Charisma by Jo Bannister Read Free Book Online

not to quote you, when would you say she died?’
    He chuckled good-naturedly. ‘Then I’d say she was killed around midnight on Friday, and that she lay for about twenty-four hours before she was put in the canal. But those are only guidelines, and if anyone asks about this conversation I shall deny it ever took place.’
    Liz liked Crowe, liked most of the pathologists she met, found them on the whole more approachable than GPs, and thought it a pity that their patients were in no state to appreciate them. ‘The secret of your competence is safe with me,’ she assured him solemnly.
    â€˜And I was right about her killer standing behind her, I think. It’d be an awkward movement to make a wound like that from in front. From the angle the blade was held at, he was several inches taller than her.’
    â€˜Good,’ said Liz, thinking this was a bonus. ‘How tall?’
    Crowe sounded apologetic. ‘Well, it’s not going to be that much help. She was only five-foot-one. You could say he was probably five six or more, but most men are.’

    â€˜At least we can rule out midgets,’ Liz said philosophically. ‘All right. Apart from the neck wound, was she injured in any other way? Was she raped?’
    The pathologist was slow to answer. ‘She hadn’t been raped violently.’
    Liz’s eyebrows climbed. ‘There’s a gentle way?’
    Reproof came down the phone at her. ‘That’s not what I meant. Look, this was a girl who spent her working life with her legs apart. She had sex the way you use a typewriter, battering away at it whenever the need and opportunity arise. Of course she was bruised. Of course there were abrasions. And yes, she had sex on the day of her death. But it could have been earlier and not with the man who killed her. It may have had nothing to do with her death.’
    â€˜So what’s he saying?’ scowled Shapiro when Liz brought him up to date. ‘That she was a prostitute but she wasn’t killed for sex?’
    Liz shrugged. ‘If a girl’s a prostitute, you don’t have to kill her for it. You pay her for it.’
    â€˜Then why did he kill her?’
    â€˜For pleasure? We should consider the possibility, Frank. There are men who get a kick out of killing women: the ultimate domination. Prostitutes are more accessible than most women, they’re more likely to meet such men. Then there’s the fact that they won’t be missed as quickly and the feeling that less effort may be put into finding their killers.’
    â€˜The hell for that!’ Shapiro’s eyes were fierce. ‘Round here, nobody’s life is that cheap.’
    â€˜We’ll tell him that when we find him,’ Liz promised.
    For a time Shapiro said nothing more. But the air around him remained charged with his thinking so Liz stayed where she was. At length he said, ‘Twenty-four hours?’
    â€˜Sorry?’
    â€˜Isn’t that what Crowe said – that she’d been dead twenty-four hours when she went into the water?’
    â€˜It was a guess, but yes, something like that.’
    â€˜She lay under that tarpaulin all Saturday and nobody found her. I know the tow-path isn’t Piccadilly but it’s not Outer Mongolia either. Particularly at weekends there are boats passing up and down, people walking dogs, kids out for a bit of fun. And nobody found her. Nobody thought it worth examining a girl-sized hump under a tarpaulin? Somebody’s dog must have smelled her and wanted to investigate. What did they do – pull it away, complain it was making them late for dinner? What kind of a town is this?’

    â€˜An ordinary town,’ Liz said quietly, ‘full of ordinary people who don’t expect to be confronted with dead bodies on public paths. If your dog barks at a bit of tarpaulin you think there’s a rat in it and hurry away. Hindsight’s a fine thing, Frank.