Helen Fields - Perfect Remains - A gripping thriller that will leave you breathless

It had taken immense physical effort to cart her into the hidden room. Down one set of stairs and up another had seemed like a genius plan when he’d conceived it. The reality was more cumbersome. Several times he’d banged her head hard on the steps, not that it mattered. He’d kept her body wrapped in plastic, but allowed her to breathe. Asphyxiation wasn’t the plan.

Elaine hadn’t liked it when he’d brought the girl in. Perhaps the tiniest hint of jealousy behind the melodramatic hyperventilation and wide-eyed head shaking, he’d thought. How could she ever have believed he would bring such a filthy, low creature into their lives?

King had returned the woman to consciousness long enough to obtain details of past fractures. Previous injuries could tell tales. The thickening of bones long after they’d healed could reveal an unhelpful story, even if all the DNA had been destroyed. She’d been remarkably forthcoming. He’d just had to promise he’d let her live if she provided the information he wanted.

In the event, there wasn’t much to be concerned about. A finger broken in a car door and a dislocated shoulder that wouldn’t show up. By far the more important thing was to ensure that the girl’s left upper arm was fragmented where Elaine’s had been fractured after she came off a bicycle as a teenager. If that bone was left intact and the pathologist was thorough, then all of King’s hard work would have been for nothing.

Once he had all he needed, King had told Elaine to watch and not look away. When he’d put on the protective glasses the prostitute had only looked curious. When he’d snapped on rubber gloves and a face mask she’d begun to plead. Elaine, for once, had grown silent. When he’d picked up the baseball bat, well, that was a different story. He had no memory of Elaine’s reaction for those few minutes. He’d experienced what he assumed was tunnel vision, for the first time in his life. It had been a breathtaking episode. Everything but the screaming, whimpering, dribbling, blubbering pile of living flesh before him had faded out. There had been no peripheral vision to distract him. He couldn’t hear anything beyond her feral cries. It was the most intensely concentrated sensation he had ever felt.

He’d awoken, and it was an awakening, standing before her, bat clutched in his hands, to find his pulse racing as if he’d run a marathon. It had been quite the adrenaline rush. For a while there was silence, then gradually Elaine’s intermittent sob-screams had broken through. The girl’s face was a mess, as he’d intended. He’d needed to bash every one of her teeth out of their sockets and damage the jaw beyond x-ray comparison for the identity exchange to work. He hadn’t foreseen that he’d get so carried away, he felt rising shame at the guilty pleasure he’d taken, seeing his handiwork in the bruises on her neck and breasts, guessing there were marks on her stomach and legs too, but unwilling to lift her undoubtedly infested clothing to see. He’d lost control – nothing to be proud of – but didn’t he deserve to vent? Better to let it out with her than Elaine. He had no desire to diminish his prize.

King shook himself out of the memory and stared at the woman whose identity the prostitute had taken in death.

‘How are we doing with those tapes? I’m sure you’ve been glad to have an activity to occupy you. I know you already speak French so I thought Russian might be a more exciting challenge. When you’re talking properly again, I’ll test you and we can make some real progress.’

He flicked a switch on the sound system and a voice began speaking words that Elaine had no inclination to listen to, or repeat. With a baby-soft kiss on her forehead, King placed a protein drink at her side and left.

The autopsy table looked more comfortable than the bed he’d slept in. That was before it was occupied by the remnants of what was presumed to be Elaine Buxton’s skeleton. It had been a bad night. Callanach would have self-medicated with a decent bottle of red, but the only wine on offer had a label with all the appeal of a bargain-bucket binge drinker’s delight. Braemar was a slightly touristy but pleasant village lacking much choice in accommodation and the better options had been fully booked. In the absence of good wine, he’d settled for a dilapidated TV with crackling reception, soup he’d admired only because he’d previously thought it impossible to cook it so badly, and half decent coffee.

Jonty Spurr, the pathologist, was quiet as he worked. Callanach appreciated that. He’d witnessed too many autopsies to be disturbed by the body. What he found more disquieting was the forced cheer some pathologists had about them. Too talkative, too determined to lift the atmosphere. Spurr was slow, not annoyingly so, but unhurried and probably unflappable under even the worst pressure.

‘The victim was an adult female, aged between thirty and forty, I’d say, approximately five foot six.’

Callanach glanced at DC Salter. She was young but not new to the job and showed no sign of being troubled by what she saw.

‘Has the accelerant been identified yet?’ she asked.

‘We’ll need to do more tests on the bones for that. The fire department might have picked something up at the scene.’ Spurr chose a bone fragment and held it up for Callanach to inspect more closely. ‘The heat and length of time the fire was burning destroyed any chance of getting DNA from the bone marrow. The skull, jaw and upper chest sustained damage not caused by the fire. You can see a pattern of fractures indicating repeated use of a heavy, blunt weapon. Must have taken quite some force.’

‘Was that the cause of death?’ Callanach asked.

‘I’d put my money on those injuries occurring before death. The resulting trauma to the brain may well have been what killed her. With no soft tissue left, I’m not going to do much better than that. Given the planning put into disposing of the body, there’d have been no other practical reason to disfigure the face after death.’

‘Bastard,’ Salter said.

‘Indeed,’ Spurr replied. ‘We’re cross-checking the teeth against Elaine Buxton’s dental records. Some have fillings or caps, so it should be easy enough.’

‘How soon will we have that?’ Callanach was keen to leave. Morgues made him claustrophobic in spite of the bright light and fierce air conditioning. It felt like a prison cell and he’d had enough of those.

‘Maybe as early as tomorrow. Will you still be here?’

Callanach wasn’t even going to consider another night in the same accommodation.

‘No, in Edinburgh. We’re going back to the crime scene to get a daylight view then we’ll set off. You’ll call when you have more information?’

Spurr nodded, stripped off a glove and offered Callanach a hand. He disliked the dry, powdery feel of it against his own, as if death was contagious.

‘Is there any news from the crime scene this morning?’ he asked Salter once they were on the road.

‘No. I tried to speak to DC Tripp but mobile reception was poor. He and DS Lively were off to speak with the hikers first thing, but they should be back at the crime scene by the time we get there.’

‘She wasn’t murdered there,’ Callanach said.

‘Surely it’s hard to tell at this stage,’ the young constable commented quietly.

‘Why bother taking her so far to kill her? It makes no sense. It may be the perfect site to dispose of a body, but it’s not a comfortable or convenient place for playing out his fantasy about her death. A great deal of time passed between her disappearance and the corpse turning up, time the murderer spent elsewhere with the victim. Whoever abducted her had this place in mind for weeks, if not months.’