Hanging Hill Read Free

bulrushes of the canal, on the other to a tangle of undergrowth – cow parsley, nettles and grass. Officers had left a gap of about fifty metres between the screens and the inner cordon, limited by police tape. Thirty metres or so past that, in a part of the undergrowth that formed a natural tunnel, stood a white tent.
    Zoë and Ben pulled on white forensic suits, tightened the hoods, and added gloves. They ducked into the tent. The air inside was warm and packed with the scents of crushed grass and earth, the ground crisscrossed with lightweight aluminium tread plates.
    ‘It’s her.’ The crime-scene manager stood a foot inside, making notes on a clipboard. He didn’t look up at them. ‘No doubt. Lorne Wood.’
    Behind him at the end of a walkway the crime-scene photographer was circling a muddy tarpaulin, taking video.
    ‘The tarp’s the type they use to cover firewood on the barges. But no one on this stretch of canal is missing one. The guy threw it over her. To look at her you’d think she was in bed.’
    He was right. Lorne was lying on her back, as if asleep, one arm resting on top of the tarp, which was pulled up to her chest like a duvet. Her head was lolling to one side, turned up and away from the tent entrance. Zoë couldn’t see her face, but she could see the T-shirt. Grey – with ‘I am Banksy’ across the chest. The one Lorne had been wearing when she’d left her house yesterday afternoon. ‘What time was she reported missing?’
    ‘Eight,’ said Ben. ‘She was supposed to be on her way home.’
    ‘We’ve found her keys,’ said the CSM, ‘but still no phone. There’s a dive team coming to search the canal later.’
    In the corner of the tent a technician dropped a pair of black ballet pumps into a bag. He put a red flag in the ground, then sealed the bag and signed across the seal. ‘Was that where they were found?’ she asked him.
    He nodded. ‘Right there. Both of them.’
    ‘Kicked off? Pulled off?’
    ‘Taken off. They were like this.’ The CSM held out his hands, straight and neatly together. ‘Just placed there.’
    ‘Is that mud on them?’
    ‘Yes. But not from here. From the towpath somewhere.’
    ‘And this grass – the way it’s been flattened?’
    ‘The struggle.’
    ‘It’s not much,’ she said.
    ‘No. Seems to have been over quickly.’
    The photographer had finished videoing. He stepped back to allow Zoë and Ben to approach the body. The tread plates divided into two directions at the foot of the tarpaulin and circled the body. Zoë and Ben went carefully, taking the side that led to Lorne’s face. They stood for a long time in silence, looking down at her. They’d both been working in CID for more than a decade and in that time they’d dealt with just a handful of murders. Nothing like this.
    Zoë looked up at the CSM. She could feel her eyes wanting to water. ‘What’s made her face go like that?’
    ‘We’re not sure. We think it’s a tennis ball between her teeth.’
    ‘Christ,’ said Ben. ‘Christ.’
    The CSM was right: a piece of duct tape had been placed across Lorne’s mouth. It was holding in place a spherical object that had been jammed inside as far as it would go, luminous green tufts visible at the top and bottom. It had forced her jaw open so wide she seemed to be snarling or screaming. Her nose was squashed into a bloodied clot, her eyes were screwed up tight. There was more blood in her hair. Two distinct lines of it ran from under the duct tape down to her jaw – almost in the places the jaw of a ventriloquist’s dummy would be hinged, except that they met her jaw almost under her ears. She must have been lying on her back when the bleeding had happened.
    ‘Where’s it coming from?’
    ‘Her mouth.’
    ‘She’s bitten her tongue?’
    The CSM shrugged. ‘Or maybe the skin’s split.’
    ‘ Split? ’
    He touched the corners of his mouth. ‘A tennis ball forced into her mouth? It would put strain on the skin