Robert Bryndza: The Girl in the Ice

‘Bloating of the face and ligature marks on the neck could indicate strangulation, and her right collar bone is broken,’ he said, and gently used a latex gloved hand to tilt the head. ‘Clumps of hair are missing, roughly around the same patch by each temple.’

‘Whoever did it could have been behind her and pulled at her hair,’ said Moss.

‘Is there evidence of sexual violence?’ asked Erika.

‘I’ll need time to look further. There are weals and scratches on her inner thighs, ribs, and breasts . . .’

He indicated a bloom of red lines under each breast, and carefully placed his hand over to show the imprint of fingers on her rib cage. ‘The wrists are lacerated which could indicate her hands were tied, but her arms weren’t tied when she went into the water. There is also bruising to the back of the head and we found fragments of tooth enamel embedded in the front corner post of the jetty . . . We’re still looking for the remains of the tooth. She could have swallowed it, so I may find it later.’

‘When she went missing, she was wearing pink high heels and had a pink bag. Any sign of those?’ asked Moss.

‘She was only wearing the dress and underwear, but no bra . . . no shoes.’ Isaac carefully lifted her legs. ‘The heels of her feet are badly lacerated.’

‘Dragged barefoot,’ said Erika, recoiling at the sight of her feet, angrily scraped and split, the flesh underneath pink.

‘One of our divers did pull this out of the water.’ Isaac handed Erika a small clear plastic bag. It contained a driving licence ID card. They regarded the photo, silent for a moment.

‘That’s an intense photo. It’s like she’s there, staring at us from beyond the grave,’ said Peterson.

Erika thought he was right. Often in ID pictures the eyes were glazed over, or the subject looked a little trapped in the headlights, but Andrea had a confident stare.

‘Jesus,’ said Erika, looking from the photo of Andrea to the dead body, wide-eyed and filthy on the stretcher. ‘How soon can you establish an exact cause of death?’

‘I’ve given you enough to go on. I’ll need to do the autopsy,’ bristled Isaac.

‘Which you’ll do today,’ said Erika, fixing him with a stare.

‘Yes. Today,’ said Isaac.

The grounds were quiet outside the forensics tent. The snow had stopped falling, and a group of uniformed officers were silently combing their way around the lake, white bunching up around their dark legs as they waded through the drifts of snow.

Erika took out her phone and called Marsh. ‘Sir. It’s Andrea Douglas-Brown,’ she said.

There was a pause. ‘Shit.’

‘I’m just on my way to talk to the boy who found her, and then I’ll go and inform the parents,’ said Erika.

‘Your thoughts? Foster?’

‘Without a doubt we’re looking at murder, perhaps rape with strangulation or drowning. Everything I have is on its way to the guys back at the nick.’

‘Do we have any suspects in view?’

‘No, sir. I’m hitting the ground running as it is. We need to organise a formal ID with the family. Forensics are going straight from the scene to do an autopsy so I’ll keep you posted on the arrangements for that.’

‘If I can tell the media we have a suspect . . .’ started Marsh.

‘Yes, sir. I know. Talking to the family is our first line of enquiry. There is a high chance she knew the killer. When she went missing there were no witnesses, no one saw her being snatched. She could have met the killer here.’

‘Take it easy, Foster. Don’t go in guns blazing, assuming that Andrea was meeting up for some sordid shag.’

‘I never said she was meeting for a sordid . . .’

‘Remember this is a well-respected family who . . .’

‘I have done this before, sir.’

‘Yes. But realise who you’re dealing with.’

‘Yes. A grieving family. And I have to ask them the usual questions, sir.’

‘Yes, but this is an order. Go easy.’

When Erika came off the phone she was prickling at Marsh’s attitude. The one thing she despised about Britain was its class system. Even in a murder investigation, it seemed that Marsh wanted the family to have some kind of VIP treatment.

Moss and Peterson emerged from the tent with a uniformed police officer, and they made their way past the lake and through the sunken garden. Erika wondered if the blank-eyed statues had watched as Andrea was dragged past, screaming for her life.

A radio on the accompanying officer’s lapel hissed static. ‘We’ve just recovered a small pink handbag from a hedge on London Road,’ said a tinny voice.

‘Which direction is London Road?’ asked Erika.

‘The high street,’ said the officer, pointing past a row of trees.

After months of inactivity, Erika was struggling to get her brain back into gear. Every time she closed her eyes she saw Andrea’s body, skin torn and bruised, blank eyes wide open. There were so many variables to a murder investigation. The average-sized house could keep a forensics team busy for days, but this was a crime scene potentially stretching across seventeen acres, with evidence strewn across public areas, trapped under a thick layer of snow.

‘Bring it to the Visitors’ Centre, by the ambulance,’ said Erika to the officer, who hurried off. Moments later she, Moss and Peterson emerged from the hedgerows. At the bottom of a gentle snow-covered slope was the futuristic glass box of the Visitors’ Centre. A courtyard out front had been churned up by an ambulance, which was parked with its back doors open. A young man in his early twenties sat in the back under a pile of blankets. He was grey-faced and shaking. A small woman stood by the ambulance doors, watching over a member of the crime scene unit who was carefully processing the boy’s clothes, his gloved hand labelling the soiled tracksuit, jumper and trainers in their clear evidence bags. The woman had the same bushy eyebrows as the boy, but with a sharp little face.

‘I want a receipt,’ she was saying, ‘and I want it in writing what’s being taken away. Lee only got those tracksuit bottoms in November, and those trainers are new too – there’s still thirteen weeks of catalogue payments to be made on them. How long are you gonna have them for?’

‘These are all now evidence in a murder investigation,’ said Erika, as they reached the ambulance. ‘I’m DCI Foster, this is Detective Moss and Detective Peterson.’ They held out their ID and the woman peered beadily at their photos.

‘What’s your name?’ prompted Erika.

‘Grace Kinney, and my Lee’s done nothing more than turn up for work. And because he’s been forced to wait in the cold, he’ll be on the sick and they’ll stop his money!’

‘Lee, can you tell us exactly what happened?’

Lee nodded, his face pale and haunted. He told them how he’d arrived for work, then followed the sound of the phone ringing, which had led to the discovery of Andrea’s body under the ice. An officer interrupted him, appearing at the ambulance doors holding a small pink clutch bag in a clear plastic bag. Another plastic bag contained its contents: six fifty-pound notes, two compact tampons, a mascara, a lipstick and a perfume atomizer.

‘Did that belong to the dead girl?’ said Grace, peering over. The officer quickly placed it behind his back.

‘She’s seen it now,’ Erika snapped at the officer. She went on, ‘Ms Kinney. You have to understand that this is evidence in a sensitive investigation and . . .’

‘I’ll keep my mouth shut, don’t you worry,’ Grace said. ‘Although what a young girl with a designer bag and a wad of fifties was doing round here, God only knows.’

‘What do you think she was doing?’ asked Erika.