Red Ribbons by Louise Phillips Read Free Book Online Page A

meticulously recorded.
    She looked again at the images taken before the girl’s body had been removed from the burial area. Other than the speckled black clay covering her body like an extra layer, the child gave the appearance of being in a deep sleep, one from which, like in a fairytale, she might suddenly awake. Kate was lost in thought when O’Connor resumed his seat heavily.
    ‘What age was she, O’Connor?’
    ‘Twelve, last year at national school.’
    ‘Her name?’
    ‘Caroline Devine.’
    Looking at a photograph, Kate asked, ‘I see Morrison. Does he have any idea how long she was down there?’
    ‘Well, he was clear on a number of points. There is, as you can see, little sign of decomposition. Although earthworms had begun proliferating some of the open orifices, they were in the early stages. Plus there’s minimal skin blistering, so the body hadn’t been down there long. With no external protection, even with the low temperatures in the mountains, Morrison believes she couldn’t have been below ground for much more than twenty-four hours, and probably a whole lot less.’
    ‘At the very least, I guess it means it’ll be less horrific for the parents to identify her body than it might have been.’
    ‘For sure.’ O’Connor paused, both of them taking in the last piece of information before he continued with Morrison’s assessment. ‘Rigor mortis, which normally sets in within one to six hours of death, had already relaxed, so she’d been dead for some time before burial. Morrison has his suspicions about the positioning of the corpse, he thinks it might have been forced prior to the relaxation of the rigor.’
    ‘So how the girl was lying was intentional?’
    ‘We’ll know more once the postmortem is complete. I’m due to see him later this evening.’
    ‘Anything else?’
    ‘Yeah, neither Hanley nor the other techs have found any blood splatters in the area, despite the severity of the blows to the girl’s head. The heavy rainfall during the storm the other night might have washed away a lot of the trace evidence, but the complete lack of blood deposits other than those found on the corpse means the girl was killed someplace else, according to Hanley.’
    Despite the subject matter of their conversation, the arrival of food didn’t stop O’Connor tucking in like a famished adolescent. Kate, on the other hand, had lost her appetite. She continued to examine the photographs while the DI ate his lunch.
    The girl’s strawberry-blonde hair had been arranged in two long plaits, both tied with red ribbons. Her white knee socks looked like crumpled layers above a pair of black leather school shoes, everything now looking too large for the girl’s narrow frame. The ground, murky and damp from the heavy rain, was rugged. Fragments of stone, granite for the most part, meant it wasn’t an easy terrain to carry out a burial. The grave area was deep. She looked up at O’Connor again.
    ‘The grave, O’Connor, it’s not shallow.’
    ‘Over three feet. The killer may not have acted alone – either way, he came equipped.’
    ‘Or, if alone, he would have to be physically fit.’ Kate looked at the images again. ‘If what Morrison says is true, about the short time the corpse was below ground, then the killer waited for nightfall to bury his victim.’
    ‘And he chose a bitch of a night to do it.’ O’Connor raised his fork, as if to give emphasis to his last remark.
    ‘Her hair – is that the way she normally wore it?’
    ‘Good question, Kate, why do you ask?’
    ‘The ribbons, I don’t know, they look wrong, nearly old-fashioned. The bows are too large, like the way kids wore them years ago.’
    ‘You’re spot-on. According to her friend, Jessica Barry, who was the last one to see her, Caroline wasn’t wearing her hair in plaits that day. Rarely did.’
    ‘And the ribbons?’
    ‘Parents know nothing about them. They
are
unusual, though. You might not be able to see it in the