No Smoke Without Fire. Paul Gitsham

the team up to speed on the various interviews conducted that morning. All those present agreed that Darren Blackheath was probably not guilty of his girlfriend’s murder, although her father’s outburst couldn’t be dismissed entirely. Warren moved his name to the unlikely column on the whiteboard, until the results of the house-to-house enquiries and forensics came back.

      As for her father, his behaviour was certainly strange and Warren made a note to pull him in for questioning after he’d had a few hours to cool off.

      A second team, headed by DI Tony Sutton, had focused on Evans’ workmates, using the initial investigation from the missing person enquiry as a starting point. The travel agency had been closed and the entire staff, including those not working on the day that she went missing, had been questioned. By the end of the morning, Sutton and his team had built a far more detailed profile of Sally Evans’ last day and largely ruled out all of her former colleagues as realistic suspects. Confirmation of a couple of alibis were outstanding but they didn’t expect much from Maureen the obese sixty-something grandmother with an arthritic hip.

      Evans had arrived at work as usual at about eight-twenty, dropped off in the same alleyway her boyfriend picked her up from after work. After smoking a cigarette, she had knocked on the fire door and had been admitted by her boss, Kelli Somerton. This was confirmed by Somerton, who said that there was still a cloud of smoke around the bin and that Evans smelled strongly of it.

      The shop didn’t open until nine a.m. and at this time of the year they weren’t expecting many customers, so the staff had logged onto the computers, put the kettle on and sat around gossiping until opening time. No customers had appeared until almost midday, so the staff had spent the day preparing for the expected post-Christmas sales. Sally Evans had occupied her time unpacking boxes of promotional material and catalogues.

      The weather had been cold and Evans had stayed in for her lunch of home-made tuna sandwiches, nipping out on her own for a cigarette. Evans had been described by everyone interviewed as ‘her usual cheerful self’, looking forward to Christmas. Nobody could recall her mentioning any worries or strange people that she’d met.

      The shop closed at five-thirty and Evans had helped lock up, before exiting via the back door at her usual time, ready to get picked up by her boyfriend, Darren Blackheath.

      Warren rubbed his eyes, his hopes of an easy collar slowly fading. He still believed that killings by a total stranger were very rare; however, if Evans and her killer had crossed paths, he didn’t seem to be in her immediate circle of acquaintances.

      He said as much to the team.

      “OK, let’s start to shake the trees a little harder.” He turned to Gary Hastings. “Use the PNC and HOLMES to see what we can find out about all of her acquaintances. Let’s also scan a list of recent customers and see if anybody interesting turns up.” He turned to Karen Hardwick. “You built a pretty good rapport with her friend Cheryl. She mentioned past boyfriends. See if you can get a list of friends — try and get as many as possible, right back to university if you can. We’ll chuck them all in the pot and see what comes out.”

      He turned to DS Khan.

      “Mo, can you continue co-ordinating the house-to-house enquiries with the neighbours? Make sure the evening shift pick up those who were out earlier in the day.”

      With the jobs assigned, Warren glanced at his watch: ten to three. “I’m due a briefing on the autopsy in a few minutes. Keep feeding back to the incident desk and we’ll meet again tomorrow morning eight a.m.”

      The room emptied quickly, everyone eager to complete their given tasks, hoping to be the one that found the vital link. Human nature, mused Warren, just as it’s human nature to lose energy and become frustrated as time wears on with no new leads. They were less than twenty-four hours in and already Warren had a bad feeling about the case. If it was a true stranger murder then they were probably in for the long haul. And it would be up to him to keep his team engaged and focused all that time.

Chapter 7

      Warren had never been a big fan of autopsies. Some of his colleagues were happy to go into the morgue and see firsthand with their own eyes the clues teased out by the pathologist. Warren privately accused them of having a lack of imagination and a touch of voyeurism. He had no problem visualising everything he needed in his mind’s eye using a few colour photographs and a well-written report. He could see nothing to be gained by looking at the corpse on a table. Truth be told, he wouldn’t know what he was looking for. Far better that a practised expert describe what he was observing.

      The expert today was Professor Ryan Jordan, a fifty-something, American-born, Home Office Certified pathologist, and he was happy to meet with Warren at Middlesbury CID rather than calling Warren down to look at the body in the morgue.

      He read from his notes.

      “The body is that of a Caucasian woman, mid-twenties. One hundred sixty-one centimetres tall, weighing sixty-four kilogrammes. Average build, with no distinguishing scars or body decoration. Medically, she appeared to be of average to below average fitness, with limited muscular development and lungs consistent with that of a pack-per-day smoker of about ten years; some evidence of early cardiovascular disease. Her liver was again consistent with somebody who drank more than she should, showing early signs of inflammation. It is my opinion, however, that none of these conditions contributed to her death.” He glanced up. “Give it a few more years and I reckon she’d have had a hard time climbing the stairs though. You see a lot of young women like this in the UK. It’s a ticking time bomb and I don’t see how the NHS will cope.”

      Warren nodded politely, not really interested in the American’s opinions on Britain’s binge-drinking and smoking culture. “How did she die, then, do you think?” he asked, steering the conversation back to the matter in hand.

      “It’s largely as Andy Harrison guessed at the scene. She was killed Friday evening, judging from her stomach contents, which are consistent with a tuna sandwich and a banana eaten at about one p.m. Cause of death was strangulation with her scarf. Prior to death she underwent very rough intercourse, probably penile. Bruising confirms that she was alive; however, we can find no signs of any struggle, suggesting that she was either compliant or unconscious.”

      Warren raised a sceptical eyebrow and Jordan raised his hands in surrender. “I’m just saying it as I see it, Chief. Or, more importantly, how the defence will try and portray it. Consensual sex gone wrong.”

      “So we have no evidence of rape.”

      “I wouldn’t say that.” He pushed a photograph across the table.

      “Look how smeared her make-up is. Assuming it’s the same lipstick that she had in her handbag, it’s waterproof and long-lasting. It shouldn’t really smear like that. Unless it was dissolved in solvent.”

      Warren was one step ahead. “You’re suggesting that she was subdued by some sort of solvent, like chloroform, which smeared her make-up? That’s a bit Agatha Christie, isn’t it?”

      Again, the American pathologist raised his hands. “As I said before, I say it as I see it. We’ve sent off for blood toxicology reports to see if she was sedated, but they’ll be a few weeks. There is no evidence of irritation to her respiratory passages, which rules out some solvents, but not chloroform.”

      “What else have you got?”

      “Not a lot really, although that in itself may be interesting. We can hardly find any trace evidence from the attacker.”

      “So he wore a condom?”

      “More than that, I would say. With this sort of rough penetration, I would expect some genital-to-genital contact. It would be hard to avoid. We’ve looked under the microscope and combed her pubic area, but we haven’t found a single alien pubic hair, or skin flake. The only thing we’ve found are traces of lubricant, consistent with that used on pretty much all of the major brands of condom, some tiny chemical traces that the mass-spec machine suggest