Cold as Ice

Chapter 10

‘What are your thoughts, Ebb?’ Carter pulled away from outside the Styles’ house. ‘Do you think she could have hidden a lot from her parents? Could she have had a whole life they didn’t know about? They didn’t seem to worry when she didn’t come home at night. She could have been someone’s regular escort? Hawk might be someone who paid her for sex.’

‘Not likely, Guv, if she was always broke. Jeanie said they spoke to her friends at the time – I think it would have come out then. Plus, a rich punter is unlikely to want to draw attention to his crime by dumping her in the canal – much more likely to dispose of her in the countryside or the sea.’

‘I agree. He’s definitely made a point with location and method. Why? For notoriety?’

‘Think it’s fame, Guv.’ Ebony looked across at Carter as he drove. They were caught in a traffic jam.

‘Yeah.’ Carter nodded his agreement. ‘Everyone remembers the body found in the canal; no one remembers the one found in the woods. And, sometimes that body isn’t even found. Somehow Hawk doesn’t seem the type to want to waste the kill. He wants everyone to see it.’

‘I think he wanted to be able to see her when she came back up,’ said Ebony. ‘And he wanted us to find her exactly as he intended: face, body, make-up, everything.’

‘Maybe he even guessed when her body would float to the surface? Is that possible Ebb?’

She nodded. ‘He could take a guess. He could work it out to the nearest two weeks, maybe. All he would need to do was to be sure of the temperature of the water, the weight of the body, the amount of fat, the food in her stomach even. But the temperature of the water dropping like it did would have been difficult to calculate.’

‘The freezing? Yes. That’s something he couldn’t control,’ said Carter.

‘That and the subsequent lack of oxygen in the water would have slowed the whole process down.’ Ebony said.

‘Then we need to examine all CCTV footage of the area and look for someone who couldn’t stay away. Someone who’s been visiting that area for the past three weeks, every day.’

On the way back to Fletcher House they stopped off at the Whittington to see Doctor Harding. They found her in her office. She had just finished cutting what was left of Emily Styles’ liver into centimetre slices to create slides for the laboratory.

‘I can spare you half an hour,’ she said.

‘Thirty minutes will be all I need,’ answered Carter.

‘Shoot.’ Harding indicated that they should pull up chairs.

‘Now we know who Emily Styles was,’ said Carter, ‘I’d like to run through some of the post mortem findings again with you, Doctor Harding. I want to try and get an idea of what was happening to Emily in the last months of her life and get a sense of where she might have been and what she’s been through.’

‘You mean now we know she wasn’t a sex worker on her way to a fancy dress party?’ Harding fixed Carter with a look that betrayed a hint of mockery.

Ebony tried not to smile as she studied the notes in her lap as she shuffled in her chair. She liked Harding. She might be the only woman in the department who did. But then, Ebony didn’t have a husband to lose and she had everything to learn from Harding.

Carter put his hands up in surrender mode.

‘I agree I might have jumped to conclusions but everything pointed to someone who had a drug habit and lived a dangerous life right up until the day she died. Not a single mum on the way to collect her child from nursery and held hostage for months. That came out of nowhere.’ Harding scrolled through the results on her screen whilst tapping her forefinger on the desktop as she waited impatiently.

Carter looked across at Ebony and rolled his eyes; she responded with a raised eyebrow and a sideways smile. Carter gave a look that said he might have guessed whose side she’d be on.

‘We can be pretty sure she was held somewhere against her will: starved and abused. We need to get an idea of how she was kept in order to find out where that might have been. Could the marks on her ankles and wrists have been caused by being restrained?’

Harding opened Emily Styles’ post mortem notes on the desk. ‘Yes. I would say so. There are variations in the depth of the wounds, where the weight of her body could have rested for long periods of time. The injuries to her wrists and ankles indicate that she was restrained and suspended by the arms primarily: hoisted up by her arms, at the wrists were where the wounds are deep. We will never know by what because the flesh has been destroyed by the pond elements.’ She pulled a piece of paper out from the drawer under her desk and began drawing a diagram of a sophisticated hangman’s noose.

‘So…’ Carter tapped his pencil on the hangman diagram. ‘She was suspended somehow and her ankles were bound.’

Harding nodded her agreement. ‘Yes. I would have no trouble testifying to that in court.’

‘He raped her, he assaulted her. He starved her, we know that,’ added Carter. ‘He could have killed her within moments of kidnapping her but he enjoys the wait. He enjoys watching her suffer. Three months is a long time to keep someone alive – someone so sick.’

‘There’s no doubt that her organs were shot,’ said Harding. ‘I’ve just finished slicing them up for examination and I can tell you now that the liver was beyond repair and so were her kidneys. The infection had poisoned her whole system.’

‘Emily Styles’ parents say she had a phobia about needles – can’t see her “popping”,’ said Carter.

‘There’s no heroin in her system.’

‘Well, if it’s not contaminated heroin what is it?’ asked Carter.

‘Could be many types of bacteria,’ Harding answered. ‘I told you it takes time for the lab to get results.’

‘If he was looking after her, holding her, then he was also nursing her.’ Ebony was looking at Harding’s hanging woman diagram. ‘He seems to want to preserve her face so that he can mock her with the make-up, whilst destroying her body.’

‘Yes, she would have been a walking gangrenous site,’ said Harding.

Ebony began drawing a make-up mask onto Harding’s hanging woman. ‘That’s what he likes.’