Kiss & Die - Lee Weeks [50]
‘I did,’ answered Mann.
‘You had a tip-off?’ He signalled to the two detectives with him to stay where they were outside the tape.
‘No. I was coming up to give him his wallet. I took it off one of the girls. He didn’t answer the door so I let myself in and found him.’
‘Who is the woman who gave you the wallet?’
‘Michelle. She’s a singer in the lounge bar.’
Sheng shouted out to one of the officers outside. ‘Go and pull in one of the singers, Michelle, have her taken to the station.’
Daniel had stopped in the centre of the room. His head turned methodically, taking in the whole scene. He stood over the corpse and looked up to the ceiling at the arcs of blood. He moved his position, looked up again. He started drawing a plan of the scene in a notebook. Daniel’s mind worked on many planes, he was clever on so many levels. He was sharp and cynical and driven but the one thing that Mann recognized in Daniel was that he was unhappy.
‘Do you know him?’ asked Sheng, in the process of putting on a forensic suit.
‘No. I’ve never seen him before. A man named Max Kosmos is registered to the room, I’m guessing this must be him.’
Daniel Lu walked around to the far side of the bed; he lifted the corpse’s shoulder and checked beneath. ‘The blood’s settled. He’s been dead approximately fifteen to eighteen hours. He was killed here.’
‘That would make it in the early hours of yesterday morning.’ Tom Sheng looked around at the room. ‘Nothing knocked over, no obvious signs of a fight. Motive?’
‘Not robbery,’ Mann answered. ‘The safe is locked and he’s still wearing his watch.’
He looked over the desk. ‘His laptop’s still here, and a briefcase.’
Daniel moved around the body and dictated into a machine as he went.
‘Deep lacerations to his torso and legs, cut right through to the bone. The flesh has been scraped away. They cut his hamstrings, his knee ligaments, anterior and interior, his elbow joints, all severed to prevent movement. Whoever it was, they must have done this before. It’s messy but it’s accurate.’
‘Cause of death?’ Sheng was busy opening the safe with the hotel combination.
Daniel looked up from where he was busy measuring the depth of the wounds on the victim’s chest. ‘Leave that,’ he said to Sheng. ‘They might have tried to open it. It’s an obvious place for prints.’ Sheng stepped back, muttering under his breath. Daniel began photographing the injuries. ‘The chest trauma is what killed him. The blood is pooled here…but not before the perp had their fun.’
Daniel Lu looked behind him at the brocade curtains, ‘The splatter pattern around the room means that all these injuries were inflicted whilst he was still alive. And this was a lengthy, prolonged torture. Perp took their time.’ He took a gloved hand and hovered over Max Kosmos’s chest. ‘These are strange wounds, really deep. He was lying down when these were inflicted.’ He traced the wounds with his finger. ‘They extend all the way across. Something literally scooped his flesh out in long strokes.’ He looked up at the ceiling where the three trails of blood and flesh had dried to brown sprays across the ceiling. ‘I don’t know what weapon made these. But someone definitely used our friend here for target practice.’ He went back to his position at the end of the bed. ‘They were standing here and used a downward action. They are about five foot three or four, I would guess. Right-handed.’
‘If not robbery then some kind of revenge, retribution? This man wasn’t just murdered, he was punished,’ said Mann.
‘It looks sexual,’ Sheng said.
‘Maybe,’ answered Daniel. ‘They cut off his penis but waited until after death to do it, unlike the amputation of his testicles which, judging by the amount of blood, was done when he was still breathing. Not a complete job though.’ Daniel Lu lifted the scrotum. ‘Sheng, make yourself useful, come over here and hold this up, I need to take a photo of the injury. ’
For a second Sheng looked as if he was about to pass on the honour of helping Daniel