Death Lies Beneath by Pauline Rowson

Author:Pauline Rowson [Rowson, Pauline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: C429, Kat, Extratorrents
Publisher: Severn House Publishers Ltd
Published: 2012-07-06T14:00:00+00:00

TWELVE

Friday

‘There’s not a lot I can tell you about her,’ Dr Clayton announced when Horton arrived at the mortuary early the next morning. He’d already been into work, entered the assault on Edward Ballard on the computer and sent the can off for fingerprints and DNA testing. He’d also spoken to Simon, the marina manager, and discovered that Ballard had paid for his mooring by cash and hadn’t given an address or left a telephone number. There was nothing wrong in that but Horton gave instructions that he was to be informed when Ballard left the marina.

‘Anything wrong, Andy?’ Simon had asked, concerned. Horton had told him he just wanted to make sure that Ballard didn’t suffer any after-effects from the attack. He wasn’t sure if Simon had swallowed it but he’d asked no further questions. Simon had called him on his mobile at eight twenty-five, as he’d been leaving for the mortuary, to say that Ballard had left the marina. Horton had then rung Elkins and asked him to contact the Border Agency to track Ballard’s boat but not to stop it, and to find out if it had been berthed at Horsea Marina on Tuesday night. As he’d predicted, Ballard hadn’t shown up on the computer.

There was nothing more he could do on that score but there was plenty on the matter of the bones laid out in front of him, and he brought his full attention back to them and Dr Clayton. She’d said the remains were those of a woman, which ruled out Foxbury’s elderly man, but the fact that it was a woman made it even more likely there was a link with Salacia’s death. He hesitated to even silently frame the words ‘serial killer’ which the newspapers had emblazoned across their pages. But this serial killer, if it was one, had left a long gap before killing again and the divers had said there were no further bodies lying in the deep.

‘The sacrum is short and wide, not long and narrow as it would be with a male,’ Gaye Clayton was explaining, ‘and amongst other indicators the sacroiliac joint is small not large. She’s also Caucasian, and from the measurements of the femur and humerus, and consulting the tables we use to determine height, she was five foot one inches. The pattern of fusion of bone ends to bone shaft, plus the general condition of the bones, indicates she was in her early twenties.’

It was a start but he needed more. ‘Any idea when she died?’ Foxbury had said the wreck she’d been found on had been there from the late 1980s and the one above it from 2002, but Horton wasn’t sure he could rely on his evidence.

‘No, sorry. We need to conduct further laboratory tests to determine that, but if blood pigments are present in the bones then it will be less than ten years. We should be able to get DNA from the teeth, which are in good condition.’

But whether it would match with anyone they had on the DNA database was another matter.

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