Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
Grave wax was the nickname given to fatty tissue after it had been submerged in cool, low oxygen water for a prolonged period of time.
It was a cruel term to give to someone who’d once lived and laughed, but it did describe adipocere, the white, crumbling substance that could preserve the body shape, but at this point was patchy.
There was skin slippage where large areas of epidermis sloughed off, the hands and feet showed a ‘glove and stocking’ formation, where the skin was slipping away, and the marbling, a purple-green pattern along the veins under the skin, visible on the torso and limbs.
The body in the water was significantly distended, bacterial gas forming inside the soft tissue. Her face was swollen, and patches of hair had detached, wrapped around the nearby debris, floating near the body.
It wasn’t Evelyn Smith. This body was too decomposed, having been in the water longer than Evelyn had been missing, but I was pretty certain that it was a female we had found in a reeded inlet beneath an overhang of vicious brambles and moss, partially trapped against a submerged shopping trolley from a supermarket that I was sure no longer existed.
The only access was from a disused industrial path behind fencing that separated a derelict industrial unit, our killer’s favourite sort of location.
No CCTV was nearby, the nearest camera over two hundred and fifty metres away and directed away from the scene.
I watched Jenna Osei speak to my half-brother, a few inches too close to be professional, although I had no doubt that their conversation was about how to remove the body from the water while preserving as much as they could.
This was a different scenario to the others.
This body had been submerged for a lot longer and was in a significantly worse state than the other three.
The atmosphere was sombre, very little chatter beyond what was needed, filled the air, which was even silent of birdsong.
This part of the canal was desolate and abandoned, Manchester’s rejuvenation not having reached this point yet.
“Victim number one.” Vinny sidled up to me. “Or is there another one we’ve missed?”
“We won’t know until we find them. My guess is this is Dolly.” We’d spent yesterday afternoon looking at the photos I’d taken from Morgan’s parents, reading the names underneath each one, just no surnames.
“The hair?”
I nodded. The hair, or what I’d seen of it, had looked thick and dense.
Dolly’s hair had been distinctive. The two other girls, Kelly-Anne and Evelyn had looked different, however, people changed and we didn’t know for sure that this was anything to do with the other women, or the Aberwyn girls, as I was coming to think of them.
“There’s going to be nothing here, forensically, is there?
” I looked around the scene. “We’ve had rain and more rain and she’s been in there a bit.
” She’d been discovered an hour ago by a group of teenagers who’d been messing about nearby with weed and each other.
They’d gotten spooked and legged it, crossing the path of PCSO Awais Khan, who’d gotten a brief description before going to investigate himself and then calling it in, securing the scene and following process to smallest punctuation mark, earning praise from Jenna when she got there.
Vinny and I had been at the office, sitting with the tech squad who were using AI to age the teenagers in the Aberwyn photos so we could try reverse image searches to further identify Dolly and Kelly-Anne, as well as the boys.
I was also trying to find out where Kelly-Anne from Lindridge Hospital had ended up , and was meeting more dead ends that an impossible maze.
Our Sunday morning breakfast barm from a greasy take out truck around the back of Piccadilly had been interrupted with a call from Wrigley, telling us to get our backsides in gear and head over to the old Trafford Park industrial site near Salford Quays.
I was glad I hadn’t finished the bacon and sausage bap with red sauce. What I had managed wasn’t sitting well.
Wrigley headed over to us, hands in pockets, expression grim. “Been a long time since I’ve had one in this condition.”
“Sir, I really don’t need to hear an example of the worst one you’ve ever seen.” I was prepared to disobey orders and walk off if he started on that.
“No, you’re okay, Mac. They’re going to get the body out of the river once they’ve used this glove technique to try and get fingerprints.
They basically fit the lose skin over a glove and get the fingerprint that way.
One of the hands has been out of water so they think they can get a print. Then they’ll move the body.”
A tent had been erected, along with a construction that would prevent any drones overhead from taking photos, a large cover that didn’t look particularly wind proof, it had to be said.
Wrigley glanced at me. “Take Lachy and go for a walk, see what’s about here.
This could well have been the dump site as Jenna’s said there’s not a huge degree of movement in the water here, so the body’s unlikely to have moved here while it was in the water.
Which begs the question, what route did our killer take to get the body here and how? ”
I gave Wrigley a grateful look and headed off to collect Lachy, who was talking to one of the CSIs.
She looked like she was getting fed up enough with Lachy’s babbling to consider sticking him in the canal for a significant length of time, so I decided it was me doing him a favour rather than me avoiding watching Jenna and Nate do something with skin and a glove.
“Boss wants us to go for a walk.”
Lachy looked at me like it was the last thing he wanted to do. The CSI looked grateful.
“Where too?”
“Try and work out how that body got in the canal.” I pointed towards the fencing. “Let’s start by looking for gaps in that.”
We headed up to the tow path on what was the most desolated stretch of water I’d seen in the last couple of weeks.
Overgrown with weeds and ivy, parts of it flattened by feet, it had no obvious secrets to give.
We scoured along the sides, finding broken bit of fencing onto the back of the disused industrial park, under a compulsory purchase order and left vacant for the last half a decade.
“They could’ve driven up here and fit through the gaps in the fencing anywhere along here, dropped onto the tow path and down towards the river. I bet if you did that at night, no one would see you.” Lachy pointed through a particularly big gap.
“I bet no one would see you if you did it at midday. This part’s like a ghost town.” I shivered, feeling suddenly cold. “I haven’t noticed anything underfoot.” I’d been watching where I walked, hoping to find a cigarette end, or a discarded tissue, something – anything.
Lachy put his hands in his pockets and looked up at the trees, a mixture of oaks and sycamores. “I don’t think we will. Our killer’s done his research on forensics and crime scenes. They know how not to leave a footprint, unless those size tens were theirs.”
“She could’ve been killed here, like Brooke was. Stabbed and then pushed into the water.”
“Would you have come for a walk here? Even with your boyfriend?” Lachy looked around us.
“You’d have to be into some pretty weird shit to think this was a romantic setting for a walk, or you were looking for a place to get high and pass out.
How did he entice the women? He’s not whipped them off the street, has he? ”
The ‘he’ was still bothering me.
“Who would you meet up with somewhere unfamiliar? If you were meeting a friend, where would you go?” I needed to go about this a different way.
Lachy thought for a moment. “The pub. A bar or restaurant. Somewhere there was food or drink. Drink if I was going to be nervous.”
“Who would you be nervous with?”
“A date. If I was taking someone out on a date, I’d be meeting them somewhere public, that they’d feel comfortable.” I was reminded that he was a really decent guy.
“What if it was someone you knew?”
“Still a pub.”
“Something healthier. Or maybe someone who didn’t drink or you were meeting too early for a pub?” I was thinking about the Aberwyn girls. “Someone you were meeting who you hadn’t seen since you were a kid.”
Lachy looked around again. “Not here. There’s nothing scenic about going for a walk here, but you’re right. If the women knew their killer, they could’ve had an arrangement to meet for a walk.”
“Or, my dog’s had puppies, do you want to see?” You trust someone, you trust what they say.
“My answer to that would always be yes. I wouldn’t stand a chance.”
We carried on walking further, trying to get a sense of location. “Unsurprising. We know one thing – all these places were scoped out beforehand. Everything is well planned.”
“Not opportunistic. You don’t think it’s anything to do with incels, do you?” Lachy looked at me like I was an alien.
“I think it’s to do with the victims. If this is Dolly, we have to re-look at the women – and Aberwyn.
Everything comes back to there, and I can’t shake the fact that the knife used to kill at least three of the women is connected to the murder of a man in the same hospital that a girl called Kelly-Anne was in.
Then we have the Kelly-Anne in Morgan’s photos, who would be the same as hospital Kelly-Ann.
What are the chances of it being the same person? ” The strings were pulling together.
“We need the surnames of the other three girls then.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and turned to look at the canal from the pathway we were on, over shrubs and trees, down to concrete.
I crept up on Lachy, gently putting my hands on his back as I didn’t actually want him to fall and it would be so easy here.
He turned around frowning. “If the killer was Dean Hobson, they wouldn’t have met to go anywhere like this. They were meeting someone they knew.”