Cold Revenge (Willis/Carter #6)(2)

‘No chance of divers going anywhere near the water today,’ Carter said, ‘way too dangerous.’ He was older than Willis by ten years, a few months from turning forty, half-Italian, the son of a London cabbie. His nose had been broken many times when he was a budding East End boxer but it had ended up looking almost straight, if a little flatter than it started out, minus its cartilage. His hair was greying in dramatic style with silver buzz-cut sides and thick black hair left long on top.

Willis nodded her agreement before turning and indicating the way she had come. ‘The car park is not monitored; there’s no CCTV. It would be pretty easy to access the park after hours. I’ve been looking at possible sites where she went in.’ She and Carter had worked together for the last six years, since Willis joined Major Investigation Team 17, based in Archway. MIT 17 was one of four teams responsible for murders and major incidents north of the Thames. ‘You want to take a look?’

‘Yeah, we’ll take a walk up there in a minute. I want to take a look at her again before she’s taken to the morgue. The park will be anxious for us to reopen this section ASAP.’

They walked up the bank towards the forensic tent on the grass verge above the path. Willis was taller by an inch than Carter, with caramel-coloured skin from her mixed-race parentage. Broad-shouldered and athletic-looking, she always wore the same combination of shirt and black trousers for work; out of work, the black trousers became blue jeans and the shirt became a T-shirt of any kind that looked clean. Carter liked his clothes flamboyant; he liked his designer labels. Carter and Willis had grown up very differently: Carter had been part of a big loving family and Willis had spent a lot of her childhood in children’s homes, and for her, they were the good times. But they both understood the one thing that really mattered to them – they had each other’s backs.

Inside the white and blue forensic tent, the photographer was just finishing; he came out as they went in. The woman from the river was lying on a plastic sheet, on her back, the signs of decomposition in the curling back of her lips and the bloating of her abdomen that had forced her rise to the surface. Her skin was lifting glove-like from her arms where her jacket had torn. She was fully clothed in a denim mini skirt and vest top under a burgundy satin bomber jacket. The skin was mottled grey, the flesh blistered and cratered on her exposed legs. Her black hair was still half-tangled inside a pink scrunch band on top of her head and her head was nearly detached from the body; the vertebrae on one side of her neck, the edge of the jaw bone and the corner of the collarbone were all visible.

Willis pulled on some gloves and knelt on the plastic sheet, before carefully lifting and turning the woman’s head to the left side. The spine protruded now, pale grey, the flesh eroded, worn away by the pounding water.

‘Stab wounds to the neck area.’

Carter let her get on with it; this was her thing. Some people merely recorded the things they saw, as they put their toe in the water, checked the temperature and decided just to watch from the sidelines, but Willis dived straight in. She’d been through such a lot in her life that she could take a great deal of pain from others, and she could empathise on another level than him.

‘All on her right side. There’s extensive damage from the river, the debris has exaggerated the wound – opened it up.’ She looked down over the body. ‘As for the other injuries,’ Willis examined the wounds on the victim’s arm, ‘it’s hard to tell whether the lacerations on her were made before she died. When she’s cleaned up for the post-mortem, things should be clearer.’

‘How long had she been in the water?’ asked Carter.

‘A month, no more, maybe less. I put her age at mid to late thirties.’ Willis opened the woman’s mouth. ‘Methadone, heroin user, wrecked teeth.’

Carter was getting ready to leave the tent, which was making him feel claustrophobic. He knew Willis loved stepping inside a forensic tent, the white glow, the captured nearness to the deceased, the first smell of their body, the things they brought with them from their last minutes of life. One time she told Carter that being inside the forensic tent made her feel like she was a child, hiding under the sheets, that it was her safe place. The irony wasn’t lost on either of them.

‘We’ll probably be able to lift a print from the couple of remaining fingers,’ said Willis, raising the hand. From the elbow down, where the sleeve of the jacket ended, the skin on the arms had lifted and was ready to come away on its own. ‘She has needle marks,’ continued Willis. ‘I would say, looking at the state of her body, that she has been living this life for many years. There are tattoos,’ she continued, as she turned the arms outwards.

Carter nodded as he stared at the face. There was something bugging him; did he know her? Was it one of the hundreds of women he’d come across in his twenty years as a copper?

‘On her left wrist, I think it says ignite the fire, and there is a chain on her right wrist, both in red ink,’ she said as she leaned across the body.

He squatted down beside Willis. ‘She’s familiar to me.’

Willis unzipped the woman’s jacket pocket and looked inside. ‘Two condoms, bank card with the name of Millie Stephens. Ring a bell?’ She looked at Carter and waited as he took out his phone and looked up some information.

He read from the screen. ‘Jimmy Douglas? Remember him?’ he asked.