Private London (Private 4)

Harman looked over at the dead body. ‘You think she was a prostitute?’

Dr Walsh looked back at him and shook her head. ‘Just speculating. We haven’t even begun to do a post-mortem on the poor woman. One thing I learned really early on in this game, detective, is – if you leap too early to conclusions …’

‘You can end up landing on your arse!’ Wendy Lee finished for her.

Harriet Walsh turned back to the dead woman and looked at her left hand which was curled into a semi-fist as if she was holding something. The pathologist opened the hand gently.

‘Rigor mortis has set in and then softened so I can tell you she has been dead for a number of days …’ she said and then trailed off. She looked up at Adrian Tuttle and said, ‘Get a shot of this.’

As Tuttle leaned in, his flashgun firing off mini-explosions of light, Wendy Lee leaned forward to look as well.

‘What is it?’ asked Harman.

‘The digitus anularis. The phalange quartus, if you like, on the hand sinister.’

Harman grunted again. ‘I don’t like. What’s it mean in plain Anglo-Saxon?’

‘The ring finger to you and me, detective,’ explained Wendy Lee.

Dr Walsh held the dead woman’s wrist and showed the others the left hand. ‘The phalange or fourth finger on the left hand, counting the thumb as the first finger. It’s been cut off at the second knuckle.’

The detective squatted down, groaning a little as his knees creaked. ‘I’m getting too old for this job,’ he said. ‘You sure it has been cut off and not gnawed?’ he asked. ‘Our hungry rats?’

‘I’ll get it under a microscope but these are clean lines around the knuckle and there has been no rodent activity anywhere near it.’

‘Why have bony gristle when you can have the prime meat?’ said Harman.

‘Not delicately put, inspector. But you make a valid point.’

Harman stood up, groaning again as he did and holding his hands to his suffering knees.

‘How old are you in fact, detective?’ Wendy Lee asked him.

‘Forty-two next month,’ he replied.

‘Maybe you want to think about doing some exercise,’ she said pointedly.

‘It’s all right for you, Dr Lee – you’re a lot closer to the ground.’

Harriet Walsh stood and nodded to her team. ‘Let’s get her down to the workshop. See what we can see.’

‘So what are we looking at, detective?’ asked Tuttle, the first time he had spoken since they had entered the crime scene. ‘Prostitution, trafficking, ritualistic killing. Or an accidental death covered up and the wedding ring removed as possible evidence of her identity?’

‘Could be any of the above.’ The detective inspector shrugged. ‘Truth is … as of this moment I don’t have a clue.’

Tuttle nodded sagely.

The difference between him and Harman was, he did have one. He had a very big clue.

‘Well, let me tell you something else, then,’ he said.

Chapter 21

DI KIRSTY WEBB pulled the zipper on her coat up firmly.

She was leaning against the wall of a building, built sometime in the sixteenth century, and watching her people process the crime scene.

Such as it was. A poorly lit cobbled backstreet off one of the quads of Chancellors University. At least, it would have been poorly lit if the police hadn’t mounted bright halogen lights to photograph and work the scene.