Viper - Michael Morley [77]
Sylvia put her hand on her old friend’s shoulder and broke the silence. ‘I need you to lie to me. Tell me that the gases from the fire will have knocked her out and she never felt a thing.’
Stern patted her hand. ‘You know that’s not true. I’m afraid this will have been a slow death until the moment he shot her.’
‘How long?’
‘I can’t tell you that until I get her back to the mortuary and examine her more closely. It will certainly have taken minutes for all her skin to have burned off. After that, mercifully, she would have been pain free.’
‘Why so? Because the brain blocks the agony?’
‘No, not at all. Quite simply because all our nerve endings are in our skin. Once the skin has burned away, then there is no feeling.’
What an awful way to go. Sylvia wondered what kind of person would want to actually watch someone suffer like that.
Stern removed his glasses and used his arm to blot sweat from his brow. ‘When your fire experts arrive they will be able to tell you much more about her last moments. But looking at the skeleton, and particularly the skull, I would say the murderer started the fire at the top of her body.’
‘Why?’
Stern replaced his glasses. ‘Come around this side. I’ll try to explain.’
They picked their way into a position closer to the victim’s head.
‘See down there, around the tops of her legs?’ He pointed out the area. ‘While there is no skin left, there is still some tissue and burned muscle. Now look here; the upper skin that should be around her neck and skull is completely missing, front and back.’
Sylvia caught his drift. ‘Fire rises; so if the blaze had been set at her feet then you’d expect most damage down there, rather than at the top of the body?’
‘Absolutely right.’
‘So you’d say he doused her in petrol and set her head alight?’
‘That might be what you would say, my dear. I don’t think so. I think your killer was a little more precise in his practices. Look at the skull. There is incredible damage around the mouth. I think he may have forced a rag, probably soaked in some accelerant, into her mouth, pushed it deep into the back of her throat, and then set it alight.’
Like a garden lamp, thought Sylvia. Her killer used a petrol-soaked rag like a wick in an outside lamp.
‘There is also extensive burning on the chest. He probably threw accelerant over her once she was ablaze.’ Stern lowered his mask so it was below his nose and sniffed. ‘Paraffin, I think, not petrol; but I could be wrong. These days my nose is better suited to sniffing a good Barolo than anything else. Again, the fire team will know for certain.’
Sylvia had seen enough. ‘Excuse me for a moment, Professore. I just need to go outside for a while. I’ll leave you to get on with your work.’
He smiled knowingly at her. ‘See you shortly.’
Sylvia was keen to escape from the charred corpse and get to the other side of the crime scene. She was desperate for a smoke.
Jack and Pietro caught Sylvia as she ducked out of the forensic tent. A packet of cigarettes was already in her hand. Before the two men had reached her a voice stopped her in her tracks.
‘Capitano!’
Sylvia turned to see a young male Exhibits Officer beside her. ‘You need to come to the other side of the pit.’
‘Why? What is it?’
‘We’ve found some things in the far corner, in an old chest of drawers.’
‘Things?’
Jack and Pietro followed, a pace behind.
‘Underwear. Tissues used by women, smeared with make-up, old lipstick – those kinds of things.’
When they reached the corner of the pit, Jack stepped back and tuned out the fast-spoken Italian comments being exchanged. Old planks and plastic sheeting had been arranged to form a sort of shelter and forensic teams were now erecting their own protection around this area as well. A rusty oil drum lay on its side in the treacly mud and there were footprints everywhere. It looked like investigators had rushed into the scene and probably compromised it. There were