were picnic tables, the wood grey and splintered, and to the right in the corner a play area with a rusting swing set and a climbing frame. There was a second single door almost at the corner of the building. CSIs had protected both entrances with tents.

The main doors were ajar and Gill read the brass plate above them: Owen Cottam, licensed for the sale of alcoholic beverages for consumption on the premises .

‘Gill Murray.’ The man, suited and booted like Gill, came out of the building.

‘Gerry. You CSM?’ Responsible for managing the crime scene.

‘Coordinator,’ Gerry said. ‘They tell you we’ve got three victims?’

‘Three! Oh, God.’ Gill felt the kick of adrenalin speed up her pulse though she was professional enough to appear calm and collected.

‘Three separate scenes. Gonna be a long day,’ he added.

Week, month, Gill thought. Each scene would have its own crime scene manager and Gerry would oversee them all.

‘Take you up?’

Up . She heard the word and revised her expectations. Upstairs. Not a bar fight, then. Unless they’d a function room upstairs and someone got killed without any of the other guests noticing. And again, how come the landlord hadn’t summoned help till now?

The interior of the inn was gloomy. No one had turned any lights on. A cardinal rule of crime scene management. Touch nothing, preserve the scene. The CSIs would bring in any lighting required, to enable photographs and video to be taken of the scene, to allow the techs to document and recover any evidence. After all, who knew if a fingerprint might be on the light switch. Might tell a crucial part of the story. There was always a story.

Gill followed Gerry through the pub to the right with its smell of damp carpet and beer and old cooking oil and cigar smoke. Years since the smoking ban but nicotine still tainted the air.

The place was cavernous, though some attempts had been made to section off the space with booths and some raised sections. As her eyesight adjusted she could see that the banquette seats looked greasy with use, and the fussy wallpaper, Regency stripes, had come away in some places. Design circa 1980s, Gill guessed, thirty years out of date.

A door marked Private led off the bar into a narrow hallway, with an external door to the right (the one she’d noticed from the outside) and stairs leading up to the left. The tenants’ entrance. So they could come and go without traipsing through the pub itself.

The fire door at the top of the stairs had been propped open and they went through it, took a quarter turn to the left on to a short landing. ‘Bathroom on the right,’ Gerry said, ‘kitchen and living room on the right.’ Both doors were shut. The landing led to a hallway that ran down the centre of the building with doors off either side. Stepping plates had been placed on the carpet along the hall to protect the scene and small markers sat here and there, indicating potential evidence.

Gerry turned left. ‘First scene – master bedroom,’ he said. The room would look out on to the road at the front. Viewed from the road it would be in the extreme right corner of the building.

Gill could hear the murmur of voices, the sound of the CSM and CSI techs already busy at work. She pulled her mask on. They stepped inside. Gill greeted the people there, who were filming in the light from a stand of specially rigged lamps, then focused on the scene.

The victim lay in the double bed. Face up, eyes closed, covered by the duvet from the waist down. Her hands were out of sight. The woman, dark-haired, looked to be in her late thirties, Gill thought. She wore a nightdress. From the short sleeves you could see it had once been blue with sprigs of dark blue flowers printed on it, but now the bulk of it across the whole of the woman’s torso was dark red, the colour of drying blood. The smell, sickly sweet, hung in the air.

The room was otherwise undisturbed. Make-up and jewellery on the dressing table. A round stool in front of it. A fitted wardrobe along the outer wall, easy chair by the window, blue velvet curtains closed. Wicker laundry basket by the door. Gill noticed the bedside tables, his and hers, water glasses and lamps on both, alarm clock on his side, a mobile phone, indigestion mixture and book on hers.

‘No sign of a struggle,’ Gill said.

‘No defence wounds, or nothing visible anyway,’ Gerry agreed.

‘She’s not been posed,’ Gill said.

‘Don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Be hard to move her without getting blood everywhere.’

Gill peered closer. Could see two puncture slits on the chest where a sharp implement had pierced the nightdress and the woman’s body. The puckered fabric, knitted to the congealing blood around the edges of wounds.

A sudden volley of barking made Gill start. What the fuck?

‘Pet dog in the kitchen,’ Gerry said, nodding back towards the stairs. ‘The next one’s this way.’

In the hall, crime scene tape demarcated the next crime scene, in the adjoining room. In order not to contaminate either by tracking evidence with them, both Gill and Gerry changed into fresh paper suits, boots, gloves and mask. Sealing the ones they had already used in bags and labelling them.

For the same reason a separate team of CSIs were at work in this room under the guidance of their own crime scene manager. And a further log was being kept of who entered and left each scene.

A plaque on the door read Penny , the letters made out of pink and red hearts. A girl, perhaps eleven or twelve, lay prone on her bed, face partly hidden by her dark hair turned to one side. The back of her pyjama jacket was thick with blood. The duvet was hanging off the foot of the bed, smeared with blood. Gill noticed the girl had painted toenails, glittery pink. She was slightly built, bony ankles and slender wrists. Just a child. Gill felt her guts tighten in response, the pity of it, always that extra sense of tragedy with a child involved, but it would not affect her ability to do her job. If anything, she would strive even harder.

Gill surveyed the room. One wall had fitted wardrobes, white with folding shuttered doors, the others were a mix of posters, One Direction and Justin Bieber, and drawings: cartoon figures, anime style, Penny signed at the bottom of them. The girl had liked to draw. There was a photograph too, which Gill looked closely at. A family group on a sofa. The woman from the room next door with a baby in her arms; a man, well built, with a moustache and close dark hair, had a toddler on his lap. In between the adults was Penny. They were smiling for the camera. The toddler had one hand up, touching the man’s cheek; the child was turned slightly towards the man and his mouth was open as though he was telling him something.

A row of stuffed toys – a dragon, a panda, a meerkat – occupied a long shelf next to a desk cum dressing table. Homework and make-up littered the table and mounted above it was a flat screen television.