Dawson frowned and shook his head. ‘No, that’s not the…’
‘You’ll be thinking of the original body farm in Knoxville, Tennessee, founded by Doctor William Bass in eighty-one and made famous by the author Patricia Cornwell. Westerley is much smaller than the two and a half acres of the Texas facility but is used in the training of law enforcement in scene-of-crime skills and techniques. I visited the place some years ago and modelled Westerley on many of their ideas and theories.’
‘So how much land do you have?’ Dawson asked.
Professor Wright nodded forwards. ‘As far as the eye can see and a little bit beyond the south border.’
Kim followed his gaze. The area he’d indicated totalled seven or eight football pitches and although the ground undulated in places it was a downhill slope from the Portakabin.
He pointed to the west. ‘Those trees mark the barrier to Staffordshire. The entire south is blocked by hedgerow beyond the oak trees and to the east is a brook that separates us from our closest neighbours.’
‘And how do they feel?’ Dawson asked.
He smiled. ‘We don’t place a weekly advertisement but our closest neighbour is a food-packaging factory. It’s a half mile in any direction to the nearest resident.’
Dawson seemed satisfied.
‘How many bodies do you have?’ Bryant asked.
‘Currently seven.’
‘Where do you get ’em from?’ Stacey asked.
‘Donations from family members, a person’s own wishes as stated in a will—’
‘Hang on, Professor,’ Bryant interrupted. ‘You’re telling me that family members actually donate their loved ones to this research?’
Professor Wright hesitated. ‘Donations to medical research rarely state the nature of the research. Few family members would wish to know the details, but they are content to know that the death of a loved one may be of scientific benefit, and of course it is.’
Kim stepped in. ‘And some people will themselves here?’
‘Not necessarily to this exact location but to the benefit of research. Texas State has some one hundred bodies donated each year and over 1300 people have registered to be donated there specifically upon their demise.’
‘It has a waiting list?’ Kim asked incredulously.
Professor Wright smiled and nodded.
‘Are the bodies in varying states of decay?’ Stacey asked.
‘Yes, my dear, I think you’ll get a good idea of what we do from the two residents I’m heading towards.’
Kim caught Stacey’s slight stiffening at the endearment, but she smiled through her irritation.
They all followed as the morning sun finally broke through the white cloud and changed the face of the day completely.
Kim matched the professor’s stride. ‘It must be quite a unique funding system you have here?’
He nodded. ‘We are fortunate indeed that the majority of institutions we approached had an interest in our research and yet no one wants it on their doorstep. So we share our findings with all parties and offer assistance where we can.’
‘To current investigations?’
He nodded as he walked. ‘Of course. We intend to replicate as many scenarios as we can that will not only aid our research aims but assist the police with both current and historic investigations.’
And had already helped West Mercia solve two cold cases. Damn, Woody. Now she was bloody interested. Kim would not scoff at any additional police resource. Cold cases were frustrating to any officer on the force. They stayed in the back of your mind like a conversation that had ended before you’d had your say. They embedded themselves into your subconscious until you could put it to bed. And that was if you were lucky.
Sometimes they didn’t even make it to the back of your mind to be machinated over while you continued with the current workload. Now and again they remained at the forefront of your thoughts, doubts constantly gnawing and shredding your brain. Did I interview the correct witnesses? Did I miss a vital clue? Could I have done more? It was Kim’s opinion that it was cold cases that were responsible for much of the alcohol abuse within the police force.
‘So here we are,’ Professor Wright said, regaining her attention.
Kim noted two perfectly cut rectangles in the grass. As she got closer, she saw that they were makeshift graves.
‘Please meet Jack and Vera,’ Professor Wright said, pointing like a proud father.
‘Their real names?’ Stacey asked while Dawson rolled his eyes.
The professor shook his head. ‘No, they come to us with unique reference numbers, which remain their official identification, but we prefer a more personal approach out here in the field.’
Kim glanced to the foot of a nearby tree. Two bouquets were in their last throes of life. Roses and lilies.
‘Flowers?’ she asked.
His eyes followed her gaze. ‘Yes, just a mark of respect from us.’
Kim liked the small touch.
He stood at the head of the graves and peered down. They all followed suit.
The grave to the right held Vera, whose body displayed the incision of a post-mortem. The flesh was immersed in water and Kim noticed the grave was angled towards them.
She looked towards Jack who was also immersed in water but there was no post-mortem incision and no angle to the grave.
‘We have much to learn about insect activity in the water,’ Professor Wright explained. ‘Vera is immersed in water being fed from the brook. We’ve cut a channel and angled her grave away from the stream.’
Kim swatted a fly away from her ear and looked to the small slip of moving water five feet away from the tip of the graves. Now she understood the angle. It was so the stream water would drain away from the water source, ensuring that no contaminants from the body re-entered the slow-moving brook.
‘We take any opportunity to use the elements around us,’ he stated and then raised an eyebrow. ‘The decision to site the Texas facility at Freeman Ranch was questioned due to the presence of vultures but this now provides a new area of study focussing on the effect of scavenging on human decomposition.’
Kim nodded her understanding. She was all for using the resources available but vultures?
‘Jack is immersed in rainwater so his liquid contains no insects, unlike the water in with Vera.’
‘Bugger off,’ Dawson said, swatting the air around his head.
Professor Wright smiled at Kim’s colleague. ‘Never complain at seeing a blowfly, young man. They don’t fly below fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit so it’s a good indication the weather is warming up.’
‘Well, this one’s a bit keen,’ Dawson moaned.
It wasn’t the only one Kim realised as another one tried to land on Bryant’s shoulder.
She looked down at the bodies in the water. The flies were paying no attention to them.
‘Occupational hazard of what we do, I’m afraid,’ the professor said. ‘Okay, on to the next.’
They stepped away from Jack and Vera and began heading across the site to the western edge of the property. Kim looked back to see if the flies were following. They were not. They had retreated to an area just beyond the brook. Kim could see they were not alone. Multiple flies hovered and then dived with the excitement of a new discovery.
Kim saw the professor was guiding them towards two males in the distance surveying a lifeless form positioned above ground encased by a chicken-wire guard.
She hesitated. ‘Professor, could we just go back…’
‘Aww… guv, let’s just keep going towards those two guys over there,’ Bryant said, with a glint of amusement in his eyes.
She had no idea what the source of his amusement was, and she didn’t much care. If there was a fresher body for her team to view, where they could observe the beginning of insect activity, then she was ready to hop off the official tour and learn something useful.
She turned and started walking back towards Jack and Vera.
‘Inspector, there’s nothing else over there,’ Professor Wright called.
She covered the ground quickly and was back at the two graves by the time he caught up with her.
‘I’m not sure what you want—’
‘Don’t worry, I’m sure it won’t be too much for my team to handle,’ she said, wading through the slow-moving stream. The water reached above her ankles. No threat to the leather biker boots but the bottoms of her black canvas jeans were sodden. She didn’t mind. Water dried.
‘It’s not that, Inspector. I’m just not sure what you’re hoping to…’
His words trailed away as they rose out of the brook on the other side and discovered the source of the insect activity.
A fully clothed woman with a smashed-in face stared, unseeing, up to the blue sky.
A hundred flies hovered above the blood-covered face.
‘Can you tell us what you hope to learn from this one, Professor?’ Kim asked as her team finally caught up with them.
The professor’s face had drained of all colour while his eyes remained fixed on the body.
There was a long pause before he finally answered. ‘I’m sorry, Inspector, but I can’t tell you a thing because this body is not one of ours.’
Five
‘Kev, go find me anything to help us cordon off this area. Stace, go back to the Portakabin and look at the footage to see if there’s anything at all that helps us.’
The professor shook his head, slowly, his eyes still fixed on the body. ‘The CCTV doesn’t cover…’
‘We’ll see,’ she said, nodding towards her team. They turned and headed up the hill. For her, the shock of the discovery had worn off and now it was time to get busy. The professor still appeared to be reeling.
Thoughts of the cases on her desk faded from her mind. The victims in every one of them were still alive, injured but still breathing.
From the corner of her eye she could see that the two figures in the distance were moving towards them.
‘Bryant, keep them away. I don’t care what they’re consulting on. This one’s not for public view.’
‘On it, guv.’
Her phone was still in her hand. Her first call had been to Keats, who was despatching a forensic team immediately. She had moved everyone to the other side of the brook where they would remain until that team arrived.
‘Detective Inspector, is there anything I can do?’ Professor Wright finally asked from the other side of the water. As he wasn’t forensically trained any observations would need to be made from outside the immediate area.
Kim shook her head although she noted that the colour was slowly returning to his washed-out complexion.
She scrolled through her list of contacts and pressed to call. Woody answered on the second ring.
‘Sir, we have a body,’ she stated without preamble. Greetings and salutations were not normally high on her priority list, but in a case like this they were non-existent.
She heard the smile in his voice as he responded, ‘Oh, Stone, your humour…’
‘No, it’s a live one.’
Kim heard the paradox of her statement but he’d know what she meant.
She continued. ‘Female, difficult to age as her face has been badly beaten. Fully clothed and she hasn’t been here long.’
‘Okay, stay with it. I’ll draft a holding statement for the press. Have you called Keats?’
She kept her irritation in check. Of course Keats had been her first call. The pathologist was bringing a forensic team to analyse the scene and offer her clues to help find the person responsible. Woody was drafting a press release. Priorities.
‘Yes, sir,’ she responded. ‘First call.’
Maybe she hadn’t been able to tame every bit of irritation.
His voice was curt. ‘Full briefing later.’
He ended the call, and Kim shrugged and put the phone in her back pocket.
She turned to the professor, whose complexion was now approaching a normal hue.
‘Any idea how long she’s been here?’
He coughed and met Kim’s gaze. ‘We know that warm-weather bodies attract blowflies by the hundreds in a matter of minutes. On a day like today it would only take a few hours for the nose, mouth and eyes to be filled with fly eggs.’
The previous day had been warm but she couldn’t see any evidence of the grainy yellowish eggs as yet, indicating the body had been left sometime during the night.
The professor continued. ‘We’ve had thousands of pregnant females swarming around a body shortly after its arrival and, as you know, one female can lay hundreds of eggs at a time.’ He paused. ‘It’s interesting that the flies are targeting only her face.’
‘How so?’ she asked, glancing across to Bryant in the distance talking animatedly with the other visitors. He was taking his time, no doubt advising them to keep away.
Kim’s attention returned to the professor, who was still talking.
‘… indicate there’s no other wound. If they smell blood that would be their target location.’
Give the man a prize, Kim thought. Already she could estimate that the body had been dumped during the night and there was unlikely to be any other wound on it. At this rate she could give Keats the day off.
‘Oh, thanks for joining us, Bryant,’ Kim said as her colleague returned. ‘I told you to warn them off, not take them for a meal.’
He stopped short of the stream and spoke to the professor. ‘Lack of coffee makes her snarky.’
Kim shot him a look.
‘Cavalry’s here,’ Bryant said, glancing up the hill.
Keats, the diminutive pathologist, charged towards them. He paused at the stream before wading through. A group of forensic scene investigators flanked him. West Midlands Police had a team of more than a hundred civilian technicians who would photograph, sketch and collect all evidence before the pathologist was able to remove the body.
Suddenly Keats stopped dead, raising his hand above his eyes before waving at someone in the distance.
The pause was brief and he landed beside her within seconds.
A smile lifted his pointy beard. ‘Oh, Inspector, only you could find a body here.’
‘Keats, how about you just—’
‘Does she know?’ Keats asked Bryant.
She caught her colleague’s quick shake of the head.
‘Know what?’ she asked.
‘Oh, excellent,’ he said, smiling. ‘Now, let me see our victim.’
Kim looked to her colleague for clarification.
‘Bryant…?’
He held up his hands. ‘I’m gonna go find coffee. You’re going to need it.’
She had the sudden feeling that everyone had been told a joke and she was the only one not to get it. She couldn’t help thinking it had something to do with the two consultants now standing in the middle of the field.
She shrugged and then turned to the professor. ‘I need to ask you to leave the area.’
‘I understand. It’s a crime scene. I’ll go and check on my other visitors.’
Kim took the protective footwear being offered to her.
‘So, Detective Inspector—’
‘Keats, don’t even start with me today. This was supposed to be a reward,’ she said, snapping on blue gloves.
They often bickered at a crime scene. He called it banter. She called it a pain in the arse. Last year, Keats had lost his wife suddenly after thirty-five years of marriage. The loss had hit him harder than he’d allowed anyone to see. But she had known. And so she let him have his fun. Now and again.
The technicians worked around her and she blocked out the surrounding chatter. For a moment Kim was as still as the body. Everything faded away as she focussed her senses on the woman before her. The only thing that mattered was the clues she still held. Anything other than the victim disappeared from her mind as she allowed her gaze to start at the partly exposed feet.
The woman’s toes peeked from gladiator
sandals with two strap fastenings above each ankle. Only one of the straps of each sandal was tied.
The skirt was long and flowing, a gypsy skirt formed of vertical patterns up to the elasticated waistband. Kim took a closer look. The skirt rested just above the sandals all the way around, as though placed with care. A lilac vest top with thin straps showed the absence of a bra. The slight frame didn’t require one. A simple chain with a gold cross hung below the neck, falling on the breastbone.
Her arms were placed a couple of inches away from her torso. The wrists were barely discernible from the rest of her arms. A thin strap of white showed where her watch should have been on the left wrist, but it was the right wrist that caused Kim to pause.
A perfect line encircled the wrist and a graze had removed some of the skin from the top of the hand. Kim needed no more information to deduce the mark and the graze were from the presence of handcuffs.
Her heart beat faster for just a few seconds as her eyes lingered on the injury. She remembered how that same red ring had looked on her own six-year-old hand. The memory of soreness from the scraped skin passed fleetingly through her, causing her to rub the top of her own hand. Sometimes she needed to remind herself that it was long gone; although new flesh had grown and healed it away she would still be able to draw its shape back onto her skin twenty-eight years later.
She shook her head to release her mind from the past.
Her gaze travelled up to what used to be a head. The skull was distorted as though someone had taken a bite out of it like an apple. Dried blood covered every inch of the skin and had formed rivulets over the woman’s jaw and down her neck. The right-hand side of her hair was coloured red from blood and the left was blonde. Kim guessed it was where she had turned her head slightly into the ground to try to avoid the blows.
The nose appeared to be pointing to the left. The flesh would have swollen immediately upon impact. Injuries inflicted after death didn’t swell, indicating the victim had been alive during the beating.
‘What the…?’ Kim said, leaning down. Her attention was drawn to the line between the upper and lower lip. A brown substance had rested there.