The London Project (Portal Book 1) Page 3

  CHAPTER THREE

  A crowd of almost twenty people milled around the London Rail service entrance. It never took long for parasites to swarm at a crime scene. Granted, there would normally be one or two amongst them who had stumbled across the police presence and decided to hang around and rubber-neck, but in this instance the road that ran parallel to the railway line had little passing traffic on foot or by car. Louisa suspected all of them had been drawn there by the scan of the dead girl.

  A few were chatting to each other in low voices, but the majority was engrossed in their terminals. As Louisa wound her way through them she was largely ignored, but occasionally someone raised their terminal almost absently to take a snap of her. She noted a few red-flashing lenses. No doubt the video they were uploading was being shared in real-time on their public feeds. Even if she hadn’t seen the red flashes, the way they were standing—absolutely still with their heads panning slowly to minimise motion-jerk, was a dead giveaway.

  She doubted anyone was an official journalist from a newscast or corporate-owned feed. More and more often the salaried journalists stayed in their offices, their articles based on content gleaned from the public feeds. That left the unofficial reporters, or Guerrilla Casters, who swarmed a crime scene to surreptitiously capture and share audio and video. In some cases it could be quite lucrative for them. They’d upload to their feeds and as the items were picked up and re-shared they gained a tiny fee from Portal. Anything really juicy might get picked up by a mainstream feed or maybe even get linked to on a newscast’s feedback. They could reel in the big bucks if the item cascaded throughout the Portal network.

  The service entrance was secured by a set of large iron double gates. The dark green paint was peeling and patches of rust showed through. One of the gates was open and a narrow strand of police tape was stretched across the gap. Before it, a British Transport Police constable stood guard.

  Louisa was struck by how young the officer looked. Surely he must be fresh out of training? Since the girl’s body had been found beside the railway tracks the crime scene fell under the BTP’s jurisdiction. Suspicious deaths were far outside their remit however, so Louisa had been assigned the investigation.

  The constable was deep in conversation with an attractive twenty-something blonde woman in a tight fitting white blouse and grey pencil skirt. The woman’s blouse was loosely buttoned and she was showing a little too much cleavage for what Louisa judged appropriate for her otherwise office-suitable attire. The constable must have said something hilarious because the woman threw back her head and laughed, casually reaching out as she did so to rest a hand on the officer’s arm.

  Louisa stopped before the constable, waiting patiently for an acknowledgement of her presence. He continued to ignore her, his attention fixed on the blonde who, at that moment, leaned in closer, seemingly hanging on his every word.

  ‘If you ask me, she OD’d on something,’ the constable said. ‘The marks on her arms are a dead giveaway. You don’t see much of that sort of drug use any more as it’s a bit old-school, but if you know what to look for you can spot the signs.’

  Louisa groaned inwardly. What was the idiot thinking, blabbing away on confidential police matters? Did he think the woman was simply passing by and stopped to have a chat? And those remarks about the victim overdosing? She doubted the guy knew his arse from his elbow when it came to diagnosing causes of death. The most serious case he was likely to have come across in his career was a serial fare evader. The woman didn’t appear to be wearing lenses but anyone nearby could be recording footage whilst she captured the audio using a pocketed terminal or a sense band. The newscasts would be desperate for more details on the girl. The uploaded scan had been a head-and-shoulders shot only, and was of poor quality, the image blurred.

  Louisa loudly cleared her throat.

  The constable turned his head, looked her quickly up and down, and lazily raised his hand, palm outwards. ‘This is a crime scene, no members of the public are allowed.’ Then he turned his attention back to the blonde.

  Louisa suppressed an angry retort. She knew what he would have absorbed with his perfunctory appraisal: the comfortable shoes, a loosely fitting grey pantsuit, hair yanked back and tied in an unfashionable style, a bare minimum of make-up.

  There’s nothing like a casual dismissal from a man barely out of his teens to make you feel drab and unattractive.

  No, it wasn’t solely the brutalising of her self-esteem that annoyed her. Every officer should know better than to run his mouth off in public. The MET made a point of training their new recruits to avoid such mistakes. It was drummed into them ad nauseum. Surely the BTP were doing the same? The last thing the force needed was another David Gallagher incident. Five years ago David’s assault had sparked two nights of the worst rioting London had witnessed in decades. Portal had been online for three months, and at the time the MET regarded it purely as a tool for their own use. Portal’s centralised network had been welcomed by the MET as a key weapon in their fight against crime. The serious beating of a fourteen year old black kid from Brixton would normally have been dismissed as another gang-related statistic, but what followed provided the MET’s senior ranks with a clear demonstration of how Portal put real power in the hands of each and every Londoner.

  When David Gallagher was attacked he’d been wearing glasses paired to his profile and configured to upload the recorded footage to his public feed. Every cry and plea was clearly audible along with the mocking laughter of his assailants who proceeded to beat him half to death. The visuals were jerky but the uniformed MET officers kicking and punching him were easily identifiable. The savage assault lasted for two minutes and ended with David raising his arm defensively as a baton swung down and shattered the bones in his forearm with a sickening crunch. It seemed to get louder each time Louisa saw the video, and the newscasts replayed it constantly for days.

  After the inevitable public enquiry and officer suspensions the MET created a mandatory training course for all officers they called Next Generation Awareness. Outside the MET it was billed as training designed to instil an intrinsic respect for human rights. Within the ranks its message was recognised somewhat differently: ‘don’t do stupid stuff in public’.

  If the BTP had a similar set of classes for their new recruits then this young constable must have been asleep during them. Louisa took out her terminal and flicked across her MET ID. The constable’s terminal pinged in response. He retrieved it from a pouch at his side and his eyes widened as he looked at the screen. He snapped around to give Louisa his full attention, straightening as he did so.

  ‘Sorry, Detective,’ he said, his face flushing an impressive shade of crimson, ‘please, go on through.’ He stood aside and lifted the tape.

  Louisa glared at him but otherwise remained silent. A dressing down would be just as feed-worthy to the blonde as his expert opinion. Besides, he was BTP, not MET. In other words, not her problem. He’d recognise his mistake soon enough when his conversation with the blonde was shared out and his Inspector was tearing him a new one. A few people in the crowd called after her as they realised she might actually have been someone of importance, but she ignored them.

  The railway tracks stretched out in front of her in a complex interweaving lattice. She was half a mile from St Pancras Station, which was hidden around the bend to the left. In the other direction, Louisa spotted a white forensics tent a hundred yards away, and she set off down a gravel path towards it.

  Louisa’s legs felt heavy and throbbed with a dull ache she put down to lack of sleep. It had been six in the morning by the time she’d crawled into bed. Louisa had been looking forward to at least five hours sleep before her shift, but the call from her boss had put paid to that. It should really have been him attending the scene, if you went by the book. But these days attending a crime scene personally was rare for the lead detective.

  As Louisa walked down the path her breath misted around her before being snatched a
way on an icy breeze. Morning frost was still evident in the clumps of whitened grass poking through the path that glistened with the criss-crossing trails of slugs and snails. The sky stretched out endlessly in a cloudless azure—so different from the usual dreary London weather. Bordering the path was an impressively dense hedge around ten feet tall. It gave the impression it had been growing beside the line for decades. On the far side of the tracks, a heavily graffitied wooden fence was topped by spirals of razor-wire. The railway line looked well secured, not the sort of place a young girl stumbled into by accident.

  Beside the forensics tent another BTP officer, a sergeant this time, was talking to a SOCO (Scene Of Crime Officer) clad in white overalls. A field station table was set up beside the tent and Forensics had laid out crime scene kits and plastic containers containing gloves and overalls.

  The sergeant caught sight of Louisa and strode forward to meet her. ‘Detective Bennett?’ Louisa nodded. ‘I’m Sergeant Jansen. I was the first officer on the scene.’

  ‘You’re the Duty Officer?’

  ‘No, that would be Inspector Briggs. I’m acting in his stead.’

  Louisa suppressed a smile. Apparently neither of our Inspectors wants to get their hands dirty.

  ‘Do you know how long this is going to take, Detective?’ the sergeant enquired. ‘I’ve had to order the suspension of all services in and out of St Pancras. The rail network providers are really giving me hell.’

  Louisa glanced over at him to make sure he was actually serious. ‘It takes as long as it takes, Sergeant. It’s a potential homicide we’re investigating.’ The sergeant stiffened, but Louisa didn’t feel much sympathy for him. He probably wants to get back to some track-side portakabin to grab forty winks before lunch. ‘Who found the body?’

  ‘That pair of delinquents over there.’ He nodded past the tent towards two black kids talking to a female constable. They looked to be around twelve or thirteen years old.

  ‘What were they doing here?’

  ‘They’re not saying much but they were carrying a bag of spray cans. It appears they were looking for something to deface when they came across the body.’

  ‘I take it one of them was responsible for the shared scan?’

  ‘Yes, and pretty shocked they were too when they saw me running down the line towards them.’ The sergeant smiled smugly. ‘Caught them red-handed beside the body.’

  ‘What about the girl?’

  The sergeant shrugged. ‘Forensics arrived soon after me and took over.’

  ‘Do you know how the kids got onto the tracks?’

  ‘I’ll check that with the constable.’

  ‘If you could get someone to walk the line it would be helpful. We need to determine how the girl got inside as well.’

  The sergeant bristled. ‘Listen, Detective, apart from myself I have the grand total of two other officers assigned to assist in this case and I had to beg for them. If any of your colleagues want to come down and help out, be my guest.’

  ‘Relax, Sergeant. I’m not questioning your work.’ Not yet, anyway. ‘I know you have limited resources available.’

  That seemed to mollify him. Maybe she was being too hard on the guy. The picture of the girl had been uploaded to a public feed and had rapidly disseminated throughout the Portal network. But if Superintendent Morris hadn’t caught his nine-year-old daughter looking at the scan at breakfast, Louisa wouldn’t have been there herself. Reports from the officers at the scene, witness statements and forensics would all get linked to the centralised case file managed from Scotland Yard. This time, however, her boss had been on the receiving end of an earful from the Super, so Louisa was dispatched to give the impression the MET were treating the case as a priority.

  A SOCO emerged from the tent. He pulled down his mask, lit a cigarette and leaned against the field station table.

  ‘Thank you, Sergeant,’ Louisa said. ‘I’ll have a word with the children after I’ve finished with the body.’

  Even with the mask in place Louisa would have recognised Bill Harper. The large protruding stomach pressed tight against his white overalls was a dead giveaway. His oft-repeated joke was that the MET were reacting to shrinking budgets by reducing the size of the forensics overalls. He had quite a sense of humour for a pathologist, or he did before his wife had left him. Now it seemed to have transposed into a burgeoning drinking problem.

  ‘Louisa.’ Bill nodded.

  ‘Morning, Bill.’ Louisa pulled on some latex gloves. ‘What have you got for me?’

  ‘Young girl, around seventeen years old.’

  Louisa shook out a set of overalls and pulled them on. They were too big, but she wouldn’t be wearing them long. She pressed her shoes, one at a time, into a box on the ground and a plastic covering wrapped around them.

  ‘Time of death?’ Louisa asked.

  ‘It was close to freezing last night so she would have cooled down rapidly once she passed. Rigor and body temperature won’t be much use. I’d guess around eight hours ago but the PM will tell us more.’

  ‘And the cause?’

  ‘That’s going to have to wait for the PM. It could be due to a number of factors.’ He stubbed out his cigarette in a plastic tray. ‘It will be easier to explain if you see for yourself.’

  Bill held aside the tent flap for her and Louisa took the opportunity to surreptitiously sniff his breath on the way past. There was no whiff of booze, thankfully. If the case turned high profile the last thing Louisa wanted was the media reporting that the pathologist was pissed on the job. These things had a way of leaking out—usually at the exact point when they’d cause the most collateral damage, like when the case was about to go to trial.

  It was surprisingly warm inside the tent. Two SOCOs stood over the body taking close-up scans. The tent was lined with sense strips so they would have a good representation of the scene attached to the case file, but forensics required greater resolution images for their reports. They were obscuring the victim’s face but Louisa could see the girl was naked apart from a white cotton shift that reached down to her thighs. But it was the state of the girl’s limbs that captured Louisa’s attention. Her arms and legs were a mass of mottled bruises. A rainbow of purple, yellow and green, with some strange red lines forming a web across her pale skin. As Louisa got closer she realised the lines were actually thin cuts covered in scabs in various stages of healing. There were also a large number of small, perfectly circular puckered spots.

  ‘It’s not pretty, is it?’ Bill asked.

  ‘We’re finished up here, Bill,’ one of SOCOs said. A woman—it was difficult to determine gender from appearances alone due to the shapelessness of the overalls.

  Bill nodded and beckoned Louisa closer. She hunkered down beside the body. Tight curls of blonde shoulder-length hair framed a serene, relaxed profile free of the violence inflicted on the girl’s limbs. With her eyes closed she could almost be asleep.

  ‘The wounds you can see are superficial and comprised of lacerations and burns,’ Bill said. ‘They’re certainly not severe enough to be the cause of death. I’d say they were inflicted over several months and were well cared for as there’s no sign of infection. The lacerations were also sutured professionally.’

  ‘Professionally? You mean by someone with medical training?’

  ‘Not just medical training. You’re talking about someone with real surgical skill.' Bill raised the girl's shift to expose her stomach. He pointed out a long, sawtoothed scar that stretched across the girl's torso. 'Anyone can suture the smaller lacerations, but this one? I know plastic surgeons who'd have difficulty producing results like this. If the girl had lived for another year or two you probably wouldn't be able to see this scar at all it'd be so faint.’

  ‘Are there any signs of drug use?’ Louisa asked, remembering the BTP constable’s assertions.

  ‘There are track marks on her left arm.’ Bill pointed them out. ‘But like the other wounds, they were well cared for and are infect
ion free.’

  ‘Could she have injected herself?’

  ‘It’s possible, but unlikely in my opinion. There’s no sign of the bruising you would normally associate with self-administration.’

  It wouldn’t matter to the media how she got the needle marks. Thanks to the constable they’d report the body of a drug addict had been found and that’s what the consuming masses would believe. Later corrections would, in the large part, be ignored.

  Bill looked over at one of the SOCOs. ‘Gemma, could give me a hand turning the body please?’

  Bill and the female officer gently lifted and turned the girl over.

  ‘Note the hypostasis on the underside of her body,’ Bill said.

  Louisa nodded. The underside of her limbs were mottled pink. ‘So she wasn’t moved recently?’

  ‘That’s correct. For the last six hours at any rate. But that’s not what interests me the most.’

  The blonde curls around the girl’s neck were matted with dried blood. Bill gently moved them aside to expose an open wound. It was roughly circular in shape and two inches in diameter. It was deep—the white bone of the skull visible through the exposed, raw tissue. It didn’t look like a stab wound. The flesh appeared almost shredded around the edges. Louisa had never seen anything like it.

  ‘Any idea what caused it?’ she asked.

  Bill shook his head. ‘From the state of the surrounding tissue, if anything, I’d have to say something was torn out.’

  Torn out? Louisa took a moment to consider Bill’s words. What could have been inserted into the girl’s neck so deeply that tearing it out would cause so much damage? Some sort of cosmetic piercing? It seemed unlikely given the girl didn’t even have her ears pierced. ‘Did the wound kill her?’

  ‘It could be a contributing factor. No major veins or arteries in the neck were damaged though, so it’s unlikely she bled out.’

  Bill wasn’t normally so reticent to offer an opinion on the cause of death. This one has thrown him. Louisa wasn’t entirely unaffected herself. The girl was barely older than her daughter, Jess.