One leg over.
‘Perfectly fine,’ I panted, leaning forward now to swing my right leg over the tape behind me. But no matter how far forward I lurched, my right foot refused to clear this damned tape which, at the very second she looked down at it again, sprang back up into my balls.
‘Really, it’s no trouble,’ she giggled, mercifully lowering my polythene nemesis.
Desperate to get my right leg finally over, I swung too fast. I felt my left leg buckle and my arms flap like a penguin in an oil slick. Too late. As I slumped helplessly onto my back, I saw only sky and a pretty face etched with alarm.
‘Smooth,’ cackled Fintan with undisguised glee, my humiliation complete.
‘Who’s in charge?’ I babbled, springing up instantly, as if the whole thing had been a pre-planned manoeuvre.
‘DS Spence,’ she managed to squeak through suppressed laughter.
She clamped her hand over her mouth and nodded towards a wiry little man strutting about in a tight mac.
‘The one with the short legs,’ she wheezed, about to burst.
‘Does he bite?’
‘Sometimes,’ she chirped through her muffling hand, ‘but I’m sure you’ll get over it.’
Laughter exploded from so deep within her that she had to bend over to cope.
‘Sorry,’ she said finally, hauling herself back upright and sleeving her wet eyes.
Her expression had changed but the tears kept coming.
‘It’s just been such a horrible morning. I really needed that. Sorry if … no offence.’
‘None taken,’ I deadpanned. ‘With my talent for slapstick, I should be working in family liaison.’
‘Thanks for not being a dick about it,’ she said, her sad watery smile somehow reducing the earth’s gravitational pull on me a second time.
‘I think I’ve been plenty dick enough already,’ I smiled, walking on.
‘I hope you’ve got a strong stomach,’ she called after me. I turned to register her worried round eyes, instantly bringing to mind Holly Hunter in Raising Arizona.
‘It’s really horrible,’ she added.
Her stark warning set my heart on a club-footed gallop around my chest. Sudden shocks of any kind – physical, mental, even a really good joke – could cause me to suffer total collapse. It’s called Cataplexy, a rare side effect of insomnia and narcolepsy. An attack turns my bones to liquid; I simply capsize like an Alp, fully lucid but unable to move anything except my eyeballs.
I gave myself a stern talking to: You’ve already fallen at the first today. You can’t go over again. They’ll label you a total flake.
I galvanised myself by studying DS Spence’s dour, pinched face. He looked about as forgiving as a scalded hornet.
He never stopped stomping about. Underlings had to build up to his ferocious pace, then fall in beside him to talk, veering and turning as he did in a surreal crime scene speed tango. When, finally, they left him alone for ten seconds, I set off in pursuit.
‘DC Lynch, sir, from the Cold Case Unit. I’ve been sent by my supervising officer, DS Simon Barrett, to take a look at the killer’s MO.’
His lifeless, powder-blue eyes locked sullenly onto mine.
‘Is that a statement or a request?’ he barked in paint–peeling Glaswegian.
‘Sir?’
‘What is it that you want, Constable?’
‘I’m analysing the unsolved murders of prostitutes in the city over the past few years, sir, establishing links and connections between cases.’
He squinted at me in irritated disgust. ‘We don’t even know who she is yet.’
‘I only need a few minutes, sir, maybe a chat with the pathologist.’
‘Why didn’t you just say so?’
He continued to pitilessly survey my face, then laughed sourly. ‘I doubt if you could link this to another murder on the planet, son. It’s outta this fucking world.’
Two gore warnings had me snorting air like a rhino with the bends. I stole one final lungful, banked it and pulled back the forensic tent flap. It felt like someone had just yanked open my rib cage and let my heart topple out onto the grass. All the blood in my head went south as my misfiring brain struggled to register the horror. I shifted from foot to foot, subconsciously trying to earth the shock. But it just ricocheted about my insides like a charged cannonball. I breathed in and out hard, willing the head swoon to pass.
‘Christ,’ I finally managed.
A pathologist and a Scenes of Crime officer padded about in white overalls, shoeless and joyless, taking swabs and snapshots. I reached for my black, Met Police-issue notebook and pen. Jotting down the date, time and location steadied me. Falling back on training and routine, the clerical somehow formalised the grotesque chaos that lay at our feet. I reminded myself of my task here – to record the facts, not comprehend the crime.
Her naked body, flat out on its back, had been sliced in two around the waist. The lower half had been positioned about a foot away from the torso and head. I started at the top.
Jet black hair. A troubled forehead. Wide, thick eyebrows that looked like a four-year-old’s attempt to draw two straight lines. Tiny, narrowing, vivid grey eyes that looked puzzled. Early 20s. A ringer for actress Juliette Lewis. The corners of her mouth had been slashed right up to her ears, giving her a grotesque, purple ‘Joker’ grin, known as a Glasgow Smile – the city’s blade gangs had patented this sick ritual during the 1920s. You make a little incision in each corner of the victim’s mouth, then hurt them so that their screams do the rest.
Her arms had been raised over her head, her elbows at right angles.
Her breasts and stomach sported spoon-size gouges, red-rimmed. The lack of blood anywhere confused me.
My eyes moved down to her spread-eagled lower half. Her intestines had been tucked neatly beneath her buttocks. Her pubic hair trimmed into a ‘landing strip’. More spoon-size gouge marks around her thighs.
I watched the pathologist insert a thermometer into her rectum and wondered why anyone would choose such a profession. Especially this woman. Mid-40s. Sculpted blonde hair. Strong nose and chin. Imperious, rigid, poised, she clearly hailed from Britain’s ‘red trouser and Land Rover’ country elite. I could picture her astride a stallion sipping a pre–hunt sherry, or flagellating the local magistrate with a bullwhip. Yet here she was, crouched at the business end of a murder victim’s arsehole, the Last Judgement in a florid, shoulder-padded jacket and pearls.
‘Right,’ she said brightly, springing up, ‘let’s pop her into a bag and get her back to the mortuary.’
Peeling off her polythene gloves, she turned to me.
‘Dr Edwina Milne,’ she announced, ‘and how may I help you, young man?’
‘DC Lynch,’ I said, offering a hand, ‘from the Cold Case Unit.’
She gave my outstretched arm an arched eyebrow.
‘I don’t think so, DC. Not where my hands have been. Besides, they get very sweaty in these things.’
She sealed the gloves in a transparent plastic pouch. She then squirted pungent splodge into her palms, rubbed them vigorously together and looked at me with a hint of impatience.
‘I’m analysing the unsolved murders of street girls from the last ten years, ma’am. I need to report to my chief today about any possible