Murder Club - Mark Pearson [91]
‘It does,’ agreed Kate.
‘But someone beat her first. At least we know who she is, now. Maybe give you people something to go on,’ he said to Diane Campbell.
Kate Walker looked at the girl’s right arm. The bruises on her arms were purplish and mottled.
‘Defence wounds, I’d say,’ continued the pathologist.
‘Similar to those on Bible Steve,’ said Diane Campbell. ‘What kind of instrument would have caused these injuries?’
‘A baseball bat,’ offered Kate.
‘Possibly,’ Bowman said. ‘Or a policeman’s truncheon.’
‘We call those “asps” nowadays, Derek.’
‘So you do.’
‘And policewomen carry them too,’ added Kate.
The pathologist crossed to an X-ray display and switched on the light. It was an X-ray of the young woman’s arm. ‘Whoever it was that hit her, and whatever it was he …’ he paused and looked at Kate, ‘or she hit her with, they did it hard enough to cause a hairline fracture here.’ He tapped on the image.
‘She had very little padding, mind,’ added Kate Walker. ‘Doesn’t look like she had had a meal for months.’
‘So we do know who she is now, as Derek said,’ said Diane. ‘But that does leave us with another problem.’
‘Which is?’
‘If this isn’t the girl Bible Steve said he killed … then who was he talking about?’
‘Assuming he saw anything at all,’ said Kate.
‘Maybe someone else was taken. Maybe Steve and this girl tried to stop it, got in the way and were beaten off.’
‘Meg ran away to hide from whoever it was, and died in the cold.’
‘Bible Steve was certainly left to die.’
‘Sounds like there might be another body out there,’ said Bowman.
‘This is London, Doctor,’ replied Diane Campbell. ‘You can count on it.’
Kate’s phone trilled in her pocket. She took it out and read the text message. ‘Rip Van Winkle has started to get flashes of memory back apparently.’
‘He’s out of the operation?’
‘Yup.’
‘Is Jack on it?’
‘No. He’s in Harrow.’
‘Come on then, Kate, it looks like the A-team are on the case.’
63.
JACK DELANEY PUSHED the buzzer and stepped back from the door. He was standing outside an end-of-terrace house at the bottom end of the hill in Harrow. Sally Cartwright stood beside him, flapping her arms around herself in a vain attempt to get warm.
‘Aren’t you cold, sir?’ she asked, looking at Delaney who was wearing his customary, battered leather jacket.
‘Not particularly, Sally, I have the love of a good woman to keep me warm.’
‘Bushmills in your veins, more likely.’
After a short while the door opened, as far as the chain allowed, and a woman looked nervously out. ‘Are you the police?’
‘Yes,’ replied Delaney, immediately spotting the resemblance to Stephanie Hewson. Same height, more or less, same build, same hair-colouring. Same haunted look in her eyes and worry lines creasing a handsome face.
‘Can I see some ID?’
‘Of course, Miss Eddison,’ said Sally.
Delaney and Sally held up their warrant cards which the woman inspected before shutting the door and opening it again with the chain clear. They followed her down a small hallway and down into a sitting room off to the right.
It was a furnished simply, with a three-piece suite in floral fabric, a television, a brown coffee table. The curtains were closed and a small gas fire was burning. Delaney opened his jacket as he sat down on the sofa. Sally didn’t.
On the coffee table was a hardback copy of When God Was a Rabbit, with a bookmarker halfway through it and a coffee mug beside it, steam still rising from the surface.
‘Good book?’ Sally asked.
The woman nodded without replying. Delaney hadn’t read it, but Kate had. It spoke of childhood, of happier times, but was also very sad in parts too. But then life was like that. You got dealt a mixed set of cards.
‘We need to speak to you about what happened to you earlier this year, Lorraine,’ he said.
The woman burst into tears.
Kate Walker ignored the stern glances the surgical registrar was giving her. She hadn’t met the woman before but she looked like she only weighed