Lee Weeks - Cold as Ice

‘In a cell; he’s given his statement already. Now he’s waiting for someone to be free to tell him he can leave.’

‘Good. Make him sweat for a few hours.’ He shook his head, trying to shake off a headache. He’d spent the evening reminiscing with an old friend and a bottle of JD and now he was beginning to feel the hangover start. He rubbed his face and sighed. ‘What’s the matter with people? Should have respect for another human being. Now we’ve got the frigging newspapers before we’ve even had a chance to assess the situation, let alone inform the family.’

Carter pulled back the entrance to the crime scene tent and stooped as he stepped inside; Willis followed. The smell hit Carter so hard that he was in danger of throwing up. He instinctively drew his scarf up over his nose.

‘Doctor Harding?’

A blonde-haired woman in a white forensic suit was kneeling beside the remains of the woman, which were bloated and blackened by the water. The woman’s head was inside a polythene bag. She had wounds as big as teacups that had eaten into her body.

Doctor Harding looked up and nodded. She didn’t smile. She wasn’t one for automatic gestures of politeness. ‘Willis…’ She handed Ebony a pair of gloves. ‘Help me with the body.’ A police photographer moved around and between them in the small tent as he took pictures of the body.

Carter spoke from behind his scarf. ‘How old do you put her, Doc?’

‘Mid-twenties.’

‘Any birthmarks, operation scars? Anything that might help us to identify her?’

‘There’s a tattoo running up the outside of her left ankle.’ Harding turned the victim’s left leg over. ‘I think it’s something written in Norse. I saw something like it once before, on a bald-headed man. That time it turned out to be an ancient proverb meaning: A cleaved head no longer plots .’

‘Yeah,’ said Carter. ‘I remember that guy – had it around his crown, didn’t he? Drug dealer from Croydon, came up to deal with the Turks on Caledonian Road. It proved to be a perfect guideline for someone to cut the top of his head off like a boiled egg. Let’s see if our mermaid shows up anywhere on the system.’

‘Yes, Guv,’ said the photographer.

‘Whoever she was, she’s definitely undernourished,’ said Harding.

‘How long’s she been in the water?’ asked Carter.

‘A few months, at least. She went in when the water was warmer. Decomposition started but then slowed right down.’

Carter hovered nearer and looked directly down over the body at the plastic bag covering her head. ‘Her face looks like something from a waxworks horror museum,’ he observed. He moved closer. ‘It looks like it’s made of cheese.’

The photographer stood where Carter had been to take his shots of the head. Carter pulled back.

Harding nodded. ‘It’s called adipocere – the absence of oxygen and plenty of moisture inside the bag have caused the fats from her face and her brain matter to fuse, turning her face into soap.’

‘Prostitute maybe?’ asked Carter. ‘A client went too far: got carried away with the bag, and killed her by accident then dumped her here?’

‘Pretty risky getting undressed in the middle of King’s Cross,’ Harding answered as she turned the woman’s head towards Ebony and searched for the best place to begin cutting open the bag.

‘People enjoy taking risks,’ Carter disagreed. ‘Might have been a warm summer evening. Maybe this was an experimental sex session gone wrong – he asphyxiates her and then dumps her body straight into the water.’

Harding decided on an entry place for her scalpel and Ebony held the plastic out, away from the woman’s face, whilst the doctor slit down the centre of the bag and peeled it back gently. She finished cutting the bag through. Ebony moved the clumped strands of dark auburn hair away from the woman’s face and neck for Harding to get a better look. She splayed them out, medusa-like.

‘Except…’ She turned the head to one side – ‘she wasn’t asphyxiated; she was strangled and the bag was an afterthought. Someone used huge force too; they crushed her windpipe, and broke the vertebrae in her neck, snapping her spinal column – usual injuries we see in someone who’s hanged themselves, but there are no rope lesions. But there’s a necklace, protected by the plastic,’ Harding added as she worked a chain loose that was embedded in the flesh of the neck and eased it free. Turning it till she found the clasp, she pulled two rings around with it, threaded onto the chain. The photographer leant over the body whilst Ebony rested the rings on her open palm so that they could be photographed. Harding undid the chain and handed it to Ebony to bag up. Ebony showed Carter the rings as she did so.

‘Two very different types, aren’t they?’ he said.

‘Of rings, Guv? Yes, I think one is an antique, maybe worth something. Think the other one is cheap.’

‘Anything else on her?’ asked Carter.

‘Not that I can see,’ answered Harding.

‘She look British to you?’ asked Carter. ‘What about the hair? Red hair is very popular with Eastern European women. We have a lot of those living in London.’

‘Yeah, but this wasn’t dyed,’ answered Harding. ‘Celtic, maybe.’

Ebony was still kneeling beside the body, studying the woman’s face. Carter stood back and watched. He was marvelling how Ebony could get that close to the smell and not seem to notice it.

‘What is it, Ebb?’

‘She’s got make-up on.’

Harding rubbed the woman’s cheek with a swab of cotton wool and looked at the resulting red stain on it.

‘You’re right. Must have been industrial-strength to survive this.’

‘There are remnants of blue eye-shadow,’ said Ebony. ‘She’s even got some sort of black eyelashes painted above her eyes. It’s as if she were going to a party.’

‘Dressed as what? A pantomime dame?’

Harding looked down the length of the woman’s body. ‘She’s had a tough life, whoever she is. The fish have capitalized on the decayed flesh.’ She stopped at the largest of the wounds on the woman’s thigh. ‘But all this tissue destruction wasn’t done in the water.’

‘Could you walk around with that kind of open wound?’ asked Willis.

Harding shook her head in response. ‘Can’t see how.’ She parted the frayed flesh and opened the edges of one of the wounds on the woman’s left thigh; the bone was visible.

‘What can have caused so many different sites of infection, and so deep?’ Carter asked as he took photos of the injuries with his phone. Willis helped Harding to turn the body on its side.

‘I think these wounds started as ulcers.’ Harding turned the victim’s arms at the elbows to take a look. ‘No obvious needle marks but these large open wounds might have started with skin-popping – injecting contaminated heroin under the skin.’

‘If she’s got that kind of drug abuse history we might find her fingerprints on file or she might be known at the needle exchange. We’ll check it out.’ Carter said as he moved back from the body. Ebony continued her fascinated examination of the woman’s face. Harding stood to allow the photographer better access.

‘Can you do the post mortem examination today?’ Carter had seen enough. He felt the need to get out of the confines of the tent. He wanted to breathe in something other than the putrid flesh of a body that had been at the bottom of the canal for months. Carter knew Willis would be happy to stay another hour or two. She came alive around the dead.

‘Yes. This afternoon. I’ll give you a call when we’re ready to start.’

‘Thanks.’ They left Harding in the tent.

‘The tattoo’s got to mean something to someone, Ebb,’ said Carter as he and Willis stepped back over the crime scene tape and walked back towards the detectives’ pool car: a black BMW. ‘We’ll get Harding to take a biopsy. The inks used might help us narrow it down to certain tattooists. Did you ask the canal man if he’d seen anything suspicious? He might have seen someone coming to try it for a location. Did you get a statement from him?’