Lorna was sitting at the other end of the table, like she was being interviewed. She cleared her throat before beginning. She spoke without the need for notes or commentary, as though she’d rehearsed it beforehand.
‘Firstly, I want to cover the cause of death, as I know that’s what you’re all itching to understand, and then I’ll cover some of the weirder, more peculiar points about this victim. Though, by the way, I must preface what I’m about to say with the following: you might want to keep some of the information about Angelica’s death away from the family. As a mother myself, I don’t think I’d want to know everything I now do about what happened to her.’
The atmosphere in the room cooled as everyone took a moment to heed her warning.
She continued: ‘As I said, first, her cause of death. At first I thought it was alcohol or blood related. I thought she’d maybe drunk too much, been drugged, or had some sort of embolism, but there was nothing of the sort. It stumped me for a good hour, and it wasn’t until I rolled her onto her front that I saw it.’ Lorna wagged her hand in the air at Tomek to pass the manila folder she’d given him. He slid it across the surface and she caught it with the palm of her hand, her nails clicking on the table. She removed all the sheets and laid them out in front of her. Then she picked up one and handed it to the person nearest.
Oscar took it gently and inspected it. Then he passed it round until eventually it reached Tomek. At first he didn’t know quite what he was looking at, and even after being told to rotate the page one-eighty, he still didn’t know what it was an image of.
‘Looks like a leg,’ he said.
‘That’s because it is a leg,’ Lorna responded. ‘More precisely, it’s the back of Angelica’s right leg. What you’re looking at there is the crease in her knee. Notice all the lines and indents where the joints meet?’
Tomek had no clue. And no matter how many times he tried looking at it from different angles, he still had no idea which way was up. It was like looking at a sonogram for the first time and confusing it with a Rorschach test.
‘Ten points if you can see the wound.’
Tomek set the photograph on the table in the hope that the light above might miraculously cause the wound to appear like it was in invisible ink. But there was nothing. No puncture wound, no stab mark, no bullet hole. Nothing to suggest that there was a wound there at all.
‘Are you having us on?’ he asked, sliding the picture across the table in frustration.
‘I wish. But no.’ Lorna reached for it, then held it up to them and pointed to a small black dot on the back of Angelica’s knee.
‘That’s a mole, isn’t it?’ Rachel asked.
‘That’s what I thought at first. That’s why I didn’t give it much of a second thought. But when I ran my finger over it, I noticed it was a hole.’
‘A hole?’ Rachel repeated.
‘Yes, a hole, not a mole.’
‘Like that TV show!’ Chey said excitedly.
His excitement was met with muted, confused stares.
‘You know the one. Is it cake or real food? Where people make cakes to mimic real-life objects.’
Tomek looked at him, deeply unimpressed. ‘You watch that shit?’
‘You don’t?’
‘I’d rather eat through a straw for the rest of my life.’
Before the conversation could descend further away from the point, Lorna knocked on the table, summoning their attention. ‘Guys, we’re getting distracted, all right. I get it, you’re excited about this “is it a hole, is it a mole” thing, but on this particular occasion, I can tell you unequivocally that it’s a hole. Now, can we move on?’
Tomek sighed. ‘Yes.’
‘Excellent. Would you like to know what the hole is for?’
‘This isn’t a trick question, is it, like we got asked in sex ed at school?’
‘No. It’s a real question. The hole was caused by a needle.’
‘Right.’
‘And then a tube.’
‘A tube?’
‘Correct. But not like the ones you find underground in London. This one was a plastic one. One you might get in hospital. A surgical tube.’
‘Okay…’ Tomek was lost. ‘And what has that got to do with Angelica’s cause of death?’
To answer his question, Lorna pulled out another photograph. This time it was of the angel wings that had been painted on the floor of the church. Everyone else immediately made the leap, the connection, but Tomek was still a few seconds behind.
‘The killer drained the blood from her body and used it to paint her angel wings,’ Lorna said, giving him a helping hand. ‘By my estimations, they must have drained over three litres of blood. Maybe four. That’s what killed her.’
That explained why she’d looked so emaciated, so… skinny.
‘How?’ Tomek asked.
‘Gravity and a heartbeat, I assume. My guess is that she was still alive when it happened, though she would have been unconscious, and so her heart continued to pump blood through her body and out of the tube, and then when the blood levels became too low, she passed away. All the killer had to do was wait.’
‘How long might something like that take?’
Lorna shrugged. ‘No idea. But judging by the size of the hole, and the vodka Red Bulls pumping blood around her body, I’d say it would have taken about forty minutes, maybe an hour.’
Tomek turned to the portion of the whiteboard he’d written on the other day. He looked at the timeline so far.
