Road led out of the city towards Leith. The area was suffering a sad decline, and the three-storey housing featured sheets hung in place of curtains and window frames that had lost more paint than remained on them. The flat in question was on the second floor with a shared entrance hall.
Ava and Callanach donned white suits, shoe covers, gloves and hats, and prepared to enter. A sulphuric, metallic smell gave the situation away from the first-floor landing. The body had been there a while. The weather was so cold that unless the flat had been heated to an extreme, the smell would have taken a while to get so strong.
Ailsa Lambert appeared at the front door of the flat, talking brusquely to a member of her team and handing over a camera.
‘You ready for us to come in and take a look?’ Ava asked her.
‘Go ahead,’ Ailsa replied shortly.
Ava and Callanach shared a brief look. If Ailsa was out of sorts, then whatever was waiting for them had to be bad.
The bathroom was tiny and the forensics team cleared out to allow them access. Ava stood with her back against the window and Callanach spread his legs either side of the toilet so they could both look down into the bath. Tripp appeared in the doorway as they were taking stock.
‘Who reported it?’ Ava asked him.
‘A neighbour,’ Tripp replied. ‘The smell had been getting worse over two weeks, so he finally called the police.’
‘Two weeks?’ Ava hissed. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Afraid not. I suspect the neighbour might be selling some weed on an informal scale judging by the smell of his own apartment and the fact that while I was talking to him, his mobile rang repeatedly. He’d obviously just cleaned off every surface in his flat but neglected to cover up the scales on the floor in the corner.’
‘So he didn’t want the police in here until it got to the stage where the stench was actually affecting his clientele, is that it?’
‘Something like that, ma’am,’ Tripp replied. ‘The pathologist confirmed the body’s been here at least two weeks, more likely three. Judging by the photos on the walls, I’d say the deceased is the owner and resident, a Mrs Hawksmith.’
As one, they all looked down at the woman’s body. Mrs Hawksmith was past middle age but not yet old. Each of her ankles was bound by a cable tie to a tap pipe, below the handle, at the end of the bath, leaving her legs splayed open, slightly bent, and flopped against the sides. Her wrists were bound with handcuffs over her stomach. A deep wound – Ava estimated three inches long – ran across the inner bend of her left elbow with another, shorter one, on the same wrist. Her head lolled against the side nearest them, eyes open, mouth agape, as if she were appealing for help.
The corpse was bloated, limbs swollen and hard, a dark red colour with brown patches. The putrefaction gases were appalling, even though the doors had been open for some time. She was a large woman but not obese. Her tattoos were visible but not clear through the discolouration of her skin and there were no other obvious wounds. The goriest of tidemarks was a muddy-crimson line around the rim of the tub and the plug remained in place.
‘The bath was full when she bled out,’ Ava said. ‘The water must have leaked out slowly in the days that followed. Has anyone found the key to the handcuffs?’ she asked Tripp, leaning over to take a closer look at the cuffs.
They weren’t police or military issue, nor were they the joke shop sort with the button that could be pressed to spring them open. A key had to be fitted into a central slot to release the wearer, which would have been possible if the key was within grabbing distance.
‘No key as yet,’ Tripp said. ‘You can get those sort of cuffs online or in sex shops. They’re bondage-type regalia. Maybe she was tomming.’
‘Okay, get asking the neighbours if there were men – or women, for that matter – coming to the flat at odd hours, or if Mrs Hawksmith was coming and going at unusual times. Does she have any previous convictions?’
‘Still checking. We don’t have a confirmed date of birth yet. She doesn’t have a passport or driving licence here that we’ve found.’
‘Do we know what the cut was made with?’ Ava looked around the tiny bathroom.
‘We haven’t found a blade or a weapon,’ Tripp said.
‘Really?’ Ava asked. ‘Is there blood anywhere else in the property?’ She tried to peer through the plastic sheeting beneath her feet. ‘Blood on the bathroom floor, even?’
‘None,’ Ailsa said, appearing behind Tripp. ‘Excuse me, young man.’
Tripp moved out of her way to let her stand over the body with a thermometer.
‘Decomposition is advanced. Thank goodness it’s not warm enough for the insects to be out in force yet, or this would be an even worse situation. As it is, my estimate of death won’t be terribly precise. I don’t know how long she spent in the water after passing, but I can tell you that her death would not have been immediate. There was little clotting around the wounds, so the water was warm and that kept the blood flowing.’
‘How long would she have suffered?’ Ava asked.
‘Difficult to say, but this isn’t the deepest of cuts. Keeping the ankles up above the buttocks would have kept the bleed more constant and her heart would have continued beating for possibly four hours, maybe longer. Eventually, her heart would have stopped. She might have gone into shock and died faster. I won’t be able to give you exact figures.’
‘Four hours? God Almighty!’ Ava said. ‘She’d have been screaming for help. I can’t believe no one heard her.’
‘The window was shut, the walls are thick – the property’s got to be a hundred years old – and there’s every chance people had music on or TVs playing. Or perhaps they were used to the sound of screams coming from this flat,’ Callanach suggested.
‘Could she have done this to herself, Ailsa?’ Ava asked.
‘She could easily have put the cable ties around her ankle and the taps, then run the bath. Logically, after that, she’d have had to have closed the cuffs around her left hand, made the two incisions on her inner arm, then got her right hand into the cuffs and snapped them shut.’
‘Which leaves the question – where’s the blade? Even if she’d thrown it out of the bath, it would still be somewhere in the bathroom,’ Callanach said, looking around. He shifted his body forwards to give himself the flexibility to turn, then opened the toilet lid. ‘One mystery solved. No blade, but the key to the handcuffs is at the bottom of the bowl.’
‘Don’t touch the water,’ Ailsa instructed. ‘If someone else was here recently, we might just get some cells from the seat or beneath the rim, possibly information about sexual diseases from any urine left in the bowl.’
Ava climbed past Ailsa to stare down into the toilet next to Callanach.
‘Looks like the right key to me. Small round barrel, ornate bow at the top. It’s obviously not meant for a door.’
‘Everyone out of here, please,’ Ailsa ordered. ‘I’ll need to get my team in to retrieve that and take samples.’
They
