Blood Work (8 page)

'Have you got anything for us?'

'Like you I've only just arrived. From what I've
seen from here, a young woman, I'm guessing mid-twenties.'

'No ID?'

PC Wilkinson stepped forward. 'Nothing yet, sir.
We're going to finger-search the area but there was
nothing on her person. She had a handbag but it was
empty apart from some condoms and a tube of KY
jelly.'

'Nothing else?'

'She had a Tube ticket.'

Delaney nodded. South Hampstead Tube station
was a stone's throw from the edge of that part of the
heath.

'Who found her?'

Wilkinson nodded over to the path where the
nurse, Valerie Manners, stood, sipping shakily from
a cup of tea as a female PC talked to her.

'I'll want to speak to her next. Make sure she stays
here, Bob.'

'Boss.'

Delaney moved to the entrance of the tent. 'Let's
have a look.'

Kate Walker followed him in. The small space was
already bustling. SOCO had cleared the overhanging
undergrowth, carefully cutting away the branches
and shrubbery that had partially hidden the body. A
video-camera operator was filming the scene, while a
photographer, blond-haired and in his twenties, was
doing the same. The bright flashes poked needles in
Delaney's sore eyes.

Kate looked down at the woman. She had black
boots on her feet, calf-length and high-heeled, black
leggings, a short black, leather skirt with an ornate,
silver buckled belt. She was naked from the waist up.
Her long hair was dyed deep black, and she was
wearing black eyeshadow and lipstick. A goth. Kate
felt the irony of it. A subculture that had death as
part of its make-up, no pun intended. She would have
laughed if it wasn't so pitifully sad. The woman was
beautiful, in a painted-doll kind of way, with a full,
voluptuous figure. Kate had to blink tears away as
she looked at what had been done to her.

A bruise ran along the lower part of the dead
woman's jaw on the right side of the face. The purple
mottling even more obscene against the deathly white
of her skin.

On the opposite side her neck had been slashed
from ear to the larynx. Below her neck, a knife had
opened up a circular hole, ripping down and
exposing the bones of her spinal column. The large
blood vessels on either side of the neck had been
slashed, and blood had run down her semi-naked
body in jagged sheets. The heart had been pumping
when the wounds were made, spraying the blood
outward with considerable pressure and telling her
that the cuts had been made pre-mortem.

Kate turned to Delaney who was standing beside
her and, thankfully, holding his counsel for once.
'Whoever did it, I'd guess, used a large, relatively
sharp blade, wielded with great force. He was full of
rage, out of control I'd say. There are no defence
wounds on her hands or arms so I would surmise the
woman may have known her attacker.'

'Was she killed here?'

Kate nodded. 'Going by the arterial spray on the
ground and undergrowth around her.'

She looked down at the young woman's body
again. Was she right? Had she known the man who
had done this to her? Or was it a random attack?
Kate's gaze ran across the woman's mutilated body,
past the slashes on her neck and down to her lower
abdomen where a jagged cut ran across it. As if the
man had held the knife down in a grip and had sawed
through, like a huntsman gutting a deer. That could
have been her, she realised, last night. Drugged,
raped, she could have been mutilated too and
dumped in the woods. Suddenly, the pinpricks in her
eyes started in earnest and she could no longer hold
back the tears. She felt her stomach lurch and knew
she had to get out of there. She turned, pushed past
Delaney, and ran through the opening of the tent.
Ducking under the tape cordon she staggered into a
wooded area away from the shocked looks of the
police, fell to her knees and threw up. She bent her
head low, holding her long dark hair away from her
face, and threw up again. She put one hand on the
wet ground to balance herself, weak with despair,
and retched again painfully. She gulped in some
ragged breaths of air, her throat cramping, and ran
her hand over her forehead, now damp with
perspiration. Her voice was a rough whisper as she
swore through her panted breath.

It wasn't the Hippocratic oath.

Back in the scene-of-crime tent Delaney turned to
Sally Cartwright. She had offered to go after the
doctor but had been told her to stay where she was.
'I guess a lot of people ate something dodgy this
morning,' Delaney had said.

Sally looked down at the dead goth's mutilated
body and felt queasy herself. 'I can't say I blame her.'

But Delaney was puzzled. Kate Walker was a
consummate professional, had seen more dead bodies
than even he had. Something was clearly up with her
and he couldn't help wondering if it had something to
do with the confrontation he had witnessed in the car
park of the South Hampstead Hospital just a short
while ago.

Kate Walker stood up. She took the bottle of Evian
water she always kept in her handbag and took a
swallow, rinsing the water around her mouth a few
times and then spitting it out. She did it once more
and then took a long swallow of the cold water. She
poured a little more on a handkerchief and wiped her
brow and lips and took a couple of deep breaths,
willing her heart to slow down. She placed a hand
against the damp bark of a tree and forced herself to
breathe evenly.

Since an early age ambition had been Kate Walker's
middle name. At school she had come top of her year
seven years running. Unlike many of her peers she
hadn't been distracted by boys or music or become
fanatical about sports, she wasn't obsessive about
ponies and didn't have a crush on her French teacher,
she didn't spend hours shopping for outfits, had no
fascination with shoes or handbags or jewellery or
make-up, she didn't take an interest in anything, in
fact, that wasn't going to further her academic career.
As a young girl in prep school she hadn't been like
that, she was a bit of a tomboy. She was as interested
in climbing trees or playing cricket as any of her boy
cousins. Her favourite novel was Arthur Ransome's
Swallows and Amazons
and a day cooped up inside
on a fine summer's day was torture to her. All that
had changed, however, one summer when she was
eleven years old and her outer life became driven
inward. It was a solemn-faced and earnest girl who
went to St Angela's for Girls, keeping her dark
thoughts behind her dark lashes. If the eyes were the
window to the soul, Kate Walker's were tinted glass.
St Angela's was for the wealthy and gifted children of
the south London suburbs whose parents couldn't
bear to send their daughters further south to Redean
or west to St Helen's. Kate's studies became her life,
and she quite literally lost herself in books. She might
not have lost her love for Arthur Ransome but the
adventures took place in her imagination now. As a
fresher at university she ignored all entreaties to join
societies that were about fun and not study. Most
people went to university to play hard and work hard,
a few went to party. Kate went to work hard and that
was it. She got a first and went on to become an
exemplary medical student. As a qualified doctor she
wasn't content with the prospect of general practice.
She took courses and the extra work as a police
surgeon. It was while doing that, and working closely
with the police, that she became fascinated with
forensic anthropological science and the work of
pathologists. One dealt with bones, the other with
soft tissue. She had gone back to medical school,
qualified and became a forensic pathologist. Overall it
had taken over twelve years and it was all she ever
wanted. And she was good at it, already targeted for
the head of her department and beyond. Her future
was as plotted out for her and as detailed as an
Ordnance Survey map.

Today, though, as she looked across at the blue
lights that were flashing through the trees and undergrowth
ahead like a carnival for lost souls, she put a
hand on her sore stomach, aching with the cramps of
throwing up, and thought about the ravaged body of a
woman just starting out in life, an unfinished symphony
cut tragically short, about the horrible waste
and the madness of it all, and she realised suddenly that
she was sick of being a pathologist. She was sick of the
blood and the pain and the daily reminder of the
absolute evil that mankind was capable of. She was
sick of dealing with the hard-headed cynicism of people
like Jack Delaney and his ilk. Sick of death, in fact.

Sick to her stomach.

As she walked back to the crime scene she realised
she had already come to a decision. She was going to
phone Jane Harrington to see if the general practice
position in her clinic attached to the hospital was still
available. She had been offered the post a few weeks
before and this time she would take her friend up on
the offer. She'd have her resignation in to her boss by
the end of the day. She had one last case to deal with
first, though. She didn't know who the young girl in
the woods was. She didn't know how she had died.
But she would give her all finding out how and why
she had died. She gave the unknown woman her oath
on that much.

A blood oath.

*

Delaney tried to look sympathetic as the nurse,
Valerie Manners, recounted the morning's events.
'I'm sure it was all very traumatic for you.'

'Traumatic isn't the word. I'm used to traumatic.
You work enough shifts on the accident and
emergency unit at a large hospital and you get used
to trauma.'

Bob Wilkinson spoke out. 'What would you call it
then?'

Delaney threw a 'leave it out' look to the constable
who was standing by Sally as she took notes.

Valerie Manners was a bit taken aback by the
question and had to think a little, giving up after a
few moments of struggle. 'Well,
very
traumatic I
would say.'

Delaney nodded, again with sympathy. The trouble
all too often with the public when they were caught up
in a crime, was to make too much of everything. The
answers to solving a crime were all too often in the
everyday, mundane, prosaic details, not in the
dramatic and the astounding. Many of the witnesses
he had interviewed over the years had a tendency to
vicariously sensationalise their own drab lives by way
of someone else's tragedy. Memories became
embellished with imagined detail. But Delaney was a
seasoned enough copper to know how to winnow the
wheat from the chaff. At least he hoped he was. 'Go
back to the beginning, Mrs Manners.'

'It's Ms Manners.'

'Back to the beginning then please, Ms Manners.'

'I had stopped to catch my breath, leant on the tree
over there—'

Delaney interrupted her. 'Before then?'

'When I saw the flasher?'

'Before that.'

'Back to leaving hospital?'

'Yes.'

The nurse looked at him perplexed, like he was an
idiot. 'Is it relevant?'

Delaney sighed and looked at her, any sympathy he
had for her draining fast. 'I'll tell you what, Ms
Manners, let's make a deal. I won't tell you how to
dress a wound or change a bedpan, and you let me
decide what details are important or not in a
particularly brutal murder case.'

'All right, no need to get snitty. I can get that kind
of attitude any day of the week, if I want it, from the
consultants who think they're better than good God
Himself.'

Delaney ignored her. 'What time did you leave
work this morning?'

'I left the hospital about eight o'clock.'

'And you always cut through this part of the
heath?'

'Yes. It takes me about fifteen minutes to walk
home. And a bit of fresh air never hurt anyone. I've
learned that much in my job.'

Tell that to the woman in the scene of crime tent,
thought Delaney, but didn't say it. 'And you didn't
see anything out of the ordinary?'

'I saw a man wagging his penis at me! I'd count
that as a pretty unusual event, wouldn't you?'

'Can you describe it?'

'The penis, or the event?'

Delaney sighed and Sally Cartwright and Bob
Wilkinson had to try hard not to smile. 'Just tell us
what happened?'

'I was walking on to the heath—'

Delaney interrupted her. 'You hadn't seen anybody
earlier, somebody coming off the heath perhaps?'

The woman shook her head. 'Not a single soul.
Weather like this tends to keep people at home or in
their cars, doesn't it?'

Sally looked up from her notebook. 'And the man
who exposed himself to you . . . ?'

'He was in his late twenties I'd say, maybe thirties.
Semi-priapic.'

'I'm sorry?' Sally asked.

Wilkinson smiled. 'He had a hard-on, Sally.'

'Yeah, thanks, Bob,' said Delaney.

'Well, partly so, enough I guess for him to waggle,'
added the nurse. 'It was early, and it was pretty cold,
mind you.'

Delaney held up his hand. 'Can we concentrate on
the man, not just the member?'

'He was about five ten, wearing a fawn-coloured
overcoat, he might have had a suit on under his coat,
he had dark trousers anyway.'

Sally flicked back through her notebook. 'You
called him a raggedy man earlier.'

Valerie Manners nodded. 'Yes, it was his hair.'

Delaney waited patiently, but when there was nothing
forthcoming, said, 'And? What about his hair?'

'It was raggedy, you know?'

'No?'

'Sort of wild, curly. A bit like yours.' She pointed
to Delaney. 'Only longer and it hadn't been combed,
it was sticking out.'

'Like his cock,' said Bob Wilkinson, his smile
suddenly dying on his lips as Delaney glared at him,
the detective inspector's already thin patience finally
worn through.