Chapter Ten
Jack arrived home feeling worn out and went straight up to his office to dump his briefcase. He came downstairs where Maggie was reading Hannah a story whilst she sat in her highchair eating a banana, waving it around gleefully. Maggie caught his arm and whispered to him that he should say something about his mother’s hair. Jack gave her a puzzled look, as Hannah threw the banana skin at him and giggled.
Penny was bending down and looking into the oven, checking the chicken.
‘Hi, Mum, I’m just going to do some work in my office.’
‘It’s a chicken in the bag, with stuffing. It’s really wonderful, cooks inside the bag and you just take it off and its ready to serve.’
Penny turned around to face him and Jack was glad that he had been warned. Her hair was not only quite short, but very blonde.
‘Good Heaven’s, Ma! You look wonderful. It really suits you. Turn around for me.’
Penny giggled and did a twirl, then fluffed the curls. ‘I decided I was looking too frumpy and old fashioned. Do you like it?’
‘I most certainly do. It makes you look much younger. Good for you! Give me a shout when dinner’s ready.’
Jack hurried up the stairs, thinking that perhaps he should pay more attention, not only to his mother, but to Maggie as well.
Eager to get back to the Ridley investigation, Jack unloaded his briefcase. He stacked the pages into a neat pile to sort through and prioritise, then picked up the first memory stick which had a typed note taped to it, indicating that this was the post-mortem report. Jack wondered how the hell Ridley had gained access to it. He plugged it into the laptop he had taken back from Leon, still fully charged, and was just about to open it when Maggie popped her head around the door.
‘What did you think of the new hairstyle?’
‘A bit of a surprise, but she seems very happy with it,’ he smiled.
Maggie shut the door behind her and came over to his desk. Jack shut the laptop, not wanting Maggie to see what he was working on.
‘I was emptying the bedroom waste bin,’ Maggie said, ‘and there were loads of Marks & Spencer clothing bags in there. Penny’s been buying a new wardrobe by the look of it.’
Jack shrugged. ‘OK, so maybe that’s where the extra money went. But I don’t think she’s bought anything new since our wedding. You know, if you ever want to have a new hairstyle, or new clothes, or whatever...’
Maggie looked at him quizzically. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, I was just thinking... I mean, you look perfect to me, but I know I’m not very good at complimenting you. Maybe you need to take some time out to pamper yourself.’
‘What’s the matter with my hair?’
‘Nothing, I just meant that we’ve both been working flat out — you in particular — and sometimes it’s good to do something for yourself.’
Maggie put her arms around him, but he shrugged her away. ‘I’m being serious, but now I need you to leave me alone as I have some work to do.’
‘Want to talk about it?’ she asked.
‘No, it’s the Ridley situation. I’ve not had the time to go over all the material he gave me, so I want to catch up. I can’t focus on it at the station as I’m still getting nowhere fast with this Middleton case. His girlfriend has disappeared and I need some information from her.’ He raked his hand through his hair. ‘I met Rodney’s aunt today. She was enormous, like a big wobbling waterbed and...’ He sighed. ‘See, you’ve got me started. Just leave me to sort out Ridley’s stuff. I don’t want to even think about bloody Rodney Middleton.’
Maggie held up her hands in mock surrender. ‘I’m going, I’m going. I can’t wait for dinner: it’s chicken in a bag that cooks itself!’
Maggie shut the door behind her and Jack opened his laptop again. A voice-over on the video gave the date, time and the location of the mortuary, then the screen filled with the shot of the body on the mortuary table, covered in a green plastic sheet. Two figures in white suits with hoods and masks were mopping the floor, and the pathologist, a man Jack didn’t recognise, stood holding a clipboard. He was also dressed in a white protective suit and had a white hat pulled down over his hair. Jack knew that the post-mortem had already been completed. He saw two other masked men standing to one side, neither of whom were known to him.
‘Right, gentlemen, let me take you through the findings,’ the pathologist began. ‘The victim has deep strangulation marks on her neck, made by some kind of cord, perhaps from an electrical appliance. I would say that the assailant was standing behind her. There are no defensive wounds on her hands, so I estimate it was looped over her head and tightened quickly so that she lost consciousness within a very short time. The stomach contents revealed that her last meal was a steak and salad with fruit. Obviously, we will await the toxicology report to ascertain if there were any drugs or alcohol in her system, but she appeared to be in good health, with good muscle tone. Consequently, I initially estimated her age to be late thirties. However, I was wrong.’
Jack was only half paying attention. The victim’s head remained covered, and he was eager to see her face, but then his attention was alerted again.
‘I would like my assistant, Nidal, to explain her findings and the reason I may have miscalculated the victim’s age.’
Moving into the camera shot was a petite, dark-skinned woman wearing a white coat, mask, and with her hair under a cap. She slowly lifted the plastic sheet away from the victim’s head and lowered it to just above her shoulders. Jack craned forwards but she was standing in front of the victim and blocking his view.
‘It is clear from her hairline that she has had a lot of plastic surgery: her forehead has been lifted and her neck has been tightened. She also has chin and cheek implants, and her nose has been very carefully reconstructed. Whoever did this surgery was an expert. Examining the victim’s rib cage there are a number of small scars, which underscores this, as it is usual, when reshaping a nose, to take small slithers of bone from the rib cage. She does not have any breast implants but has had silicone injections. She has faded white lines from being suntanned some months prior to her death, and her hair has been professionally coloured and highlighted recently, as there is no natural new growth showing.’
At last Jack got a close-up view of the woman on the slab. Even devoid of any makeup her skin looked flawless. The assistant covered the victim’s head again and took out a hand from beneath the cover.
‘No defensive wounds, and very well-manicured nails. Again, I found slight scars which can be found when surgery is used to tighten the skin and remove age spots.’
She replaced the victim’s hand under the plastic sheet and moved to the end of the slab to lift the cover from her feet.
‘The victim clearly took care of her feet with regular pedicures and there is no hard skin. The same colour varnish used on her fingernails is also on her toes, but a tell-tale sign of her real age is the fact that on both feet she has quite advanced bunions, which may have been quite painful.’
The pathologist now moved into shot, gesturing to the victim. ‘So, we know she is five foot eight, and we know her weight was almost ten stone, but we had some difficulty estimating her exact age; from Nidal’s experienced inspection, we both now think that she may in fact be in her late fifties to mid-sixties, rather than her late thirties. I believe that her killer was forensically experienced as we found no fibres of any description, other than from the vehicle carpet. It is possible her naked body had been taped to remove any clues, and with no clothes there was no further examination by a forensic fibre expert. We are still waiting for the toxicology reports.’
Jack leaned back in his chair. ‘Bloody hell.’