LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘We found no technology whatsoever in her place, but her colleagues told us she had Facebook and Twitter and all the other gubbins online so the chances are whoever was in her place took it for some reason,’ Imogen said.

      ‘Can we get access to her social media accounts?’ Adrian said.

      ‘We’re trying. Her sister doesn’t know any of her passwords. We can only see what’s available to see by the public or friends. Her sister let us look from her account.’

      ‘What about the post-mortem?

      ‘It’s happening right now, I believe. I could go and check it out.’

      ‘I’ll come with you,’ Adrian said.

      Imogen flashed him a look. He knew what she was thinking. She thought he couldn’t handle it. She thought the sight of a dead body would send him careering into an abyss of depression. He could still do his job, even despite what had happened to Lucy.

       Lucy.

      A journalist who had worked on their last case, a journalist who Adrian had very much fallen for. He hadn’t even been with her for very long, he reasoned, so the idea that his whole world had fallen apart now she was gone was ludicrous. Things had changed for him, there was no denying that. The biggest change was the fact that his ex, Andrea, and his fifteen-year-old son Tom had moved in with him following the death of her partner, Dominic – who had been exposed as corrupt at the end of Adrian’s last case. Adrian had given Andrea the bed and been sleeping on the sofa for the last two months. It was good to have them around. The first few nights after Lucy died were crippling, having other people move in most likely saved him from himself. He worked late most nights and got into work early most mornings. If nothing else, he was scoring some major brownie points with the DCI, if not his own sanity.

      Adrian watched as Imogen thumbed through the post-mortem report. She handed the pages to him but he shook his head.

      ‘Just give me the bullet points.’

      ‘Looks like she might have been on a date, she had traces of white wine and oysters in her stomach.’

      ‘Right,’ he said.

      ‘It’s not clear whether she was sexually assaulted – she definitely had intercourse before she died, and there is some minor tearing, but it seems as though it could have just as easily been vigorous consensual sex. Her genitals were washed with bleach, presumably after death which could mean any number of things. Maybe it was an accident and he was trying to remove any traces of himself, or maybe this is part of a larger ceremony that isn’t accidental at all. I’ve not really dealt with anything like this before.’

      ‘Right, anything else?’ He didn’t want to verbalise his disgust just yet.

      ‘She has also got some half-moon marks on her neck from her nails, consistent with her trying to fight back, pulling at whoever’s hands were there. She basically scratched herself.’

      ‘Oh God, poor thing.’ Adrian shuddered involuntarily. ‘Do you think it was kinky sex gone wrong? Erotic asphyxiation? Breath control or whatever you call it?’

      Imogen frowned. ‘I suppose that’s a possibility, but there’s a certain level of calm around the scene. Don’t you think? The way the body was redressed – that’s confirmed now by the way; she was definitely dressed after death. Something a bit ritualistic about the whole thing.’

      ‘You think it was planned?’

      ‘It just seems too neat not to be.’

      ‘Yeah. Maybe.’ Adrian took the sheets of paper from Imogen and glanced through them. ‘Says here that they couldn’t find any DNA on or in the body. The bleaching wouldn’t get rid of fluids, but it would get rid of trace evidence, right?’

      ‘So, what do we think then? Random or targeted? The underwear she had on suggests that she was on a date, coupled with what she ate.’

      ‘Let’s find out which restaurants serve oysters then, there can’t be that many places around here. Maybe someone saw her on the night.’

      DCI Kapoor came over to Imogen’s desk; Adrian could feel her eyes on him all the time, waiting for him to snap or something. It was getting tiresome.

      ‘Did you find out anything from Erica’s work colleagues?’

      ‘She was single, she had a cat, a few crap relationships but all pretty short-term, most of them guys at work.’

      ‘Where does she work?’ DCI Kapoor said.

      ‘Recruitment agency in town,’ Imogen said.

      ‘A lot of traffic then, people in and out. What about clients she’s dealt with?’

      ‘We have a list.’

      ‘We’re briefing on this in two hours. Grey, I’d like to see you in my office,’ DCI Kapoor said.

      Grey got up and followed the DCI. Adrian wondered if she was being asked to spy on him and then considered that maybe he was being a little egomaniacal about the whole thing and just maybe it was about something else entirely. He would ask Grey later, she wouldn’t keep anything important from him.

      Looking through the post-mortem for Erica Lawson made Adrian feel like a traitor. He still had a copy of Lucy’s post-mortem in the bottom of his desk drawer. For the last few weeks whenever he reached into the bottom drawer, he looked only with his fingers, not wanting to see the name on the report. He felt closer to her with it there in his drawer and he hated the idea of it being filed with all the other victims. It was on his mind every day, but he didn’t see how knowing all the details would help him in any way and so he just kept it nearby. He already knew enough.

      He shook off the image of Lucy’s lifeless body and put Erica’s post-mortem down, picking up the crime scene report instead. There were no other fingerprints in the bedroom, not even a partial, and no fingerprints other than Erica or those of her sister in the rest of the house. That implied premeditation, he thought, the wherewithal to know from the start not to leave prints. The door handles were not wiped clean because the other prints were there, which suggested that the killer knew from the moment he stepped into the house what he was going to do.

      Imogen returned and sat down next to Adrian, interrupting his thoughts.

      ‘What was all that about?’ he asked her.

      ‘The DCI has asked me to act up as DI.’

      Adrian raised his eyebrows. ‘Oh! Do I have to call you boss now?’ He smiled at her; she deserved this. From the moment they had started working together he had been impressed with her dogged determination and work ethic. She would be a great DI.

      ‘You don’t mind? You’ve been here longer than me.’

      ‘If there’s one thing I don’t need right now, it’s more responsibility.’

      ‘She wants me to go in for the exam. There’s a permanent DI spot opening up.’

      ‘You should go for it, Grey, you’d be good.’

      ‘I don’t know if it’s what I want right now.’

      ‘Well, as long as it’s not because of me. You do what you have to do. I think you’d be great.’ Adrian said. He vaguely remembered a time when he was ambitious, when he’d wanted to climb the ladder and call the shots. None of that seemed to matter anymore though. Maybe it was the grief or maybe it was the fact that he didn’t think he was ready yet. He knew that over the last few cases he had made some questionable decisions. He stood by them though, he probably wouldn’t do anything differently if he were put in the same position again. He had come to realise he struggled to put the law before his own morality. He needed to fix that before he could move forward in the police.

      

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