‘Wait a minute,’ Wayne said. ‘The paint would be a perfect medium to collect fibres, hairs and other traces. Don’t tell me they haven’t found anything?’
‘Apparently there was some contamination with dust, but they’ve been having trouble separating it from the paint to get an idea of its origins. They seem to think the chemicals in the paint would destroy most trace evidence anyway.’ Monty replied. ‘They spent hours removing the paint and found nothing. They think he shaved himself too, or else...’ he tapped a tattoo on the tabletop with his pen, flicking his tongue against his lower lip as he re-read the lab notes in front of him.
Wayne said, ‘C’mon Mont, spill it. The suspense is killing us.’
‘Minute traces of neoprene were found under the victim’s fingernails.’ Monty read the pertinent part of the lab report aloud to his team.
‘Neoprene?’ Barry queried.
Monty shifted his gaze to Stevie. She’d have the answer to that.
‘Neoprene as in wetsuit material?’ she asked him.
Monty dashed her a smile.
‘So, if he’d covered her in paint while in a wetsuit, he’d be doubly certain not to leave any part of himself behind. He could have been wearing one of those diver’s hoods too,’ she added.
‘And I thought we were going to be looking for a hairless man.’ Barry sounded disappointed.
‘An old wetty splattered with bronze paint would be a lot more incriminating than a hairless body,’ Angus said.
Nods all round as this was digested.
Stevie said, ‘She was supposed to be drugged, but the evidence of neoprene under her fingernails would suggest a struggle.’
Monty shrugged. ‘Maybe she woke up in the middle of the painting?’
Something inside her tightened again. Keep your distance from the victim, she said to herself, don’t personalise this.
‘There’s something else, and it’s a lot more concrete than the wetsuit possibility,’ Monty continued. ‘A single grey hair was found on her left buttock.’
Murmurs of excitement rippled through the group gathered around.
‘Was there a clean skin tag? Has it been matched?’ Stevie asked.
‘Yes, but the lab hasn’t finished running through the DNA comparisons. There’s nothing in the standard database so I’ve asked them to widen the search. I’m expecting a call any minute now.’
‘All that painting must have caused one hell of a mess. It must have been done in a very secluded spot, a garage, warehouse...’ Stevie turned to Wayne. ‘What about the photographer’s place?’
‘I supervised the search myself. Nothing.’
‘Or,’ Angus said, ‘one of those self-lock storage sheds perhaps.’ He sighed and rubbed his thin face. ‘We’d get a lot further ahead with this if we could find the location.’
Monty gestured to Wayne. ‘Well, maybe Wayne’s hobby shop employee will point us in the right direction.’ He returned to his notes. ‘The lab guy said she was covered in three coats of paint, and around the throat area there were four. Her actual cause of death was strangulation. They reckon the hand pressure on the throat might have smudged the drying paint so he applied another coat to tidy the area up.’
Barry said, ‘But he must have left something else of himself behind other than that single hair. When he shifted her he wouldn’t have been wearing the wetsuit, surely.’
Angus shrugged. ‘Maybe he was? It was dark. A dark wetsuit would be good camouflage.’
Everyone was thinking about this when Angus added, ‘I’ve got something on the slogan, too.’ He was referring to the words ‘Easeful Death’ printed down the victim’s right thigh, a detail they’d been able to keep from the press. It gave them leverage should someone confess, or a comparison should they have a copycat.
‘I think it’s an allusion to Keats, part of a line from his poem, “Ode to a Nightingale”. I mean it’s not the kind of phrase that gets tossed around on a regular basis; I reckon it has to be from that poem. The whole line reads, Half in love with easeful Death. I should have twigged it straightaway. Keats is one of my favourite poets.’
Barry slapped his head with his hand. ‘Damn. I must have slept through all those poetry appreciation classes at the academy.’
Angus tossed down his pen and let out a long-suffering sigh.
‘Okay, so what the hell’s it supposed to mean?’ Barry persisted.
Angus answered, patient as ever, ‘Keats was dying from consumption. He was musing that an easeful death might be preferable to what he was going through.’
‘There was nothing easeful about what Linda Royce went through,’ Wayne said quietly, his gaze fixed on the notes in front of him.
Barry shrugged. ‘Yeah, but maybe it could’ve been even worse.’
Monty must have sensed Stevie’s suppressed shiver. He said, ‘Okay, that’s enough. For now let’s just concentrate on the message itself. Evenly spaced capitals in black marker pen, written after the paint had dried. I talked to the experts in Documents about the writing. Unlike ordinary writing, carefully hand-printed capitals are very hard to match to a particular individual, so the writing itself is a dead end.’
‘But why kill her after the paint and not before?’ Barry asked.
Stevie looked at Monty. ‘So he could pose her? Rigor mortis can start as early as two hours after death.’
Monty nodded. ‘That’s what the lab boys think, that he wanted to pose her before rigor set in. A lot of care was taken over the paint; it would’ve taken a while. Killing her after the paint job would have given him a bit more time to transport her, put the props in and pose her before she stiffened up. They surmise that he came back later and took the props away when she’d stiffened into the required position. There was a slight indentation on each forearm containing minute splinters of wood. They think she was propped up with wooden dowels.’
A sombre silence followed this macabre theory.
Barry shook his head. ‘Boy, are we dealing with one sick individual here. Have we any idea what he used to transport the body?’
‘A van would make sense; more room than a car,’ Wayne suggested.
‘Whatever he used, there has to be some kind of paint evidence left behind. Even dry paint will leave traces,’ Angus mused.
‘We’re jumping the gun here, folks,’ Monty said. ‘We haven’t even found the vehicle yet. For the moment everything rests on Wayne’s hobby shop man.’
Wayne pushed his chair back and climbed to his feet. ‘If that’s it, Mont, I’d like to get cracking now.’
Monty stood and began to scoop up his mess of papers. ‘All of you have plenty to keep you busy. Let me know any developments. I’ll pass on the news of the hair when I hear back from the lab.’ He turned to Stevie who was gathering her own gear together.
‘Have you heard from De Vakey yet?’ he asked her.
She looked at her oversized watch, the only jewellery she wore. ‘Yeah, I suppose it’s time I picked him up and took him to the scene,’ she said without enthusiasm. The kids would soon be filing into the assembly hall, Izzy and the other little ones waiting behind the curtains, ready to go on stage. She wondered if Dot had scored a seat in the front row. The last time Izzy had waved at her in the middle of the performance and made the audience laugh.
‘Before you go, I want a word,’ Monty said.
Stevie followed him into his office and closed the door. He didn’t mince his words. ‘Stevie, what’s got into you lately? You’ve been looking like a fart that can’t get out. Barry was only thinking aloud; it’s called brainstorming, we do it all the time. You didn’t need to snap his head off like that.’