Tennison. Lynda La plante
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was killed at the playground, or elsewhere?’ Bradfield asked Martin.
‘I don’t know, it’s impossible for me to say.’
‘She could have been murdered indoors somewhere nearby, carried on foot in the early hours and dumped,’ DS Lawrence speculated.
‘OK, Sherlock, how’s that explain her bra still being round her neck?’
Martin spoke before Lawrence could answer. ‘It was tied in a double knot and so tightly neither I nor DS Lawrence could unpick it at the scene. In the end I had to cut it free with some scissors.’
DS Lawrence removed the bra from the paper bag and showed it to DCI Bradfield so he could see the knot for himself. He then removed the blouse and laid it on top of the bag.
‘The two upper buttons on the blouse are missing and they weren’t found at the scene.’
‘They could have come off at any time, even accidentally,’ Bradfield said.
Lawrence pointed to the chest area of the blouse.
‘There’s tear damage where the buttons were, which suggests a struggle.’
Jane stepped forward so she could get a better look at the bra.
‘Excuse me, sir, but the bra’s strapless, so he could have removed it at the scene while she still had the shirt on during a bit of foreplay.’
There was a sudden silence in the room as all three men looked at each other and Jane thought she was about to get a dressing down.
DS Lawrence glanced at Bradfield, nodded at him and whispered, ‘It’s a good point.’
Professor Martin tapped his clipboard with his pen to get their attention.
‘We’re going round in circles and the fact is I have to consider both possibilities: was she murdered at the scene, or dumped there? Now can we get on with the postmortem, please?’
Professor Martin peered down at his clipboard as he walked round the table to Julie Ann’s left side. ‘I have had a close look using a magnifying glass and cannot find any hypodermic needle marks that appear to be recent.’
He lifted up her left arm and pointed to the black and blue track marks around her inner elbow joint, which Lawrence photographed.
‘As you can see there is bruising around all these injection sites, which indicates they are old. It’s difficult to determine the exact age of the bruising as veins in junkies start to collapse after repeated heroin injections. However, I would estimate the most recent to be anywhere between one to two weeks old.’
‘So that suggests she was off heroin just before she was murdered?’ Bradfield remarked.
‘Possibly, but I believe your victim was attending a treatment centre for help, so she may well have been prescribed methadone as an opiate substitute.’
Bradfield made a note in his pocket book to ask the treatment centre about the methadone. Martin lifted Julie Ann’s right arm and they could see that the whole of the inside of the lower arm was badly bruised.
‘You can see there is blue and yellow coloured bruising to the inside length of the lower arm caused by severe blunt-force injury, which has ruptured blood vessels in her skin.’ Martin asked the morticians to turn the body over.
The extensive bruising and welt marks to Julie Ann’s back and buttocks were quite horrifying, even Bradfield and DS Lawrence were visibly shocked. Jane shuddered at the thought of the pain the poor girl must have suffered during the beating. Professor Martin explained that initially the injuries would have appeared dull red to blue, but over time the red blood cells would have been broken down, releasing the yellow-brown hue seen on the edges of the blue-bruised areas on her back.
‘So the bruising’s old?’ DS Lawrence asked.
‘Yes, the yellow colour does not appear until a few days after the initial injury and you can see the clear differences from the red marks round her neck caused by the strangulation. In this poor girl’s case I’d estimate the beating injuries are at least six to ten days old. The type of surface and force that impacts on the body will have an effect on the intensity, size, shape and pattern of the bruising as well.’
‘Any idea what caused them?’ Bradfield asked, brushing cigarette ash off his jacket.
Martin said that due to the time lapse since the injuries were inflicted, it was hard to tell. However, it was clear that whoever had inflicted them must have been in a rage, and some of the welt marks still had a faint curved pattern that could have been caused by something like a walking stick.
Martin looked at Jane. ‘WPC Tennison, would you mind crouching down in a side-on foetal position and raising your right arm, palm outwards, as if you were cowering and trying to protect your head?’
Hesitantly Jane did as requested so Martin could act out his theory.
‘The assailant stood in front of the victim’s right side and raised the weapon. This in turn caused the victim to hold up her right arm to protect herself from the beating,’ Martin said as he swung his arm in a backwards and forwards motion. ‘She was hit three or four times on the lower arm before falling over and being repeatedly struck across the back and buttocks.’
Jane followed Martin’s cue and fell to the cold wet floor. There was silence in the room as she peered up and saw the three men staring down at her with a look of bewilderment.
Bradfield shook his head in disbelief. ‘The Prof didn’t mean for you to actually do that bit, Tennison, so get up.’ She felt embarrassed, yet relieved, as the floor smelt of disinfectant and the tiles were not that clean.
Bradfield looked at her impatiently as she stood up and raised her hand as if in a classroom.
‘Excuse me, Professor Martin, is it possible to tell if the attack occurred when she was fully clothed or naked?’
‘Very good question. We have a bright little probationer amongst us, and one not keeling over for a change. But then again we’ve not got to the fainting part yet.’ Martin chortled and then cocked his head to one side, looking at Jane.
‘I may have been able to give you a clearer answer had the beating taken place up to seventy-eight hours before death, as marks from the clothing are sometimes visible on the surface of the skin.’
‘Was she raped?’ Bradfield asked, becoming even more impatient.
‘There’s some old bruising on the inner thighs, but nothing recent or unusual for someone who worked in the sex trade.’
Professor Martin said he would now start the internal examination. Jane knew she had to keep calm, and decided that the best thing to do was to try to think of it as a biology lesson in human anatomy. Bradfield then took her by surprise as he gently patted Julie Ann’s right foot: it was a gesture a father might give to his sleeping child.
As Martin stood over the body a mortician handed him a scalpel from the instrument tray. He proceeded to make a deep incision in the shape of a Y from the front of each shoulder to the bottom end of the breastbone, and then down from the sternum to the pubic bone. The skin and muscle from the cut was peeled back, with the top flap pulled over the face of the body. A mortician then sawed the ribs off exposing the internal organs. Jane noticed the smell, but it was not as pungent as the smell of the elderly man’s body. DCI Bradfield got out his packet of Woodbine non-tipped cigarettes and lit one up from the butt of his previous one, handing another to DS Lawrence. He hesitated and proffered the pack to Jane. She declined, but she did find that the smell of the cigarette smoke helped mask the stench from the body.
Martin now cut into the bladder and took a urine sample. Together with a blood sample from an artery he handed it to DS Lawrence for toxicology tests at the lab.
The assistant mortician placed a large plastic bowl between the legs of the victim. Professor Martin cut away the internal organs, sliding them in one block into the bowl. Then he carried it