Substantial Threat Read Free

the foot of the steps the front door was almost hidden from view from anyone who happened to be passing. It opened into a tiny vestibule and from there into a bed-sitting room. This was meagrely furnished with a three-quarter-width camp bed, adequate in size for the business of prostitution, some cheap chipboard units and an old, but comfortable-looking settee. There was a portable TV in one corner of the room which looked quite new. The room was lit by a single bulb swinging on a bare wire from the damp ceiling and a lamp on a unit next to the bed. Curtains, worn and frayed, were drawn across dirt-streaked windows, giving the room, at best, a very grainy-grey light.
    Also on the bedside unit were an empty wrap of heroin, a blunt, blood-filled needle and a packet of condoms.
    The kitchen, reached through this room though an archway, was fitted with a two-ring electric hob and nothing else. No fridge, no kettle, no toaster. Just a brown-stained, germ-filled sink. A cupboard on the wall housed food supplies. Pot Noodles and a selection of instant soups, a bottle of curdled milk, little else. The boiling water required to make these delicacies had to be heated in a pan on the hob.
    The cupboard under the sink was the route by which the rats had been able to infiltrate from the foundations. They had obviously been trying to break through for some time, having gnawed their way through the laminated chipboard from which the cupboard was made. Had the girl been alive, the rats would have come through anyway. As it was, they had found her dead and feasted on her.
    Henry shivered involuntarily at the thought. It was ghastly enough to have been murdered so horrifically, but then to have been lunched on did not bear thinking about. In his time as a cop, he had been to several deaths, usually from natural causes, where the deceased had lain undiscovered for some time and their pets, driven crazy by hunger, had started to nibble them away.
    Cats were the worst.
    Henry’s mind, distracted momentarily by these thoughts, flicked back to the crime scene.
    Whether she had actually had four customers on the day of her death was difficult to determine for sure. It seemed to be a likely scenario, according to the scientists, and very likely that her last customer had been her killer.
    She had had sexual intercourse with a man who had then pummelled and battered her until she died.
    The assault had started in the bed-sitting room. She had been beaten while still on or near the bed. Blood splashes were all over the bed clothes, together with semen stains from another three men. Her assailant had smashed her head against the wall next to the bed, strands of blood-matted hair and indentations in the plasterboard confirmed this.
    The grim fight had continued around the room.
    She had either banged her head, or had it banged for her, against the sharp corner of one of the home-assembled units. The pathologist and forensic scientists had matched up the triangular point with the indent on the back of her skull.
    At some point during the struggle, killer and victim crashed through to the kitchen and boiling water from a pan on the hob had been tipped up. A scald mark was found on the dead woman’s back: more excruciating pain to add to the suffering she was already enduring at the hands of the person destined to take her life. From there the crime-scene analyst reckoned she had managed to escape, but only as far as the bathroom. She had locked the door, which had been booted down off its fragile hinges.
    Henry’s thought processes paused at that point. His mind’s eye saw the moment when the door had been whacked down, splintering. He wondered if the woman had thought she had found some sort of sanctuary in the bathroom, a place of safety. But all she had found was that she had backed herself into a corner from which there was no escape.
    Was she screaming as her assailant threw himself against the door? Or was she cowering, huddled down on