Chapter 29 Thursday | Morning
Thursday | Morning
Field
The sun was already burning hot in the sky.
Field waited outside the crime scene tent, arms folded, scanning the houses on either side of the street. Despite the hot August morning, the curtains in every upstairs room were drawn, windows closed.
The blood on the road had dried a deep rust colour, the ground littered with sterile packaging and medical gauze.
David Moore attacked in the early hours of Wednesday morning.
Less than twenty-four hours later, another stabbing. A murder.
‘All right, ready.’ Young’s voice carried from inside the tent.
Field took a breath and stepped inside.
It was stiflingly hot, the air thick with the scent of blood.
Young hadn’t worked a murder on-scene for years – there was too much demand for her elsewhere. But she’d seen David’s injuries up close, so her examination of Sam was a shortcut to a comparison.
Sam’s clothes had been cut away, still pinned under her body. The paramedics had left the breathing apparatus in; the packing material was still in the wound to her throat. Young was kneeling by her midriff, knees resting on a stepping plate.
There was hardly room to move, and Field trod carefully as she took up the same position on Sam’s other side.
Young sat back on her heels. No preamble. ‘Wounds to both legs, as well as her arms and torso. Seven total, so a comparable number to the attack on David Moore.’
Field leaned closer to look at the wounds to her side. They were much closer together than David’s had been.
Young followed her gaze. ‘Bruising has formed here.’ She picked up a torch and shone it onto the skin, revealing a reddish tone. ‘That will be from the handle of the knife hitting the flesh. We should be able to get an idea of the blade’s length from that wound, specifically.’
Field looked at the woman’s face. Even with all the tubes and the blood, Field could tell Sam had been pretty – and she looked younger than thirty-two.
She had light silvery-lilac hair, and a few small tattoos on her arms. Her skin was grey and waxy, with a sheen to it that could be mistaken for sweat.
Field tried to look at the slim frame on the ground as evidence, rather than a human being. Only for now, while she needed objectivity.
‘It can’t be a coincidence,’ Field said. ‘I mean – look at the state he’s left her in.’
Young gently moved a lock of Sam’s hair, looking closer at her neck. ‘This wound to her throat will be the cause of death. From what I can see it looks like a similar, if not identical, weapon to the attack on David Moore. Similar wound pattern, too.
‘First wound below the ribs, on the right-hand side. Then a wound to the right of the neck. But Sam wasn’t as lucky as David – this wasn’t a glancing blow.’
Field’s forensic suit rustled as she dabbed at the sweat on her forehead. ‘If he’d called the ambulance earlier, do you think she might have made it?’
‘I don’t think so,’ Young said. ‘That kind of injury, it’s not something they could have got to outside of an operating theatre.’
A grim thought occurred to Field. Could David and Sam have been dating? There was a big age gap – but then his wife was younger.
‘One point you may find interesting,’ Young said, straightening up. ‘Her face.’
Field frowned. There were a few tiny drops of blood on her cheeks, but no wounds to the face.
‘Have a look at this.’ Young pointed to Sam’s hairline with a gloved finger.
On closer inspection, the skin at the edges of Sam’s face was heavily scarred. Small but deep pockmarks, and raised bumps in some places. Field frowned. ‘Chicken pox?’
‘I don’t think so. I know you haven’t had her notes through yet, but I think Sam might have historically had a condition called dermatillomania. Skin picking disorder,’ Young added, for Field’s benefit.
Field already had Moore’s paper bookmarked in her emails, and she had it up on her phone in a few swipes.
She scrolled to the participants list and read aloud.
‘Patient B. Hospitalised at fifteen years old with severe—’ she stumbled trying to pronounce the word ‘—derm-a-till-o-mania. Brackets – excoriation disorder.’
Field held the phone up to Young, so she could read it without needing to change gloves. ‘It makes sense. Body-focused repetitive behaviours are often classed under OCD, although not all clinicians agree.’
‘When I spoke to Callum Mulligan last night, he confirmed he’d been in the Maudsley with Sam,’ Field said.
Until that moment, she hadn’t thought about piecing together which of the five they each were. They were so focused on finding the names, but they also had to match them to the symptoms described in the paper.
Young turned back to Sam. ‘It was a severe case of dermatillomania, judging by the scarring. There are much larger patches on her shoulders. There’s also these—’
Field leaned in. Sam had a line of small round scars on her left wrist.
Young went on. ‘Over a decade old, I’d say. About the right size to be cigarette burns.’
‘Could she have been abused, then?’ Field asked. She had met plenty of damaged adults, with physical and mental scars from childhood torture.
‘It’s a possibility,’ Young said, quietly. ‘But they’re only on her left arm. If she’s right-handed, then it’s more likely they were the result of self-harm.’
Young got to her feet. ‘There’s one more thing.’
‘Love it when you say that.’ Field stood up too.
She took a deep breath, and a last look down at the battered body of their victim, before they stepped out into the slightly fresher air. ‘Tell me you’ve saved the best until last.’
Young had stopped just outside the tent, moving the fabric slightly for a better look at the dried bloodstains on the road.
Field stared down at them with her hands on her hips.
‘It’s this.’ Young pointed at two parallel smears of blood, maybe the length of Field’s palm. Young’s brow was creased with concentration, and Field could sense her brain firing connections and calculating possibilities.
‘Right.’ Field waited for the mark on the tarmac to reveal its secrets to her, but it just looked like a smudge.
‘That’s a shoe mark, believe it or not,’ Young said. ‘Specifically, it’s a shoe dragging through the blood as someone gets to their feet.’
The penny dropped. They weren’t two parallel, separate stains. The toe of a shoe, or the tip of a sole, had streaked through the blood.
‘We know the first two wounds were designed to get the victim to the ground—’ Young stood in front of Field, then grabbed onto the front of her forensics suit. ‘What if she pulled her attacker down on top of her?’
Field pictured it in her mind, trying not to dwell on the image of Sam’s terrified face.
Young was working her way up to her point.
‘If Sam pulled her attacker to the ground with her, and they didn’t stand up until there was a significant pool of blood, it explains why the wounds to her side are so close together, compared to David’s. If you’re kneeling over someone, there’s a lot less room to swing.’
‘Could the shoe mark have been a paramedic?’ Field reasoned. ‘One of our officers maybe—’
Young was already shaking her head. ‘I’ve checked their shoes, even the knees of their uniforms. The paramedics’ boots are all bagged.’
Field didn’t have the same fizz of excitement yet. ‘Okay, so we’ve got an absence in the blood caused by a shoe, which we can match to our victim when we find our killer.’
‘If he fell on top of her—’ Young turned to Field, eyes bright. ‘Then we could have contact DNA on the body, sweat maybe. But there’s also this—’
Field should have known there was more.
More turned out to be tiny droplets of blood. ‘These droplets of blood fell from a height, onto the ground,’ Young announced, triumphant. ‘I think they belong to your killer, and they cut themselves when they fell.’
‘Will we get DNA from the blood?’ Field asked.
‘There’s a good chance, but you’ll have to send them to Teddington.’ Young blew out a breath. ‘We’ll do everything we can.’
The Met’s new lab in Lambeth could run basic tests quickly, but the complex stuff had to be outsourced to labs in Teddington. It could take a few days, even fast-tracked.
‘Thank you,’ Field said, meaning it sincerely.
She needed a moment to process the mass of information, and she sought the shade on the far side of the road, for relief from the heat.
The droplets of blood indicated the attacker was injured, to some degree. If they couldn’t retrieve DNA from those, falling over meant there was at least a hope of finding their DNA on Sam’s body.
Forensically, it was a win compared to David’s attack. If – when – the case went to court, there were now more opportunities for irrefutable physical evidence.
But the results would take at least a few days, and their perpetrator was escalating.
For all the uncertainties and unanswered questions, Young’s evidence proved one thing beyond doubt.
Samantha Hughes had fought for her life.