call had come through at eleven-thirty. By midday, the scene was secure and the investigating team was moving into place. A young woman, dead in the bathroom of one of the cheap hotels on the road out of the centre, to the east of the city. The first – and easiest – assumption was that the woman had been a prostitute who had fallen foul of her client. The Blenheim was a known haunt of the local prostitutes. She had been severely beaten – her face was smashed beyond recognition – and there was evidence of other injuries on her body. By one, John Gage, the pathologist had finished his work at the scene. ‘You can move her now, unless there’s anything you need to do before she goes,’ he said, wincing slightly as he stood up from where he had been kneeling by the bath.
Detective Chief Inspector Roy Farnham stood in the doorway, his hands carefully in his pockets. The photographer had finished, and the Scene of Crime team had moved through the small bathroom, bagging evidence for removal. ‘What have you got?’
Gage looked up, still pulling faces as he worked his stiff legs. ‘I’m too old for crawling around on bathroom floors,’ he said. ‘Hello, Roy, didn’t see you there. Well, she’s been dead for a few hours, but I’ll need to get her on the table before I can be more specific than that. Cause? I don’t know yet. There’s ligature marks round her neck. She’s got head injuries that could have been fatal, but she’s taken one hell of a beating. Whoever it was – he’s a nasty piece of work.’
Farnham wasn’t going to argue with that. But Gage hadn’t answered the question he needed answering. ‘Is it another one?’ he said.
Gage shot him a quick look. ‘I’m not guessing anything before the PM, Roy. The others – there were no ligature marks.’ He looked down at the body. One of the investigating team was leaning over the bath now, carefully cutting through the rope that bound the woman’s wrists to the heavy mixer taps. ‘I’ll get her printed, and get the stuff to the lab as fast as I can. You’re not going to get an ID from her face.’
Farnham looked, and looked away. ‘Can’t you patch it up a bit?’
Gage shrugged. ‘After a fashion. You’ll be better IDing off the prints. Or you might get something off her watch – it’s engraved.’
Farnham looked round the cramped room, and pushed at the wall behind the bed. It was thin – a partition. ‘The other rooms down here were occupied last night. Someone must have heard something.’
Gage looked doubtful. ‘She may not have been killed here. There isn’t enough blood. It’s possible the running water washed it away, but…You’ll need to get into that drain.’
Roy Farnham contemplated the prospect of trying to find a murder scene and felt depressed. One of the SOCOs came over to him. ‘Sir?’
Farnham looked at what the man was showing him. It was a card in a clear evidence bag, like a business card, that had been dropped on the floor of the bedroom. In one corner there was a silhouette: a woman kneeling with her hands crossed behind her head. The lettering was fine italic, Angel Escorts, with a phone number. At the bottom of the card it said, International escorts. Our pleasure is to give you pleasure. ‘OK,’ he said. He made a note to get on to Vice, see what they knew about this Angel Escorts place.
The photographer had finished. Farnham nodded to Gage. ‘All right,’ the pathologist said to his waiting assistants. ‘Get her out of there.’
Farnham watched as they moved the woman’s body carefully, sliding plastic sheeting underneath her to prevent the bloodstained water from dripping on to the floor. He looked inside the bath as they lifted her. Gage was right. There was very little blood, just a diluted wash that left a dark tidemark as it moved with the disturbance of the water. It was possible the killer had cleaned up after himself, got rid of the blood and debris from the death. The room was awash with water. Farnham needed the people who’d been in the other rooms that Thursday night, to see if they’d heard sounds of a fight, the sound of water running late, anything that would help locate what had happened.
Once the body had been removed, he found it easier to work. It became a job, a problem-solving task. With the woman still there, it was more personal, involving anger and disgust at the things that human beings were capable of doing. He wondered why they did it, women who sold themselves to strangers. It had to be more than money, for the women who walked the streets or who went to hotel rooms with men who ordered them over the phone, the way they ordered pizza brought to their door. So many of them ended up dead – from drugs, from violence, from self-harm. This was the third one within the last two months, and there were disturbing parallels between the deaths. His superiors weren’t convinced there was a link, but Farnham had a bad feeling.
He wondered what the story was of the woman in the bath. She had looked so small and broken.
The priest was only sixty, but he often felt like an old man. He had spent his life in inner-city parishes, a life that had been properly devoted to poverty, chastity and obedience. He had seen a steady decline in the power and influence of the church that had been his life from his earliest memories. And now he was tired.
He walked slowly down the aisle, the words of the canonical offices in his mind, the ritual of the prayers working like an automaton on his tongue, but always real, always meaningful as he whispered them into the hushed silence, into the still, close air of the sacred, of the transcendence that was God.
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts…Sometimes the words came back to him in the old Latin – long gone, and for good reasons – the old Latin that he remembered well and sometimes missed. Sanctus, sanctus, sanctus…The church was silent and empty. It was carved out of the stone, reaching up into the high vaulting of the roof spaces, where light diffused through the lacework of the windows, dappling the colours from the stained glass against the stonework of the pillars. The flags on the floor were worn smooth with the feet of worshippers, penitents, communicants. Now, the feet of occasional tourists wore away the names cut into the memorial stones.
He read the familiar descriptions as he walked. Libera me! Deliver me, O Lord! The plea was still legible, but the name had vanished from the permanence of the stone decades ago. Requiescat in pace. Rest in peace. The statues waited in niches and on plinths with banks of candleholders in front of them. There were boxes for offerings, and candles that could be lit in memoriam, for a soul gone before, as a plea for mercy and forgiveness for the souls of dead sinners. The holders were empty, unused, the metal tarnished now. He could remember when each saint had its row upon row of devotional candles burning steadily in the shadows, scenting the air with the smell of burning wax.
His curiosity was taking him to the furthest corner of the church, where the side aisle met the transept. In an obscure niche, a statue stood, some forgotten saint, cowled and tonsured. The statue may have been painted once, but now it was grey stone, caught in the moment of stepping forward, one hand raised in blessing, or in threat. The eyes, smooth and blind, watched from the shadows.
The priest paused in his slow procession. Though the bank of candleholders here was smaller, he had noticed recently that some of the sconces, always the same ones, held candles recently burnt down. His hand touched a blackened wick lightly, and it crumbled away. But it was warm, and the metal around two of the sconces was encrusted with wax that had dripped over weeks and months. Under the third candle, the wax deposits were less, as though this one were less used than the other two. No one cleaned the darker corners of the church. The candle sconces were used so seldom that no one thought to check. He sighed for the days when cleaning the church was in itself an act of worship. But someone had come here to place a light in the darkness, a light to ask for mercy or forgiveness, a light to shine on the road of
