Absent Light

ABSENT LIGHT

Eve Isherwood

Published by Accent Press Ltd – 2012
ISBN 9781908917737

Copyright © Eve Isherwood 2007

The right of Eve Isherwood to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of the publishers: Accent Press Ltd, The Old School, Upper High Street, Bedlinog, Mid Glamorgan CF46 6SA.

Cover Design by Joëlle Brindley

The publisher acknowledges the financial support
of the Welsh Books Council

In loving memory of my mum

May Reeves Isherwood

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book would not have been written and published without the help, support and enthusiasm of certain people. Firstly, I'd like to thank my publisher, Hazel Cushion at Accent Press, and Broo Doherty, my agent, editor and friend at Wade and Doherty.

For background information on police procedure, my thanks go to Matt Hunt and certain friends in the police force who prefer not to be named. Thanks also to the lovely staff at the Worcester office of St John Ambulance who cheered me up one morning while also giving advice on Helen's treatment after her dip in the drink. Thanks, too, to David Boucher, Service Administrator at Okehampton Training Camp for giving me some sense of the visual impact of live firing on Dartmoor. It should also be mentioned that anyone trying to find the cottage described in the book would be disappointed – far too dangerous for people to actually live there!

While acknowledging people's generous assistance, any mistakes are entirely my own. Last but by no means least, thank you to my husband Ian Seymour for keeping the home fire burning, the gang fed and watered, and spurring me on.

PROLOGUE

DEATH WAS IN THE air. Unmistakable. After seven years as a Scenes of Crime Officer for West Midlands Police, Helen Powers recognised it the minute she set foot in the building.

The only light came from a bare bulb hanging in the stairwell. Walls, once a shade of red, now tobacco brown, were aged by years of dirt and neglect. A metal handrail, kicked and beaten into submission, offered minimal support and the tread on the stone steps was so badly chipped and worn that Helen had to take care not to miss her footing and drop the camera equipment. She'd lost count of the number of times she'd been to places like this: seedy, deprived, without hope.

There was noise. Always was. Deep in the bowels of the block of flats came the sound of a screaming child. From somewhere else, a heated exchange between male and female. Repetitive gangster rap hammered out over her head, boxing her ears.

“All right?” she smiled, half-turning to Elaine Peterson, another SOCO.

“Never better,” Elaine grinned, protective clothing rustling as she moved. Small but sturdy, she'd been charged with carrying the forensic and fingerprint kit.

As they reached the top they were met by two police constables. One, who looked impossibly young, was trying to keep a small group of onlookers at bay. The other, face pale and drawn, had a handkerchief clamped over his nose and mouth.

“Peterson and Powers,” Helen announced, by way of introduction.

Reluctantly removing the handkerchief, the pale-faced officer made a note in his scene attendance log and jabbed a thumb in the direction of an open doorway partitioned off by crime-scene tape.

“Grim Reaper here yet?” Helen asked, towering over him. She wondered whether bobbies on the beat came smaller these days.

The policeman's eyebrows drew together in a questioning frown.

“Barnaby?” Helen persisted. Barnaby Finch was Head of Scenes of Crime and her supervisor.

The police officer nodded, unwilling, it seemed, to share the joke.

A wicked smile crept over Helen's face. “Got any gum, or a packet of mints?”

This was met with an anguished shake of the head.

Helen let out a laugh. “Better make a note to remember for next time, the stronger the better.” Personally, she'd never had a problem with the smell from a dead body. Either you could spend time with a corpse or you couldn't.

Elaine drew alongside. “Jesus, next time you can carry the kit. In here, is it?”

“What the man says,” Helen said, winking at him as she plunged past.

The flat was freezing cold and filthy, one of the most squalid she'd ever visited. It looked as if a fight between two rival gangs had taken place among the cheap furniture. Everything was smashed: television, chairs, china, glasses, tables. And anything that couldn't be smashed was ripped or destroyed. Blood spattered the floor. The droplets were quite small, Helen observed, rounded one side, irregular in shape the other, suggesting that the victim had moved at speed, probably in a desperate attempt to escape.

There was a fair bit of human activity. Two plain-clothes police officers hung round the perimeter talking in muted voices. They shouldn't be here, Helen thought, wondering why Barnaby hadn't kicked them out. Tougher-looking than her, both appeared visibly shaken. No welcoming smile. No exchange other than a brief nod of the head. None of the usual banter. And there was something else. Something she couldn't quite place. A certain edginess, hostility even. Despicable crimes engendered that type of response.

Further inside, Barnaby was conferring with Detective Chief Inspector David Dukes. Short, fat and balding, Dukes was old school with a distinguished service record. He had a reputation for an anarchic and often black sense of humour, a cover for the rampant cynicism associated with almost thirty years in the Force. But there was little comedy in his eyes today, Helen thought. His skin seemed almost sweaty in the bleak January light.

Barnaby broke off and turned to Helen, his heir apparent. As thin as Dukes was overweight, Barnaby had dark eyes and cadaverous features. “I've already asked the constables outside to maintain a perimeter. They'll be logging names, excluding anyone other than those who have a right to be here,” he paused, fixing both SOCOs with one of his most piercing expressions. “Victim's a young teenage girl. According to neighbours, her name's Rose Buchanan.”

“Appears there was a boyfriend on the scene,” Dukes interjected, “a bit of a violent type.”

“Sign of forced entry?” Helen asked.

“No,” Dukes said, clipped.

Making the boyfriend a prime suspect, Helen thought. “Forensic examiner arrived?”

“He's with the victim.”

“Pathologist?” Helen pressed.

“Still waiting.” Dukes looked and sounded impatient.

Barnaby took up the conversation. “Usual ropes, girls, diagram of the scene, note and record of possible items of interest. There's a particularly suspicious sequence of footprints near the victim. In fact, on the surface, there appears to be a treasure-trove of evidence.” He gave Helen a hawkish look. What Barnaby really meant, Helen thought, was make an informed choice about what to collect. Processing evidence cost money, and there was little point in collecting it unless you were fairly certain it had come into contact with the murderer. Selection was key. Otherwise it just overloaded the forensics team and wasted funds.

A sound behind them signalled the appearance of Dr Stephen Forbes, the middle-aged medical examiner. “Judging by the rigidity in her jaw,” he told Dukes, “I'd estimate she's been dead for roughly eight hours – Bill should be able to give you a more precise time – and with regard to the manner of her death, there's some evidence of physical and sexual abuse. Cause of death most likely stab wounds.”

“Doesn't take much expertise to work that out,” Barnaby said drily, inviting Helen and Elaine to take a look.

Apart from the dull grey light bleeding through the netted windows, it was dark in the room. Helen blinked, accustoming her vision to the absent light. She'd seen many crime scenes, some appalling, some less memorable, all unique. But this…

Blood. Blood everywhere. On the ceiling, spattered across the walls, staining the bare-boarded floor, more blood than it's possible to imagine. The room was slicked with it.

A small divan was pushed up against one wall. Helen observed it with dispassionate interest. Beds were likely sources for semen samples, but this indicated something else. Something that was both sick and disturbing. Whoever had slashed the sheets and clothing was sending a warning: worse to come.

At first she didn't make out the body, the beating heart of any crime scene. It didn't seem real. Looked too small, too insignificant, and far too vulnerable to be the focus of such rage. It was the blood that drew her line of vision. Dark as tar, it pooled underneath the girl's broken body, soaking into the only rug in the room.

Helen crossed the floor to where the victim was curled in a foetal position, palms facing upwards in a pose of supplication. She had chestnut-coloured hair that once might have looked lustrous but now was a tangled mess of dried sweat and blood. Her blue-grey eyes were open, searching, as was her bloodstained mouth. Helen let out a sigh that was partially muffled by her mask. She briefly imagined the girl imploring her assailant to take pity.

Roughly pushing the image out of her mind, Helen crouched down and made a visual survey of the girl's injuries. Just below one eye, she noticed a mark. Elaine noticed it, too.

“Looks like a bullet wound.”

Helen shook her head and looked more closely. “Cigarette burn,” she said, her voice low and detached. “Same here,” she pointed, with a gloved hand, to several marks on the girl's legs. There were numerous wounds to the torso, but the really sickening part was the vicious injuries to the girl's stomach, clearly visible because of the way her skirt had been wrenched up above the waist, cruelly exposing her naked buttocks.

“One for the pathologist,” Elaine said. “Bound to find semen either around her mouth or genito-anal regions. What do you make of the wounds, Helen?”

“Penetrating. Sharp-edged, inflicted with a single blade, judging by the appearance, most likely a kitchen knife.” Helen could only conclude the injuries were committed by someone whose rage was as personal as it was violent.

“She's been beaten,” Elaine said, pointing to the bruising on the girl's thighs.

Maybe not for the first time, Helen thought, deciding to photograph some of the shots of the body using ultraviolet. UV had the advantage of revealing scars, bruises and burns long after all visible signs had faded.

Bill Durrant, the pathologist, strode into the room. Built like a small ox, he quickly took charge of proceedings. Within minutes he was simultaneously taking intimate swabs from the victim and giving instructions.

“Make sure you get some carpet fibres from the rug.”

Helen bent over the body. “What you clocked?”

“These,” he pointed to fibres on the victim's legs.

Elaine dealt with the body first, fibre-taping it and sealing the evidence in a clear plastic bag labelled with Health Hazard tape marked for the lab, while Helen, after collaboration with Barnaby, was charged with getting on with the photography, the most powerful tool in the armoury for recording an image, however vile.

She began by videoing the entire flat, from the point of entry to where the corpse lay, then she photographed the perimeter of the scene, including the entrance and approaches, taking wide-angled shots, continuing with close-ups. She used colour film, three rolls of 36 exposures each, shot with a Nikon Single Lens Reflex. By tracing the pattern of blood spatter, she was able to work out and record the direction in which Rose was travelling to escape her assailant. The drip patterns indicated that Rose had been wounded in the living area and fled to the bedroom, her attacker pursuing her at close-quarters. Blood on the ceiling pointed to the weapon being drawn upwards, blood from the blade flicking off. She mentioned this to Bill Durrant who, after examining it, concurred with the theory. Then she moved on to the body itself. With clinical detachment, she took shots from every angle, the conscious part of her focusing on the job. Only later would she struggle with what she'd seen: the snuffed-out remains of a young life before which hadn't even begun.

Fibre evidence, trace evidence, any impression that could be identified, was photographed and treated.

“Shit,” Elaine said, “we really ought to have permission from the owner before we start ripping up this floor.”

“Problem?” D.C.I. Dukes said, stalking up behind them. He'd been snapping at their heels for a fast result from the moment they started. Given the circum-stances, Helen found it easy to make allowances.

“We need to recover an impression,” Helen pointed out. “I've already photographed it but we ought to lift the floorboard.”

“The place is a shit-hole, for Chrissakes,” Dukes burst out with uncharacteristic anger. “Just get on and do it, and fuckin' get a move on.”

Elaine exchanged a
what the hell's got into him
look with Helen who shrugged and turned away. Yes, it was bad, she thought. Nauseating and senseless, it ranked as one of the nastier crimes. Police officers were only human and they had a right to feel, but she also sensed an emotion more compelling than anger. There was a definite undercurrent. Fear. It had been there from the moment she stepped through the door. Something was going down, she thought. Something serious.

Once they'd completed the job, Rose Buchanan was lifted into a zip-up body bag, and taken to the mortuary to be formally identified. Meanwhile, extreme care was taken to ensure the correct packaging was selected for each piece of forensic evidence. Then there was the filling in of forms, the signing and dating, the distribution of copies, totalling four in all.

After finishing at the crime scene, Helen returned to Thornhill Road to write up and file her report. Then she pushed off home and cracked open a bottle of wine, selected a spine-tingling track,
The River,
from an Eric Clapton album, and mulled over the savagery of the day's events. So lost in thought, she didn't hear Adam put the spare key in the lock and creep up behind her.

“Jesus, I wasn't expecting you,” she blurted, as he put his arms around her, buried his face in her neck, making her skin tingle.

He pulled away, gave her one of his lop-sided smiles and kissed her. “Looks like a rough day,” he said, eyeing the half-empty bottle.

“I've had better,” she sighed in agreement.

“Want to talk?”

“Not especially. Want a drink?”

“Not especially,” he grinned, drawing her close.

They ended up in the bedroom. Always did.

“How long have we got?” she said at last, rubbing a finger across his chest. Her life seemed to be made up of questions like this.

“Long enough for you to tell me what happened today,” he said, plumping up the pillows beside her.

“Ghoul,” she laughed.

“Think of it as professional interest. Remember, I'm the detective.”

So she did. That's when she realised she was more shaken than she thought. She wasn't going to break down or anything, but you'd have to be as cold as winter not to be affected.

“Poor kid,” Adam said at last, his eyes dark and solemn.

“Yeah,” Helen sighed. “And you should have seen the place, Adam, it was a real hovel. A young girl should be living at home with her mum and dad, not somewhere like that.” She snuggled up next to him. “Odd, but I thought what a nice name she had. It had a sort of ring about it, as though she came from a good family. Pure conjecture, of course.”

Laughter trickled out of Adam. “You're daft,” he said, stroking her hair away from her face. “What was her name then?”

She looked up into his eyes. “Rose Buchanan.”