Sharpe now stared down the high-fashioned, fieldstone wall, which held the Thames in check. For a moment, his eyes fell on nearby Jubilee Gardens and Queen Elizabeth Hall. For some years now, the city had been attempting to run out the vagrants from this area of the embankment. Officialdom threw money at it, hoping to improve it as a tourist walkway, but efforts had gone wanting. Wise city officials had actually thought that it might help if they planted new, exotic trees. Rather, it had added lush locations for the homeless to curl up by night and from which to fend for shillings by day.
Sharpe stood and stepped away, shouting, his order sounding more harsh than he'd wanted. “You men standing about with nothing to do, scour the area for homeless who might have seen something.”
The body had been deposited in a busy area. Someone had taken a dreadful chance at discovery. Had the killer hoped for discovery? Perhaps unconsciously so?
From here it was some distance to the motorway from which the body presumably had been spotted by the American motorist. The roadway overhead, which the killer must turn off from to get down here, led north and south. By now, the killer might be anywhere in the enormous maw of the city or the London suburbs.
Sharpe stepped back from the embankment and returned to where Copperwaite remained kneeling beside the body. Seeing Sharpe, Copperwaite muttered, “Bloody awful hell, this. Can you imagine the depth of suffering this woman endured? Jesus…”
Both men pictured the torturous image in their minds once again. “Yes, well, that's one item you can assume, Stuart,” said Sharpe.
Stuart replied, a hint of confusion in his voice, “What one item can I assume. Sharpie?”
“That the killer knew she'd die like Christ if he did her up this way…”
“Why the oil? It's still sticky to the touch.”
“I haven't a clue, but I know the bastard knew she'd die an agonizing death.”
Sharpe again kneeled beside his junior partner and pointed to the water's edge, saying, “Wonder why the body wasn't thrown in for 'cleansing of the wounds' before the killer disappeared. Perhaps caught in the act of preparing to dispose of the body in the river.”
“The bridgeman unknowingly startled him, run him off prematurely.”
“It would appear so, Stuart. But they tell us the bridgeman saw no one?” The chief bobby, overhearing this, stepped closer to be discreet. “The man had been at his bottle early, sir. Saw no one, sir, not even the dead woman until he… Well, sir, he run the dead woman over.”
“Yes, ran over the body, so we've heard.”
“His first thought was it was him what killed her, sir.”
“Of course. In his dfunken state, he would.”
“She was facedown when he hit her with the car, sir. We… some of us took liberty to turn her faceup,” the man confessed, fearful not to do so.
Copperwaite found his voice. “Shall we roll her and have a look, Richard?”
They rolled the body to the sound of Richard Sharpe's curses. “Gore… Gore blime!” Sharpe muttered the Cockney vulgarism for God blind me, while staring at the unmistakable blistering of tire treads from a lightweight vehicle running the length of Mum's back and buttocks. “Yes, of course,” began Sharpe, “add to the indignity of having been tormented to death and having to lie out here in the elements, the rummy bridgeman must find a way to thump over her body in the dark with his Jetta!” Copperwaite gnashed his teeth over the gruesome image. Sharpe in turn released some of the pent up emotion he felt in a small explosion of exhaled air. “We'll have to examine the car,” he told Copperwaite.
Copperwaite, pointing, replied, “Parked over there, at the base of the bridge.”
Sharpe had seen the vehicle below a stone ladder that wound its way to the man's stone turret high overhead, from which perch he currently looked down on the scene, no doubt trembling still.
While staring at the damage done, two clear tire tread marks well tattooed onto the woman's back and backside for her to take to eternity along with the wounds inflicted by the killer, Sharpe groused, “Likely the only useful forensic evidence and it's from the wrong source.”
Copperwaite and the others watched as Sharpe found a matchbox and finally lit his pipe tobacco.
“Can we assume that, Colonel Sharpe?” asked Copperwaite, using Sharpe's military salutation for the men all round to hear.
“Will you stop calling me 'Colonel.' Makes me out to be an old fart in front of the chaps.”
“Sure, Sharpie, sorry.”
“Not so sorry as that bridgeman when I get my hooks into him.” Sharpe stormed off to climb the spiraling ladder that would take him to the only so-called eyewitness left to deal with. He snatched his now-lit pipe from his mouth and shouted from the third rung of the ladder, “Stuart, see what you can do to locate that bloody American tourist. We must question him.” He silently cursed the bobbie beside Stuart for having allowed the tourist to continue on his merry way. Then he concentrated on what remained of the ladder, grateful that he had worked out at the gym the day before.
FBI Headquarters, Quantico, Virginia Two days later
Dr. Jessica Coran, FBI forensic pathologist for the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico, Virginia, paced her office, staring at the crime-scene photos of a particularly gruesome murder in which a man had been literally torn to death by rabid dogs. Police in New Jersey believed that the man was a murder victim, that the dogs had been the weapon. She and her team awaited shipment of the body, a man with full-body tattoos but not a trace of identification, having been stripped of wallet and clothing after the attack. The victim had no pockets, as the street cops would say.
Jessica, her hazel eyes dancing with the soft office light, had loosened her auburn hair to let it flow. She now studied the photos of the dead man, holding them up to the light when her phone beeped. Her secretary's voice followed. “Dr. Coran, I have a call that you really must-”
“I left word I wasn't to be disturbed, Gloria!” Jessica firmly replied. “I need a couple of hours.”
“But… but this is a call from New Scotland Yard, an Inspector Sharpe, something to do with a… a crucifixion murder over there?”
“A crucifixion murder?” Jessica flashed on a newspaper account of a body discovered in some park in England, a woman whose body had shown the unmistakable signs of having been literally crucified. She realized the call must have something to do with that. “All right, put it through,” she relented.
Inspector Richard Sharpe introduced himself, asking if she might inform him what she knew of murder by crucifixion. “We're still waiting on a final autopsy protocol on the murder, and as yet the victim has not been identified, you see.”
Jessica loved the accented words, and his voice. “I see, and how might… What do you wish from me?”
“I am seeking your expertise and any information you can share on death by crucifixion.”
“Ahhh, I see, now it's come to this, Dial-an-Autopsy.”
“I've read that you are an extraordinary medical examiner. I'm fishing, as you Yanks would say. At this point all we know is that the woman died of her wounds, sustained from what appears a ritualistic killing.”
“Then you are already wrong.”
“Pardon? But that much is obvious,” railed Sharpe. Jessica Coran countered, saying, “If she hung from a cross for any length of time, and from the sound of her wounds- I've heard talk over the Internet about the case and the gaps where gravity did its work around the spikes-then I must assume she died of asphyxiation, not her crucifixion wounds.”
Sharpe, taken so much aback that he now fumbled for words, finally replied, “Asphyxia? How do you bloody get that from her wounds?”
“Any postmortem man worth his salt will tell you that crucifixion means great stress placed on the breathing apparatus.”
“Breathing apparatus?”
Jessica allowed a short, annoyed breath to escape into the receiver. “It has to do with the weight placed against the lungs until the victim can no longer support the effort it takes to breathe.”