Читать книгу At Your Door - J. P. Carter - Страница 12

Over an hour had passed since DC Fellows had called Anna to tell her they had a probable ID on the victim. Since then the team had gathered more information and they were now ninety-nine per cent sure they knew who she was.

There would have to be a formal identification process, of course, but Anna was already working on the basis that the body on the common was that of twenty-three-year-old Holly Blake.

It was good news in the sense that it gave the investigation a jump start. But the bad news was that her identity alone was going to ramp up the pressure on the team from the word go.

‘The media will be all over it just like they were with the nursery investigation,’ Anna told her detectives after racing back to headquarters. ‘So brace yourselves. And let’s just hope it will be an easy one to solve.’

Anna had returned to Wandsworth in the pool car with DI Walker, leaving DC Sweeny to look after things at the common. She had wanted to put everyone in the picture and assign tasks as quickly as possible, and preferably before the press got wind of what was going on.

The wheels of the investigation had already been put in motion. A whiteboard had been set up and on it was pinned a photograph of the victim downloaded from her Facebook account, plus images of her body in the undergrowth taken from Walker’s phone. In addition there was a map of the common showing roads that went around it and through it.

As Anna stepped up to the board, the room fell silent, save for the ringing of a couple of phones. The nine detectives who were present were poised to take notes and ask questions.

Anna tapped a finger against the photo of the woman. In it she was smiling at the camera, white teeth glistening, a sparkle in her bright blue eyes.

‘This is Holly Blake,’ she said. ‘A freelance model aged twenty-three. She was reported missing by her mother yesterday because she hadn’t been seen or heard from since Tuesday. She bears a striking resemblance to the young woman found naked on Barnes Common earlier this evening. But that’s not all.’

Anna moved away from the whiteboard to a large TV monitor mounted on a stand. She nodded at DC Fellows, who took it as his cue to bring the screen to life remotely from his desktop computer.

The image that appeared was of Holly Blake’s Facebook profile and there was a montage of photographs showing her in various outfits and poses. She was quite beautiful, Anna noted, and it looked as though she had been brimming with life and confidence.

Anna pointed to one particular photo which showed Holly standing on a beach in a bikini. She was glancing back over her shoulder while poking her tongue out at the camera. The photo suddenly filled the screen and Anna drew everyone’s attention to the tattoo between her shoulders.

‘The young woman on the common has an identical tattoo in exactly the same place,’ she said. The picture was replaced by another one showing Holly cupping her bare breasts in her hands. Anna indicated the silver ring on the middle finger of her left hand. ‘She also has a silver ring exactly like this one and on the same finger. I therefore have no doubt in my mind that it’s Holly Blake whose murder we’ll be investigating.’

Anna turned back to her audience and took a long breath before continuing.

‘DI Walker and I will go see her parents straight after this briefing. They live in Pimlico. While we’re doing that I want DS Prescott and DC Niven to check out Holly’s flat. We have an address in Camden.

‘I’ll come to what we know about Holly and her family in a moment. And it’ll be pretty obvious to all of you why this is no run-of-the-mill case. But first let me put you in the picture regarding the scene up at the common.’

Anna explained how dog walker Joyce Connor had stumbled across the body in the undergrowth. She pinpointed the location on the map and described the surrounding area.

‘The pathologist believes she was murdered elsewhere and left on the common shortly afterwards,’ she said. ‘The cause of death is almost certainly a single stab wound to the throat. She was stripped naked before her body was dumped and the killer or killers did not spend a lot of time trying to conceal her.

‘It’s believed she’s been dead for several days and it’s likely she was killed on Tuesday or Tuesday night. Nothing has so far been found at the scene to identify her. No phone. No clothes. No bag. At first light a search team will descend on the area but I’m not expecting them to turn up much vital evidence, if any. We believe the vehicle that carried her there parked next to the gate. But the ground around it has been trampled on so it’s unlikely we’ll get any clues from it.’

As Anna spoke an image of the body resurfaced in her mind and it sent a chill down her spine. It was such a tragedy that a girl who obviously had so much going for her should end her life in such horrendous circumstances.

‘The obvious questions are these,’ Anna said. ‘Who killed her and why? When and where was the murder carried out? Why was the body dumped in that particular place? Was it because the killer was in a hurry or simply didn’t worry about it being discovered? And why was she stripped, since there seems to be no evidence as yet that she was sexually assaulted?’

At this point Anna handed over to Walker, who was standing off to one side with a notebook in his hand.

‘I’ve already drawn up a list of checks that need to be carried out right away,’ he said. ‘So I’m afraid you will all be working late into the night.’ He looked down at his notes as he ran a hand across his bald head. ‘We need to pull Holly’s phone records and get the techies to go through her social media history. We know she’s been busy on Facebook for years. So check out Twitter, Instagram and the others.

‘There’s plenty of information online about her, including the fact that she’s on the books of a London-based modelling agency. From what I’ve seen it doesn’t appear that she was a hugely successful model. But she’s done jobs for fashion magazines, clothing catalogues and swimwear companies. Let’s also check all CCTV cameras around the common. Presumably her body was driven to the spot sometime on Tuesday or maybe early on Wednesday morning.’

Walker then handed back to Anna, who signalled for DC Fellows to change the image on the TV monitor. Holly’s photo was replaced by a picture of a woman who looked like an older version of her. She had the same oval face, full lips and well-defined jawline.

‘This is Holly’s mother,’ Anna said. ‘As I’m sure you all know her name is Rebecca Blake, and she’s the reason that we’re going to be under pressure like never before. And that pressure won’t just come from the media. It will also come from the top brass in the Met and from the Home Office. At this stage we have no idea why Holly Blake was murdered. But we can’t rule out the possibility that it had something to do with her mother.’