insist on holding meetings in the morgue.
It wasn’t that Warren was particularly squeamish—he wouldn’t have been staring at the A4 colour photographs spread across his desk otherwise, he told himself—however, he’d rarely seen the need to see the victim’s dissected remains up close and personal. He’d much rather have high-resolution photographs, pre-interpreted by experts far more qualified than he.
“The cause of death was fairly straightforward—single stab wound to the heart. Dead before he hit the ground. There would have been lots of blood, so the attacker’s clothes would have been soaked, although the heart will have stopped pumping pretty much instantly so once he dropped there shouldn’t have been a huge puddle.”
Warren remembered the blood smears on the grass and the relatively small patch on the tarmac pathway. “Given the lack of blood spatter on the path away from the pool where we think he fell, would that be consistent with his attacker standing in front of him?”
“I’d say so. If he’d been attacked from behind—” Jordan mimed a stabbing action towards his own body “—he’d have sprayed at least some blood forward, leaving marks on the sidewalk. It looks as though his killer caught the brunt of it.”
Warren made a note on his pad. A search was already underway to comb bins and possible hiding places for discarded garments. There might also be spots of blood leading away from the scene of the attack. There hadn’t been any rain and so they might still be visible. He made a note to request a fingertip search to find any such trace.
Assuming they found a suspect, perhaps they had been seen trying to clean clothes or dispose of rubbish unexpectedly.
“What about defensive marks?”
“None that we can find.”
“So his killer took him by surprise. Do we have any information about the murder weapon?”
“From the size of the laceration, we’re talking about something sharp with a five- to six-inch blade. Not too wide, but pointed. No serrations. We’ve not found any traces of rust in the wound and, unfortunately, the nature of the attack means that it missed any bones or ribs, so there aren’t any metal fragments that would allow us to identify the knife more precisely.” Jordan shrugged. “I suspect that we’re looking at a run-of-the-mill stainless steel kitchen knife, unused, or at least well cleaned before the attack. Assuming there was any premeditation, it may have been bought anywhere from a supermarket chain to a hardware store. Find me the weapon and I might be able tell you more, but until then I’m speculating.”
Warren sighed. They’d found the victim’s wallet, but nothing else. “So it could still be a bog-standard, mugging gone wrong?”
Jordan shook his head. “I’m not so sure.” He picked up the folder that he’d brought the photographs in. “Leaving aside all the inconsistencies, the precision of the killing worries me—a single stab wound to the heart. It’s very clean. Straight into the diaphragm, missing the sternum and ribs, but angled upward directly into the heart. Ordinarily, I’d be happy to dismiss that as good luck. But there’s also the dog.”
“How was it killed? I didn’t see any blood.”
Jordan pulled out another sheet of paper. “According to the vet, its neck was broken. A shattered jaw suggests a single kick, snapping its head back with such force the cervical vertebrae were fractured.”
Warren felt a chill go down his back. “What are you suggesting, Professor?”
“A perfectly targeted, instantly fatal single stab wound to the heart with no opportunity for the victim to defend himself and a precisely killed dog, both concealed quickly with little trace evidence left behind—I think we’re dealing with a trained killer.”
Tuesday 27 March
Warren was back at his desk well before seven a.m. Tuesday morning. The proverbial ticking of the clock had weighed heavily on his mind the previous night, resulting in broken and restless sleep. By late afternoon Menendez had been getting impatient and making noises about getting a lawyer so Warren had authorised his release, knowing that if Menendez was innocent, the suspect column would soon be empty. Before he left, Warren broke the news of Reggie Williamson’s murder to him. The man’s look of incredulity, then horror as he realised that he had been a suspect, strengthened Warren’s suspicion that he was not who he was looking for. Regardless, he had been unable to resist one last dig at the man who had caused Tabitha Williamson so much misery and was probably fleecing the hapless Candice even now.
“I have my eye on you, Menendez. If your name comes across my desk in future, I’ll remember. And I’ll be happy to pass on the details of anyone else you’ve been ripping off.”
It was an empty threat. Low-level identity theft and fraud never came anywhere near Warren’s desk—but Menendez didn’t know that. He’d looked suitably shaken as he left.
It was a small victory, but at the moment, Warren was taking them where he could.
By six a.m, Warren had finally given up on sleep and slipped out early, taking care not to wake Susan.
Professor Jordan had calculated a preliminary time of death roughly sixty to seventy hours before the body was found, which, allowing for the weekend’s clock change, made it between about eight p.m. on the Thursday evening and four on the Friday morning. The range fitted with Williamson’s mobile phone leaving the network at eight-thirty on the Thursday.
It had got dark at approximately six-fifteen that evening, which if Menendez was to be believed was the time at which he had left the park and returned home. Candice, his partner, had returned from her Zumba class just after nine-thirty and confirmed that Menendez had been sprawled across the sofa watching TV.
Warren had passed on the details of Menendez’s mobile phone to the team working their way through the cell dump and was waiting to see if it would confirm his movements. Fortunately, the man was an avid social networker and his phone regularly connected itself to the network to look for new content. The team had already confirmed that the common and the flat Menendez shared with his partner were far enough apart for the phone to use different cell towers at the different locations.
The search of the common by the forensic team had not found any more clues within a two-hundred-metre radius of the body’s dumping spot, and DSI Grayson had authorised the cost of emptying all of the bins within a kilometre radius. It was almost a certainty that the killer would have had to dispose of heavily bloodied clothes and possibly even the murder weapon. Unless he’d covered himself up, he was unlikely to have walked too far before doing so; even in the dark, the chances of being seen would have been too great for any sane person to have risked it, Warren decided. Warren just hoped that the killer was at least partly sane. Otherwise all bets were off.
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair. It was getting long; it probably needed a cut. Too late for that now. The press conference was scheduled for the late morning. Grayson, as usual, had mysteriously disappeared the previous afternoon and Warren was willing to bet good money that he’d be immaculately groomed for the cameras later.
There had been little to report overnight and he didn’t expect anything until after the morning briefing, so Warren poured himself another coffee and settled down to do some paperwork. He chafed at the forced inaction, but took solace in
