Equinox

Chapter 7

The scene of the killing was little more than a mile and a half from the hospital. But the traffic into Oxford from the M40 through Headington was starting to build up, so it took Philip almost twenty minutes to get there.

Laura had stayed at the hospital with Jo, which was an arrangement that suited him just fine; he was in no mood for a repeat of last night's performance with Monroe. Still shell-shocked from the fright that his daughter had given him, he knew he had to focus on the task ahead. He parked his car in a residents-only zone at the bottom of Cave Street close to the river, put his police pass on the dashboard, retrieved his bag from the boot and walked towards the towpath that ran parallel to a tributary of the River Cherwell.

The path down to the river was slippery and Philip took the steps slowly. The rain started up again, and ahead of him he could see the murky grey river. About ten yards away stood a bedraggled-looking group — two uniforms, Monroe with his back to the path, and a sergeant holding an umbrella over the head of the DCI. Further off, two CSI guys were walking away towards a house that extended out on stilts into the river. The rain grew heavier and Philip was tempted to run back to the car for his umbrella. But just at that moment Monroe spotted him.

'Mr Bainbridge. Alone today, are we?'

Philip sighed, put his hands in his pockets and risked a brief smile.

'Well, we have a real doozy for you this morning. Better prepare yourself

'What? Worse than last night?'

'Depends how squeamish you are. Woman out jogging found her about seven o'clock. Forensics tell me she's been dead between four and six hours. Follow me. You're going to have to work to find a suitable angle — and watch yourself

Monroe picked his way carefully along the path. Some plastic sheeting had been draped over the branches of a tree on the bank and a single floodlight was shining onto the lapping river under the lowest bough. Just behind Monroe, Philip could see the red stern of a punt. As he took in the full horror of the scene, he felt his stomach lurch.

A young woman was half-sitting, half-lying at one end of the boat. She was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and was staring at the bank with sightless eyes.

She looked completely drained of blood. Her arms were spread wide and her left hand hung over the side of the punt. Streaks of blood could be seen on the inside of her arms and across her shoulders. Her eyes were open, but what had been their whites were almost completely red: the blood vessels had burst. Over her eyes lay. a slimy film that dulled the colour of her blood. Her throat had been cut and the top of her head had been removed cleanly, expertly, a hemisphere of bone and scalp sliced away. Where her brain had once sat there remained nothing but a red and black bowl. In a few places the dead tissue had been scratched away to reveal startlingly clean white bone.

Inside the woman's head, a highly polished silver coin caught the light: a silver twin to the gold coin that Philip had seen in Detective Chief Inspector Monroe's gloved hand the night before.

Philip turned away and took a couple of deep breaths.

'I'll give you a few minutes,' Monroe muttered, climbing back to the path. 'But I'll need the pictures at the station within the hour.'

Philip wasted no time in setting up his shots. He knew from long experience that this was the only way he could deal with these situations. The more horrible the images that lay before him, the more intently he had to disconnect, to go into a robotic state where he simply did his job and forced himself to become blind to what lay beyond the camera's lens.

He took a series of shots from the prow of the punt: some close-ups using the telephoto attachment and a couple of wide-angle pictures. Then he walked along the bank, and took some shots side-on before crouching close to the stern where the boat had lodged against the bank, and where the most horrific images could be captured, digitised and stored on a chip in his camera — a human life reduced to pixels.

It wasn't until Philip had clambered up the bank, given the two uniforms left at the scene a careless wave and turned the corner into Cave Street that he realised how much his hands were shaking. Reaching the car, he was about to open the boot when a wave of nausea hit him. He vomited into the gutter and watched the bile wash away in the speeding rainwater flowing down the street.