It was all very nice, and the furniture and artworks had clearly cost a small fortune, but the place was somehow devoid of personality. As if Jane Cooper had handed the whole thing over to an interior designer and asked them to make it look as if someone rich lived here.
‘Right, off we go.’ The Dunk performed a theatrical clearing of his throat. ‘Jane Izabella Cooper; twenty-four; shoulder-length curly brown hair; heart-shaped face with a fairly uncomfortable smile. The features look a bit too small for it, too. You know, like she’s one of those spooky porcelain dolls little girls used to play with in the Victorian times?’ A sigh. ‘She looks sad.’
Lucy wandered out of the lounge and into a long corridor lined with doors and original artworks.
He followed, nose in the file. ‘Pretty enough, I suppose, if you’re into that sort of thing.’
The kitchen wasn’t quite as big as Lucy’s dad’s, but it had a lot more gadgets in it. Their gleaming metal surfaces dulled by time and the SOC team’s powders.
The Dunk thumped his bum against the work surface and pouted. ‘Oh...’
Lucy opened a cupboard at random, exposing three shelves full of pots and pans that still had the paper price tags dangling from the handles. ‘“Oh”, what?’
‘She worked in that bookshop on Castlewall Terrace. I like that place; they do great coffee.’
The next cupboard held a pasta machine, fancy blender, and some sort of vacuum packer. None of which looked as if they’d ever been used.
Lucy closed the cupboard door and moved on to the fridge. ‘She bought this place by working in a bookshop?’
‘Nah: inherited a massive chunk of cash when her parents died in a scuba-diving accident off Mauritius. Dad was some sort of investment banker; Mum was a corporate lawyer.’
The fridge was still fully stocked: mostly Marks & Spencer ready meals, all now eight months past their sell-by date, their plastic films swollen and stretched taut. The milk carton had blown up like a rugby ball, its contents separated into dirty liquid and a thick layer of yellowy sludge.
She shut the fridge before anything in there went off with a bang. ‘Who reported her missing?’
‘Erm...’ He followed Lucy across the hall, into a spacious bathroom with a freestanding bath and fancy shower. ‘Ah, OK. It was a Russell Fowler, of Robinson, Fenton, and Fowler Limited. They’re solicitors. Been working for her family since before the accident.’ The Dunk sniffed. ‘Now that’s just depressing.’
Next up was a cosy study. The views weren’t as good on this side of the flat — looking out across a building site to the unconverted warehouses and ratty little alleyways that used to cover this whole area.
The search team must’ve had a field day in here: all the drawers were open, the contents heaped up in wobbly piles on an antique desk. They’d even emptied out the wastepaper basket. Looking for clues. Finding sod all.
‘Says here she was meant to attend a “financial management and planning consultation”, which is sketchy lawyer talk for squirrelling cash away in the Cayman Islands where the taxman can’t get his hands on it. Because, you know, why should rich people pay their fair share?’ A snort. ‘Anyway, when they couldn’t raise her over the next couple of days, Fowler called the local station.’
‘Why didn’t the bookshop call it in?’
‘She was only part-time.’
No family. No friends. Not even colleagues who gave a toss. It had been down to the lawyers to report her missing.
The Dunk was right, that really was depressing.
He looked up from the file. ‘You want PM results next, or crime-scene photos?’
Neither.
But she held her hand out anyway. ‘Photos.’ Took them out into the corridor again without looking at the bloody things. Down to the master bedroom at the end.
Another long, low whistle. ‘Wow.’ The Dunk scuffed into the middle of the space. ‘I mean, waking up to that every morning.’ Standing there, with his hands on his hips, looking out through the patio doors, across the balcony, and off towards the castle — balanced on top of its granite blade — fading in and out of focus as the rain drifted by.
Didn’t seem to bother him that the rest of the room was a disaster area.
The crime-scene cleaners had been in, hacking big random chunks out of both carpet and underlay, exposing the mottled chipboard flooring below. They’d sprayed the wall behind the bed with their industrial-strength bleach, replacing the Bloodsmith’s prayer with a large patch of urine-yellow blotches, but clearly the mattress, sheets, and pillows had been too contaminated to rescue. Now only a purple furry throw lay draped across the naked bedframe.
Like the study, all the bedside-cabinet drawers were open, their contents rummaged through. Same with the make-up stand. Only the built-in wardrobes looked as if they hadn’t been ransacked. Or at least someone had bothered to hang Jane’s clothes up again, afterwards.
‘How much do you think a place like this would set you back?’ The Dunk unlocked the patio doors, sliding them open to let in the muffled roar of the city beyond. Dampened by that thick blanket of drizzle. ‘I should start buying lottery tickets.’
Lucy risked a glance at the crime-scene photographs.
Jane Cooper lay spreadeagled on her bed, stripped naked, eyes and mouth hanging open. Chest and stomach, too. He’d draped Jane’s innards across her thighs, hiding her crotch. Pale skin smeared with dark scarlet. The bedding saturated with it. ‘HELP ME!’ on the wall above what was left of her.
The next pic was a close-up of her face, frozen forever in an expression of horrified surprise. The Dunk had been right about that too — she really did look like a porcelain doll. One some angry child had taken its rage out on.
After that was a shot of her left arm, where a faded circular mark surrounded a small dark dot.
‘You want PM results now?’
‘Might as well.’ Lucy lowered herself onto the end of the bedframe.
‘OK. Back of her skull was partially caved in. Must’ve hit her a bit too hard this time. Organs were removed after death, again, and instead of slitting her wrist, the Bloodsmith drained her with a large-bore needle. Pathologist estimates eighteen to twenty gauge, but doesn’t think he would’ve got much before her heart stopped, because of the head wound.’
‘Why do it in here?’ Pointing at the room.
‘Says it’s probably the same kind of needle they use for blood donations. The larger gauge means you don’t damage the red blood cells as they go through the needle on their way to whatever tubing and bags you’re using to collect it. Something to do with fluid dynamics and shearing forces?’
She turned, setting the frame creaking. ‘He knows it’s going to be messy, but he doesn’t take her into the bathroom like Adam Holmes or Craig Thorburn. He does it here.’
‘Cause of death was the brain trauma. Like I said: hit her too hard.’
‘Maybe they were romantically involved? Maybe that’s why they were in the bedroom?’
‘Took her heart, a big chunk of liver, and a kidney.’
‘What about the profile? They speculate about why here?’
The Dunk juggled his paperwork. ‘OK, right. Blah, blah, blah, “I don’t know how to use punctuation properly, and everything is one big run-on sentence.” Blah, blah... “Given that the readily accessible and sizeable bathroom was ignored in favour of exsanguinating Jane in the bedroom we can conclude that either the Bloodsmith was less concerned with making a mess, given that the flat below remains unoccupied, was confident that his new methodology for extracting blood through a big needle wouldn’t cause as much mess, or there was a sexual element to this encounter that wasn’t present with the previous victims,” deep breath, “though it’s unlikely that this was planned, given his modus operandi to date, if it occurred organically during his encounter with Jane it is likely to have taken him by surprise and his sudden arousal may well have startled and revolted him in equal measure, which could explain the excessive use of force when attempting to render her unconscious with a hammer.” So, maybe you were half right about the romance. “This may also explain why the Bloodsmith placed Jane’s intestines where he did, covering her genitalia, because he was ashamed of becoming sexually stimulated by her physical presence,” then it just sort of rambles on for a bit, about platonic love versus spiritual love versus just wanting to jump someone’s bones.’ Turning the page. ‘On and on and on...’ The Dunk curled his top lip. ‘People shouldn’t get to be Police-Scotland-approved forensic psychologists if they can’t write in proper sentences.’