Erika Foster 04 - Last Breath Read online

  ‘Erika, I know you’re not happy here. I get it. I don’t find working with you much fun either.’

  ‘I applied for a transfer, but I’ve been turned down.’

  Yale got up. ‘Then we should make the best of things. I need to see the first draft of your report on knife crime statistics in the borough by the end of play today.’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  He went to say something else, then nodded and left. Erika sat back and stared out of her window. The high street stretched away up to the crossing, where it became a pedestrian zone. There was a sprawling queue outside the pound shop. A young Asian man emerged, pulling up the shutter, and the crowd surged forward.

  Erika was about to make another cup of tea when her phone rang.

  ‘Is this Detective Erika Foster?’ said a young male voice.

  ‘Detective Chief Inspector, yes, speaking.’

  ‘Hi. This is Josh McCaul, from last night…’ His voice tailed off, and she heard the sound of a coffee machine in the background. ‘Can I talk to you?’

  ‘Josh, one of my colleagues will be getting in contact with you to take a formal statement.’

  ‘Before I do it formally, I need to talk to you.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘The murder victim,’ he said in a small voice.

  ‘You said you didn’t know her?’

  There was a long pause on the end of the line, then he said: ‘I don’t know her. But I think I know who killed her.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Erika agreed to meet Josh in the Brockley Jack, a traditional British pub on the busy Brockley Road, recently refurbished in a gastro-pub style. The bar was quiet at eleven in the morning, apart from two scruffy old men who each had a pint on the go, and another lined up.

  Josh was behind the bar, wearing a long-sleeved black T-shirt, arranging clean crockery on top of a large silver coffee machine. He looked scared.

  ‘Hello. Where do you want to talk?’ asked Erika.

  ‘Do you mind if we go in the beer garden? I need a ciggie,’ he said.

  A middle-aged woman with heavy make-up and a ruched red blouse appeared from a door behind him, and gave Erika a hard stare. ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting coffee?’ she snapped.

  ‘Black with no sugar,’ said Erika.

  ‘I’ll bring them over. Put the space heaters on if you need them, Josh.’

  * * *

  The beer garden was small, with a high wall backing onto a row of houses. They sat under a small veranda on some decking. Josh got the space heater ignited with a click and a whoomph, and wheeled it closer. The warm air wafted down on Erika. The woman came out with their coffees and an ashtray.

  ‘I’ll be in the bar if you need me, Josh… Remember he called you,’ she said, departing with a scowl.

  ‘Is her bark worse than her bite?’ asked Erika, taking a sip of her coffee.

  ‘Sandra’s cool; she’s like another mother to me,’ replied Josh, taking out a packet of cigarettes and lighting one. ‘Where are you from? You’ve got an odd accent.’

  ‘Slovakia, but I’ve lived in the UK for twenty-five years.’

  Josh cocked his head and sized her up, gripping his glowing cigarette. ‘You’ve got like a northern accent, with a bit of foreign underneath.’

  Erika noted how pale and ill he looked in the weak January sun.

  ‘Yes. I learnt English in Manchester, where I met my husband,’ she said.

  ‘How long have you been married?’

  ‘I’m not. He died a few years back.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  Despite the cold, it was hot under the space heater. Josh went to push up his sleeves and then checked himself, but not before Erika saw needle marks on the inside of his arms.

  ‘Josh, this isn’t my case. You should have asked to speak to Superintendent Sparks.’

  ‘The creepy guy who looks like a vampire with piles?’

  Erika stifled a smile. ‘That’s him.’

  Josh stubbed out his cigarette, lit another, and exhaled, biting his lip. ‘I think I know something, about the dead girl. But telling you means I have to admit to something illegal.’

  ‘Start by speaking hypothetically,’ said Erika, placing a hand on his shoulder.

  He shrank back a little. ‘What if a person bought drugs from a dealer, but then saw that dealer at the crime scene?’ he asked.

  ‘What are we talking? Cannabis?’

  He shook his head. ‘Much worse.’

  ‘Does this person have any previous convictions?’

  ‘No… They don’t, I don’t,’ he said softly, looking at the floor.

  ‘Then I doubt the CPS would push for a prosecution. Do you need help?’

  ‘I’ve got all the numbers; I just have to get around to calling…’ Josh stamped out his third cigarette, furiously blinking back tears.

  ‘Josh, you saw the girl in that dumpster. It was a brutal death.’

  He nodded and wiped his eyes.

  ‘Okay. There’s this dealer, he hangs around the student union all the time. I went to take out the rubbish earlier than I said I did. The first time I went out, he was there, the dealer. So I went back inside.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Five, five-thirty.’

  ‘Why did you go back inside when you saw him?’

  ‘I owe him money… nothing major, but he’s a nasty piece of work. I thought he’d come for me.’

  ‘What exactly was he doing?’

  ‘He was just, like, standing beside that dumpster.’

  ‘Just standing?’

  ‘He had his hand inside. Then he stepped back and was just staring.’

  ‘Do you know his name?’

  ‘Steven Pearson.’

  ‘Address?’

  ‘He’s homeless as far as I know.’

  ‘Josh, did you find the body, just as you told me, around seven thirty p.m.?’

  ‘Yes, that part is true. I came back outside with the rubbish around seven thirty, when he was gone.’

  ‘Would you be willing to put this on the record, give us a statement?’

  ‘And if I say no?’

  ‘If you say no, you’ll have a drug problem and the murder of a young girl on your conscience.’

  Josh looked at the ground and then nodded. ‘Okay.’

  * * *

  When Erika was back in her car she made a call to John at Bromley, and got the number for DCI Hudson. Melanie’s phone went straight to voicemail, so she left a brief message with details of Josh and what he had seen.

  Erika looked out of the window at the car park. It had started to snow hard, and Sandra darted out of a fire exit with a bag of rubbish and slung it into the open dumpster.

  Then, Erika made another call to find out who would be conducting Lacey Greene’s post-mortem.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Just after eleven the next morning, Erika arrived at the mortuary in Lewisham, where she was met by Forensic Pathologist Doug Kernon. He was a big jovial bear of a man in his early sixties, with short grey bristly hair, and a red florid face.

  ‘Erika Foster, glad to finally meet you, I’ve heard a lot about you!’ he boomed cheerily, shaking her hand and showing her through to his small office next to the morgue.

  ‘Good or bad?’

  ‘Both,’ He grinned, pushing his glasses up on his nose. Erika had lied, saying she was involved with the Lacey Greene murder investigation. Her rank and reputation meant that this was accepted, but with her rank and reputation she acknowledged she should know better.

  ‘You’ve just missed DCI Hudson. I presumed as SIO she would be briefing you?’

  ‘She wanted to get my angle on things,’ Erika lied. ‘I hope you don’t mind running through it again?’

  ‘No. Not at all,’ he said with a wave of his hand. His office was crammed with the usual shelves of medical tomes, and the quirks that senior members of the medical profession acquire. There was a lava lamp, and a treadmill under a small w
indow, but the conveyor belt was lined with seed trays full of home-grown salad leaves. He seemed to have quite a fancy for the British actress Kate Beckinsale. Erika counted nine pictures of her in her various movie roles. On his desk were various open parcels of greaseproof paper containing meats and cheeses, and a loaf of artisan bread on a wooden board.

  ‘Not peckish, are you?’ he asked, following her gaze. ‘I was about to tuck in and open a jar of my wife’s piccalilli.’

  ‘No, thank you. I have to be back at the office,’ said Erika. She’d dealt with death for many years, but wasn’t sure chorizo and stilton would sit well before viewing the body.

  ‘Of course, let’s go then.’

  His demeanour changed when they moved from his cosy office and into the chilly morgue. There was a scrape of metal as he pulled out one of the mortuary drawers on the large back wall, which contained the black body bag.

  Erika moved to a computer screen in the corner of the morgue, which had details of Doug’s report and a driving licence photo of Lacey. She had been an attractive woman, of medium height with long glossy brown hair, a beautiful heart-shaped face. There was a youthful almost cherubic beauty about her, and this was all captured in an ID photo. Erika presumed she had been even more beautiful in real life.

  From behind, Erika heard the slow oily sound of a zip being opened and the crackle as Doug flicked back the folds of the body bag. She took a deep breath and turned.

  The blood had been washed from her body, but she was unrecognisable from her picture, with two huge swollen pouches for eyes. Lacey had been lying on her side in the dumpster, and now she was on her back, Erika could see the left cheek bone of that heart-shaped face was broken. Scores of deep cuts covered her chest, upper arms, and thighs.

  Doug gave her a moment to take it in, then started to explain his findings. ‘These cuts are consistent with an extremely sharp object. They have an even depth and line, which makes me think she was slashed repeatedly with a small sharp blade. There is blunt force trauma on the back of the skull, the left ocular bone – that’s the eye socket – and the left cheekbone was shattered. You can see that her ears were pierced, and an earring was ripped out of her left ear.’ He indicated a torn earlobe.

  ‘Was she sexually assaulted?’

  ‘There’s no evidence of semen, or any latex residue,’ he said. ‘But she has internal injuries on the walls of her vagina. The cuts are small but again they are consistent with a small sharp blade being inserted… Perhaps a Stanley knife or scalpel.’

  ‘To torture,’ finished Erika.

  ‘I believe so, yes. Also, see the wrists. There is bruising consistent with her wrists being bound. I think in this instance her wrists were tied with a thin chain: see the linking in the bruising. She has identical bruising on her neck.’

  ‘She was tied up… Did you manage to take anything from under her nails?’

  ‘Note the fingers,’ he added, gently lifting one of the hands.

  Erika’s stomach lurched. The fingernails had been pulled out.

  ‘When I saw her at the scene, her fingers were curled against her cheek. I hadn’t noticed this… Maybe she scratched him, and he didn’t want us to get his DNA,’ said Erika.

  Doug nodded. ‘Her right arm is broken in two places, and you can see the toes on the right foot have been crushed,’ he said.

  ‘Cause of death?’

  ‘Despite all of this, the actual cause of death was catastrophic blood loss from an incision in the femoral artery in her left thigh.’ He moved to the side of the table, and gently parted her legs to show a small incision, high on her inner thigh near the groin.

  Erika noticed that her pubic hair was shaven, with a tiny amount of stubble.

  ‘Was her pubic hair shaved during the post-mortem?’ she asked.

  ‘No.’

  Erika didn’t want to jump to conclusions, but was this a sign of promiscuousness? She looked back to Doug.

  ‘I wouldn’t use it as a moral compass on the poor girl,’ he said, reading her thoughts. ‘Was it a bad choice on her part? Or were events thrust upon her, out of her control? That’s up to you to find out.’

  ‘She was reported missing last week, and her body was found several days later,’ started Erika.

  ‘Yes. I believe the wounds were inflicted over a period of several days; some had already started to heal. The incision to the femoral artery would have been fatal, and I would expect her to have bled out within minutes.’

  ‘So you think she could have been held somewhere and tortured?’

  ‘All I can say is that the injuries were inflicted over a period of two to three days…’

  ‘I’m impressed you were able to ID her so quickly,’ said Erika.

  ‘When the victim is found with her bag, wallet and ID, it’s fairly easy… but you should know this?’ he said, narrowing his eyes.

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  He looked as if he wasn’t buying it, but continued. ‘The incision on the inner thigh, the femoral artery, is precise. He knew where he was going with the knife…’

  ‘You think it’s a “he”?’

  ‘Are you going all politically correct on me, Erika?’

  ‘No. I’ve seen the havoc and violence women can inflict just as much as men…’

  He beckoned her over to a large anatomy poster fixed to the tiled wall. The body, of undetermined sex, lay with arms splayed outwards and it showed the position of all the major organs and arteries.

  ‘You see here, the inner thigh at the femoral artery,’ he said, indicating with a biro. ‘The artery is buried in folds of fatty tissue. The femoral artery is used as an entry point for heart procedures: for example, when a stent is inserted to widen a heart valve. It’s non-invasive; instead of opening up the chest cavity you can go through the groin.’

  ‘You think the killer had medical knowledge?’

  ‘Again, that’s for you and your SIO to work out.’

  ‘Do you have a time of death?’

  ‘Looking at the rate of rigor mortis, I’d say she has been dead for 48 hours or more.’

  Four days are unaccounted for since she went missing, thought Erika. Four days of fear, agony and pain.

  She turned away from the anatomy diagram and went back to the table to look at Lacey, and the incision in her upper thigh. ‘Could it be a lucky guess on the part of whoever did this? Finding this femoral artery and making the incision?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, but it would be a fluke to find it, and then make the correct incision first time. If she’d been unconscious, it would have been easier to locate, but you can see that she put up a fight.’

  Erika looked down at Lacey’s beaten and broken body. The long neat line of stitches from her navel to chest, completed after the autopsy, were at odds with the random violence inflicted on her. Erika wished that the other cuts had been sewn up too. It just seemed to expose her even more.

  ‘It would be really good if you could catch this one,’ said Doug, his face set in grim sadness.

  Erika nodded. ‘I will. I always do.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Erika drove back to the police station in Bromley, and spent the rest of the afternoon staring gloomily at a spreadsheet on her computer. She couldn’t focus on the numbers, which kept blurring in front of her eyes. All she could see was the battered body of Lacey, lying in the morgue.

  Just before five she was about to go and grab a coffee, when she made a decision and picked up her phone. This time, Melanie Hudson answered.

  ‘Did you get my message?’ Erika asked. ‘Josh McCaul, the lad who lives next to the kitchen showroom, states he saw a man called Steven Pearson acting suspiciously in the hours leading up to when he discovered Lacey Greene’s body…’

  ‘I got your message,’ she said irritably. ‘We have Steven Pearson in custody.’

  ‘Already?’

  ‘Yes. We brought him in a couple of hours ago. We did another door-to-door, and got a positive ID on him from a neigh
bour. Steven Pearson’s well known to the police in the area: GBH, ABH, attempted rape. He had Lacey Greene’s wallet on him, with her cash and bank cards, and he had a surgical scalpel. His arms and face are also covered in scratches…’

  ‘Did he have her mobile phone?’

  ‘No… Look, Erika, I appreciate you passing info on to me, but Superintendent Sparks gave you a direct order to stay away from this investigation.’

  ‘He did, but—’

  ‘I just want to do my job, Erika. I have Lacey Greene’s killer in custody, and it looks like this case is moving towards a successful conclusion. Stay out of this, or I’ll make things difficult for you.’

  There was a click and she hung up. Erika slammed down her phone, bristling. The snow whirled thickly against the window, blanketing the high street. It usually lifted her spirits, the cleansing power of snow, but she felt angry and isolated in her small office in Bromley. She turned back to her spreadsheet and attempted to concentrate.

  Lacey Greene was abducted, held somewhere for four days, and then tortured before her femoral artery, an artery hard to find, was cut with surgical precision.

  Would a homeless drug addict have the brains or the resources to execute all of this? And why would he then hang around the crime scene, allowing himself to be seen by two witnesses?

  CHAPTER NINE

  Erika couldn’t sleep that night. After lying in the darkness for hours, she got up and went to her window. It gave her a clear view over the small car park outside her block of flats. Snow continued to fall, and had reduced the cars to humps of white. In the corner, against a high brick wall, was a line of three dumpsters for the building. It was quiet; the only sound was a faint tapping as snow fell against her window. She couldn’t get the image of Lacey Greene’s battered body out of her head. Twenty-two-year-old Lacey had her whole life ahead of her.

  From past investigations, Erika knew how much fate played its part in murder cases. If the victim had left the bar ten minutes later, or remembered to lock the car door, or taken a slightly different route, they would still be alive.