The constable gestured to the joggers. ‘They were dragging the body out of the water when we arrived. We just told them to drop it and come away.’
Rose nodded. She took in the little group of joggers, dog-walker and lock-keeper. You could almost see them bristling with self-importance. They weren’t going anywhere, she thought, and in any case there was a second plod who seemed to be standing guard over them.
She went into the mobile incident room — at least it was dry there — removed her quilted raincoat and pulled the obligatory white paper suit over her indoor clothes. Fortunately she was wearing a trouser suit that day, which made things easier, and certainly she was considerably more suitably dressed than she had been when she was called to the first murder. By the time she stepped out of the truck the tent had been properly erected and the crime scene taped off according to her instructions. She stepped over the tape fence, shoulders hunched against the weather, glad of the shelter the tent gave, however inadequate.
The demands of modem forensic investigation did not pay much heed to climatic conditions. There was a limit to how many layers of clothing you could keep on beneath the requisite paper suits. Rose tried not to think about her own physical discomfort, although she did fleetingly wonder if it were actually a statistical fact that outdoors murders almost always happened in the winter or if it were just her imagination. Hers and the Cataldis’.
Taking a deep breath, she looked down at the body lying at her feet. Almost certainly the corpse was male. More than that, there was little she could be certain of and she wasn’t going to touch anything until Carmen Brown arrived. But as she bent over the body she was almost sure the observant young constable — presumably the one who had greeted her at the scene — was about to be proven right. There was definitely a hole in the back of the leather coat the dead man was wearing. Everything pointed to a stabbing just like the other two.
Rose experienced the familiar frisson of excitement. She knew something PC Smithers had yet to discover. Cops were like racehorses. The more experienced they were, the more excited they got at the prospect of the big one.
She stepped back over the tape fence. The young policeman was standing rather stiffly a few yards back, still showing signs of the shakes.
‘Was it you who spotted the slash in his coat?’ she asked.
‘Y-yes, ma’am,’ replied PC Smithers.
Poor chap is stammering now, thought Rose.
‘Well done, constable,’ she said out loud.
Smithers turned slightly pink. Pride or embarrassment or a bit of both, wondered Rose.
While she waited for Carmen Brown to arrive there was little more she could do except talk to the witnesses. And here Rose Piper got lucky again. An observant plod and an observant witness, all in one day, she thought to herself.
The woman who found the body claimed she had recognised the corpse at once, in spite of agreeing that she had not been able to catch the merest glimpse of his face. It was actually his clothing that she had recognised.
‘It’s that Wayne Thompson. I live opposite his mother in the council houses round the corner — well, it’s either him or someone’s nicked ’is coat,’ said Mrs Josephine Bird, with the self-righteous certainty of someone who was quite enjoying being the centre of attention although trying not to show it. ‘I’d know that coat anywhere, I would. Nobody else round ’ere’s got a coat like that. Great fur collar an’ all...’
Mrs Bird was a small quick woman whose appearance rather suited her name. And it soon became apparent that, while probably not in the same class as Marcia Spry and certainly not blessed with the advantages of a close village community in which to operate, Mrs Bird did have a certain penchant for immersing herself in other people’s business. She admitted, rather grudgingly, that she hadn’t known Wayne well, but yes, of course she could tell Rose what he did for a living.
‘He’s a builder’s labourer, isn’t he? Works darned hard, I should think. That coat must have cost a few bob and he’s good to his mother. Always has been. This’ll kill her, you know.’
Rose Piper recognised that Mrs Bird could be a very useful source of information, but reckoned she personally didn’t wish to listen to any more from the woman. For once she was actually looking for a team to whom to delegate. With some relief she saw that not only had Carmen Brown just arrived, but also DS Mellor along with two of her murder enquiry detective constables. Rose gave instructions that Mrs Bird should be escorted to Staple Hill and a full statement taken from her.
On her own radio she called back to the Investigation Centre and asked DI Jordan to run every check possible on Wayne Thompson of Barton Hill.
‘I want to know as much as we can about him as fast as we can, Phyllis,’ Rose instructed. ‘Most important of all, I want to know if he’s not where he should be, if he’s missing. Oh — and check out Avon.’
Carmen Brown went straight into the mobile incident room and like Rose quickly emerged fully kitted up in scene-of-crime apparel.
Rose stood for a while watching her crouched at work beside the corpse and silently bet herself another month’s salary that Wayne Thompson would turn out to have had a night job with Avon Escorts. This was beginning to get scary. It really was turning into the big one. Rose just hoped she was big enough to handle it.
Eventually the pathologist stood up and beckoned Rose closer. The Detective Chief Inspector took her usual deep breath, banished her uncharacteristic feelings of self-doubt and composed her features into an expression of lack of concern.
The Feeder seemed to be smelling particularly ripe that morning, she thought, and its acrid aroma was not going to help the habitual nauseousness she experienced when forced to come close to death.
Although the body had already been moved once, having been dragged out of the canal by the joggers, Carmen Brown still intended to examine it closely where it lay before moving it again. The doctor gestured towards the hole centrally positioned in the back of the victim’s leather coat. Once again it was surprisingly small and neat.
‘Definitely another stabbing,’ she said, with a small tight smile.
‘Same weapon as before?’ asked Rose, her excitement mounting again, making it easy now for her to forget the cold and even to overcome her usual nausea.
‘Let’s wait till we get him into the mortuary, shall we?’
Pathologists could be so damned pedantic, thought Rose. Carmen Brown wouldn’t tell you the time unless she had a watch with a second hand.
The doctor called to two of the SOCOs standing chatting, waiting for her to finish her preliminary examination.
‘OK, let’s see what our boy looked like, shall we?’
The body was swiftly and efficiently turned over so that it was lying face-upwards now. Rose took another quick sharp, and she hoped silent, gulp of breath.
The victim had a nasty head injury which had turned his forehead into a concave shell, the white bone clearly exposed, and his lips were drawn back in a meaningless skeletal grin revealing even teeth. This time the eyes were mercifully closed, perhaps as an involuntary reaction to landing in icy water.
Neither of the other victims had suffered any injury except the one lethal stab wound. Rose said nothing, waiting for Dr Brown, who was once again crouched by the corpse, this time intently studying the head, to give her verdict.
Eventually the pathologist looked up at her. ‘Can’t be sure until I get him back to base, but I’d guess the head injury happened after he’d been stabbed, almost certainly when he fell in the canal,’ she said.
She glanced over her shoulder. There was a broken supermarket trolley sticking out of the waterway just behind them and in the shallow water right by the bank you could make out the shape of some hostile-looking stones and boulders, one or two of which protruded out of the water.