Gina twiddled her fingers in her lap and looked down for a second but the urge to watch was overwhelming. Holly’s red hair had been tidily placed to one side, eyes closed, skin bluish and as pale as skin could get. Gina had seen the photos of the young redhead. She had been pale in life but death almost gave her skin a translucent look.
Gina glanced up as her stomach contents were being placed in a tin.
‘You okay, guv?’
‘This isn’t my favourite part.’
‘Mine neither. Such a tragic loss.’
Gina slowly nodded. ‘What do you and Jennifer talk about at night?’
He let out a slight laugh. ‘Not this, that’s for sure. Films, music, art.’
‘Art? Since when did you have an interest in art?’
Any conversation that acted as a diversion from what was happening was most welcome. She didn’t normally get too squeamish but today the post-mortem just added to the uneasy feeling in her stomach. After an unsettled night with both Hannah and Holly running through her every spare thought, and her conversation with Briggs waking her every five minutes, a banal conversation was just what she needed.
‘Jennifer has opened my eyes to so much. We now have a shared passion for Salvador Dali and René Magritte.’
‘A bit of surrealism?’ Gina could have laughed. Her whole life at the moment felt like it was a work of a surrealist creator pulling her strings. Between what was happening and the weird dreams, she pushed images of Dali’s melting clocks to the back of her mind. ‘I’m glad you’re both happy.’ A flash of Dali’s ‘Carnation and Cloth of Gold’ entered her mind as Gina thought back to Holly’s body. The flower petals had to mean something even if they were just snatched from the table centrepieces. Had the killer chosen them with thought or was the carnation simply a coincidence? She felt the cogs of her mind kicking into action. ‘Carnations – the Mother’s day flower.’
‘What?’ Jacob glanced her way.
‘Someone left carnation petals on her torso for a reason. Holly was going to be a mother. Let’s keep that in our thoughts as we investigate.’
Jacob slowly nodded in agreement.
Swabs and samples were being catalogued and the body was being sewn up. Gina hoped they had all they needed and that Marianne Long would be able to start arranging her daughter’s funeral.
The pathologist stepped to the side and headed towards the shiny stainless steel sink. After scrubbing himself, he left through the other door.
‘I suppose we best get the low-down.’
The door opened. ‘Ah, DI Harte and DS Driscoll,’ the pathologist said as he straightened his Pink Panther tie. He held out his arm revealing a crisp white cuff as he gestured for them to leave the room. ‘Lovely to meet you both again. It’s a shame the circumstances are always so macabre.’ His eyebrows arched. ‘Follow me. There’s a room down the corridor where we can talk. We have a lot of the forensics results back too and I’m happy to talk you through what we’ve got.’
The pathologist held the report in his hand, smiling as he led the way to a tiny room with three mismatched plastic chairs surrounding a small coffee table. ‘Have a seat.’ He slipped his glasses from his pocket and pushed them up his thin nose.
‘So, what do you have for us?’ Gina rested back onto the plastic chair, resisting leaning too far back when it creaked.
‘Holly Long, aged twenty-five.’ He scanned his eyes across the report. ‘I’ll obviously need time to prepare my official report but this is what I have for now. Her nose was fractured, just slightly on the right of the bridge. This would have caused some bleeding and looking at the blood spatter photos and reports, we can confirm that the blood on the wall by the door did come from her nose.’
‘Taken by surprise?’ Gina imagined someone knocking or calling through the door and Holly answering. Was it her lover? The baby’s father? She opened the door to someone she knew, or could it have been a call from staff? Room service, maybe. She thought back to the reports she’d read. The staff all had alibis. Her mind flitted back to the drug dealer, Phillip Brighton.
‘Could have been. The other main injury is that of the blow to her head. The actual size of the cut to the right side of her skull is two point three centimetres. I have matched this to the lamp measurements and the edge of the base fits this measurement. We also have a blood match to the lamp. Holly Long’s blood is on that lamp.’
‘There was some evidence at the scene showing that she may have been smothered with a pillow. Can you confirm this?’ Gina thought back to the blood on the pillow that had been placed back on the other side before her body was left to look like she was sleeping.
‘I was just coming to that one. Look at her eyes.’ He passed a photo across the table. ‘See the little bloodshot prickles? This is a sign of suffocation. Also, we pulled out fibres of the pillow from her bloodied nose. The fibres were found in her mouth and throat too. If you look at her skin,’ he passed another photo to Gina, ‘petechial haemorrhaging – during asphyxiation blood vessels break and can leak into the skin, causing this.’
Gina passed the photos back. ‘Can you email these over to me?’
‘Of course. I can get these sent this afternoon.’
‘Are there any more signs of a struggle?’
‘Yes, she has a broken rib. Given the bruising on her body, it looks like someone straddled her and held the pillow over her face. There’s no doubt that this would have been traumatic for the victim. Confusion and dizziness would have set in after a few seconds and that soon would have been followed by unconsciousness and death. There was also bruising to her wrist, colour consistent with it occurring that evening. She could have been grabbed or pulled. The fingerprint measurements will be in my report. Also, her body still contained a lot of its heat when the forensics team arrived. No rigor mortis, but you already know that there was only a small window of time when her murder could have happened.’
Gina glanced at Jacob’s notes. He’d got it all down. ‘And the foetus?’
‘The foetus weighed in at 14.9 ounces and was measured at 4.1 inches long. Sex, female. Holly Long was about fifteen weeks pregnant.’
Gina scrolled through her diary on her phone. ‘So, she would have conceived around the week of the twentieth of January?’
‘That would be a good estimate. There was something else.’
Gina exited her calendar and looked back up.
‘There were a couple of scars on the base of her neck, consistent with fingernails digging into her skin. The measurements have been logged. I will send these to you too. Two rows of half-moon scars. Someone must have gripped her like this – may I demonstrate on one of you?’
Gina nodded and the tall pathologist leaned over her, placing his two thumbs gently on her throat as he gently pressed his nails into the back of her neck. As the nails pinched her flesh she felt her stomach sink and her heart rate speed up. He let go and sat back in his chair. ‘Do you see what I mean?’
Gina nodded. She saw what he meant and she knew how it felt. She knew what it was like to gasp until her oxygen supply had been cut off. She knew how it felt to look into the eyes of someone who was clearly enjoying every moment as her vision had prickled.