covered in blood and we don’t want to disturb the trail. Have either of you had breakfast yet?’
‘Only coffee,’ Ava said. ‘Why?’
‘I’ve had two of my people lose their stomach contents so far this morning. We don’t need any more distractions,’ Jonty replied.
‘We’ve both been doing this long enough to keep our lids on,’ Ava said. ‘But thanks for the warning.’
They trod slowly forward on the white matting path beneath the canvas roof, avoiding stepping to either side and contaminating whatever articles of evidence might be lying there. Dr Spurr went ahead of them and hunkered down next to a small mound that was covered by a forensics sheet. He lifted it slowly, as if trying not to wake a baby.
Callanach looked away. Ava covered her mouth with a hand. There were crime scenes, and then there was carnage. Whatever had happened to the young woman on the ground fell firmly into the latter category.
‘Luc, call the station. Ask them if they have a young woman listed as missing in the last forty-eight hours. Just say between sixteen and twenty, long brown hair, red-brown dress. No other description for now,’ Ava instructed Callanach.
‘It’s not,’ Jonty said.
‘Not what?’ Callanach asked.
‘It’s not a coloured dress,’ Jonty replied. He slid a gloved hand under the girl’s left shoulder to raise her a few inches off the floor, exposing a small section of the dress behind her shoulder blade. The bright white patch of cotton glowed in the floodlights.
Ava took in a sharp breath. ‘It’s a white dress?’ she muttered. ‘How the fuck did she …’
Jonty answered the question by raising the hem up over the girl’s thighs and abdomen. A massive section of skin had been cut from her stomach, the raw sections of flesh curling back where her body had begun to dry out. Blood was crusted over the whole of her lower half, washing down her legs and her bare feet.
‘That’s not all,’ Jonty said. ‘There’s another equally large section of skin cut from her back. Her underwear was missing when we found her. I was preserving the scene for you to see it first-hand.’ He stood up, covering the girl again as he pointed along the road in the opposite direction from which they’d come. ‘She crawled several metres along the road. There are pieces of skin in the tarmac, which we believe came from her hands and knees. The bleeding increased as she crawled. We’ve found two large wads of wound packing that must have dropped away from her, both completely blood-soaked. Whoever left her here gave medical assistance initially, then abandoned her to die where she almost certainly wouldn’t have been found until it was too late.’
They stood silently, contemplating the scene for a few moments. A tractor could be heard starting up in the distance. The wind rushed noisily over the expansive reservoir to the south. It was a place of extraordinary beauty, just a few miles south of the Edinburgh City Bypass, and now it was home to a ghost.
‘She was on her back,’ Ava said. ‘You think she collapsed from her knees and rolled?’
‘No, she’d have stayed face up if she’d simply collapsed. There’s not enough of a gradient for gravity to have moved her. I believe she stopped crawling and decided to rest. Or gave up hope. She’d have been delirious with blood loss and shock by then. Can I move the body now? I don’t want it to degrade any further before I start the post-mortem,’ Jonty said.
‘One more look,’ Ava said. ‘You were right about the breakfast, Jonty. Every time I think my years in the force have hardened me, something new comes along.’
‘Peace and justice. It’s all we can do for them at this stage. I’ve some documents to sign. You can take another look but don’t disturb her and stay on the mats, okay?’ Jonty said.
Ava stepped forward to the girl and knelt down next to her, peeling the sheet back once more to reveal her face and arms. ‘Her right arm’s almost semi-circular on the ground. It’s as if she was holding something,’ Callanach said.
‘It might have just fallen that way,’ Ava said. She moved to the end of the body and lifted one foot. ‘I can’t see any injuries beneath the dried blood. No obvious bruising. I don’t think she walked very far. She was dropped off close by.’
‘It wasn’t raining last night, and there’d have been no reason for the vehicle to have pulled onto the verge if there were no other cars around. We won’t get tyre tracks,’ Callanach said.
‘Agreed. We don’t know which way it was going so CCTV at the nearest junctions will be a needle in a haystack. There are a few houses dotted along the road, though,’ Ava said. ‘Get uniformed officers doing a house to house. Any vehicles seen or heard late at night. Ask if local landowners mind us searching their premises. Anyone who says no, do a background check.’
Jonty Spurr rejoined them, stripping off his gloves as a photographer stepped in to capture the scene before the body was prepared for transfer to the mortuary.
‘Dr Spurr, any possibility this was an operation gone wrong? The cotton wool packing, the incisions. And dumping the body so publicly. Whoever did this wanted her to be found,’ Ava said.
‘It would have been obvious that the blood loss would have been beyond her capacity to recover from. There’s no medical reason for what happened here. The wound packs might have been applied to simply keep her alive longer,’ Jonty said.
‘You’re suggesting that treating the wounds was actually a way to prolong the agony?’ Callanach asked.
‘My remit is science, not speculation. It’s a wonder she survived as long as she did. She was tough and brave. To have crawled at all, even just a few metres was, in the circumstances, remarkable,’ Jonty said.
‘How long since she died, do you think?’ Ava asked him.
‘Three to four hours. Apparently, she was found by a farmhand who was on his way to let out some cattle further down the lane. I saw him talking to the first officers on the scene. Given that he’s being treated for shock himself, I’d say he’s nothing to do with it. The pathology aside, it took someone with a strong stomach to take a knife to this girl, then to turn her over and do it again. It’s not like stabbing in anger. It takes medically trained professionals a long time to prepare themselves to make major incisions.’
‘A psychopath, then,’ Ava said. ‘Or someone completely inured to the extremes of violence and bloodshed.’
‘Someone you shouldn’t underestimate, I think I’d say,’ Jonty confirmed. ‘We’re moving her now. I’ll perform a post-mortem today but it’ll take some time. Join me first thing tomorrow morning for some answers.’
They said their goodbyes. Luc and Ava stood watching as the corpse was moved from the ground into a body bag and onto a stretcher. The ground where the young woman had died was crimson in the centre and black at the edges. With the body removed, the trail she had crawled was more obvious.
‘She didn’t get very far at all,’ Callanach said. ‘My guess is that when she was left here, the perpetrator knew she wouldn’t last much longer. I also think they drove away south west, towards the reservoir.’
‘Why?’ Ava asked.
‘Because she started crawling
