Chris Simms: Shifting Skin

‘And the lack of blood around the body. She was moved here?’

‘Just like last time. One thing I’m not sure about is the damage to her abdomen. The wounds are very rough.’

‘Dog bites,’ said Jon.

The pathologist looked dismayed and Jon was pleased to have broken through his professional detachment.

‘What’s your opinion now on this guy’s medical skills?’ Jon asked, hands in his pockets.

The doctor looked at him, regret tugging at the corners of his eyes. ‘To remove a face in its entirety like this takes a lot of time and skill.’ He crouched, extending a finger to the victim’s hairline. ‘He’s created a coronal flap by cutting from one ear, across the top of the forehead to the other ear. Then he’s peeled the skin away — not particularly hard where the forehead is con- cerned, since the peri-cranial flesh is quite loose and you only have the frontalis muscle to worry about.’ He pointed to his own forehead and raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s the one that lets you do that. Next, I imagine he made incisions down the sides of the face and right along the jawline. This is where it would have got complicated. The muscles in your body are attached to your bones by tendons. Your facial muscles differ from all your other muscles in that they attach directly to other muscles or to the skin, which is why the human face is capable of such an amazing array of expressions. The movement of one muscle has an effect on its neighbour — a kind of ripple effect, if you like.

‘Whoever did this has divided the skin from the ocular muscles — which surround the eye — almost perfectly.’ He pointed to an exposed eyeball. ‘Just a tiny nick here, then he’s carried on down the face, leaving all the muscles around the nose perfectly intact — I forget their names, levator and Compressor naris or something. Next, he reached the mouth. He’s removed her lips, with the result she now looks like she’s grinning for kingdom come. Perhaps that’s what he wanted.’

‘So he’s had formal training of some description?’ Jon asked, relieved to look away from the mutilated corpse.

‘He’s got surgical knowledge, without a doubt. The key to surgery is all about finding a plane — the layer between the dermis, or outer layer of skin, and the sub-dermal tissue. Once you’ve found your plane, you make your incision along it and the skin lifts away quite easily. But to find your plane and keep it while navigating all the contours of the face and its delicate arrangement of muscles? That’s quite a feat.’

Jon nodded his thanks and turned away. When he got his hands on whoever was doing this, the bastard had better admit to everything straight away. Otherwise it would take more than the duty officer to stop him visiting the sick fuck in his cell and beating a confession out of him with his bare hands.

By the time McCloughlin showed up, the body was shrouded by a white tent. The pathologist and photographer were inside and flashes kept going off, making it appear like they were in there enjoying a particularly morbid party.

‘DI Spicer,’ McCloughlin announced, rubbing his hands together. ‘First to the scene again?’

The comment wasn’t accompanied by a smile. On the Chewing Gum Killer case, Jon had arrived at a crime scene ahead of McCloughlin and the observations he’d made had eventually led him to the killer. It still bristled with McCloughlin.

‘Sir, I picked up the call to your desk phone,’ Rick intervened.

McCloughlin didn’t seem bothered and Jon glanced at Rick. So, the arrangement you have with McCloughlin extends to taking his phonecalls?

‘And Jon took the opportunity of teaching you how to crack a case all by yourself?’ McCloughlin walked off without waiting for an answer.

Rick spoke from the corner of his mouth. ‘Someone got out of bed the wrong side.’

Jon’s hands were clenched tight in his pockets. ‘I guess that’s our cue to bugger off.’

As they set off back to the car Jon spotted a petite figure with tousled black hair hurrying across the grass towards him. She was struggling slightly with what looked like a large plastic toolbox: Nikki Kingston, the crime-scene manager. He’d used just to fancy her, but with what they’d gone through during the Chewing Gum Killer investigation, the bond between them had deepened to a level he’d never dare let Alice know about.

‘Nikki, you’ve got this one?’

She smiled up at him. ‘Jon Spicer. My lucky day.’ Her eyes lingered on his for another heartbeat before she turned to Rick.

Jon coughed. ‘Nikki Kingston, crime-scene manager. DS Rick Saville, my new partner.’

Rick’s businesslike exterior underwent a fractional softening, and Jon noticed a lightness in his touch as he clasped her hand.

Nikki turned back to Jon. Something was sparking in her eyes and jealousy jabbed him in the chest. ‘So, am I reporting to you?’ she asked.

He shook his head, ‘I’m on another part of the investigation. Carol Miller, mainly.’

Her eyes widened. ‘You mean this one’s connected to the

Butcher? I was just told it was a naked body in a field.’

‘It is. Except her face is about two feet away from the rest of her.’

‘Oh, Jesus,’ Nikki winced.

Jon gave her a grim smile. ‘See you in the incident room.’ She turned and started towards the crime scene again.

The walk back to their car took Jon and Rick past a makeshift ramp made from an old door and a few breezeblocks. Bicycle tyres had scoured the grass in front of it and left muddy tracks across the door’s surface. As they stepped round it Jon spotted something.

‘Nikki!’ he called.

She turned, saw the urgency of his wave and came back.

‘Is that a latex glove?’ Jon said, pointing. It lay in the long grass beneath the door, fingers slightly curled as if caught in the act of trying to crawl from their sight.

She squatted down to get a closer look. ‘Yes, and that looks like blood covering it.’ She examined the ramp. It had been knocked out of alignment with the breezeblocks. Treading carefully, she scrutinised the area around the door. Pointing to a heel mark in the muddy patch by the foot of the ramp, she said,

‘Looks like someone could have bumped into it.’

Jon looked back at the tent covering the body. With a finger he drew a line in the air back towards the road. The ramp was right in the way.

‘What are you thinking?’ asked Rick.

‘Our man dumps the body and sets off back to his vehicle. Only it’s dark. He walks full into this ramp, stumbles and drops the glove.’

Nikki was nodding with excitement, ‘Don’t go any nearer. There’s another footprint there, too. We need to get this area taped off.’ She turned towards the main crime scene.

‘Nikki!’ He caught her hand. ‘When McCloughlin asks, it was Rick who found the glove.’

‘No way,’ Rick protested. ‘It was your find.’

Jon didn’t take his eyes off Nikki. ‘You heard me?’

‘Whatever,’ Nikki replied with a frown, twisting her fingers from his grip and running away.

In the car Jon began indicating to do a U-turn, then changed his mind. ‘Let’s go for a coffee. If we get back to the incident room now, everyone’s going to be pumping us for information, and there’s no way I’m taking the wind out of McCloughlin’s sails.’

‘Why’s he got it in for you?’ Rick asked.

Jon ran a hand over his knee, wondering how much Rick knew. ‘It’s old history. I had a stroke of luck.’

‘The Chewing Gum Killer?’

Jon looked out the side window and nodded.

‘That was the favourite topic of conversation last summer in

Chester House.’

‘Well, there you go. You know already.’