01:28 – Angelica arrives home
01:52 – Angelica leaves, gets in car
09:00 – Angelica supposed to start work
Now he mentally added another hour-long break in that timeline.
‘So the killer must have driven her some place, knocked her unconscious or put her under somehow, and then spent an hour draining the blood from her body.’
‘That’s about right,’ Lorna answered. ‘But they would have needed an even longer time to complete the rest of what they did to Angelica’s body.’
‘The rest?’
Tomek wasn’t sure he was prepared to hear the answer. When he’d first seen the body, he hadn’t thought anything malicious or untoward had happened to Angelica. Then again, he hadn’t thought that the killer had drained her body of its blood either, so what did he know?
‘Post-mortem, Angelica’s body was cleaned and shaved,’ Lorna continued.
‘Cleaned?’ Tomek asked.
‘Yes. Using Aleppo soap. Cinnamon-scented Aleppo soap.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I recognised the smell. It was still on her skin even after all that time.’
‘And she was shaved too?’
‘Yes. When I tell you this woman’s skin was like a baby’s bottom, I mean it. There was nothing left on her, not even the fine white hairs you get on your forearms and cheeks. It looked like she’d never grown a single hair in her life. It was like she’d just come out of the womb.’
In his mind, he conjured images of the killer bathing Angelica’s body in water, rubbing a bar of soap into her skin, and then shaving her armpits, legs and pubic region, before taking the blade across the rest of her skin. The time, patience, and care required was what unsettled him.
‘What else did they do to her?’ Rachel asked, looking slightly uneasy in her chair.
‘The killer also painted her finger- and toenails and applied a full face of make-up.’
‘To make her look like an angel,’ Tomek added.
‘I said that, didn’t I?’ Rachel commented. ‘I said to you it was probably some of the best make-up I’ve ever seen.’
‘So the killer must have known how to do professional-looking make-up?’ Tomek said.
‘So it could be a woman?’ Chey asked.
‘Statistically, yes. There aren’t many men I know that could do make-up that good,’ Tomek answered.
‘But there’s one more thing you haven’t heard yet,’ Lorna interrupted, knocking on the table again with her knuckles.
‘Which is?’
‘That she was raped. Not aggressively or anything like that. But there were signs, just some slight bruising. And whoever it was was… well endowed, shall we say. Some of the bruising went deep. But what’s more is that there was no evidence of it. No DNA. No ejaculate. My theory’s that they used a condom and when they cleaned her body, they cleaned the inside of her as well. They left nothing.’
‘Jesus,’ Chey said softly, staring at the surface of the table. ‘He drained her, raped her, cleaned her, shaved her, painted angel wings behind her… who the fuck is this guy?’
‘Either someone totally infatuated with her or a sadistic fuck,’ Rachel said, the venom from her tone leaking into the room.
‘Quite…’ Lorna added tentatively.
‘That’s not everything, is it?’ Tomek asked. He could sense in Lorna’s tone that there was more, and her expression confirmed his suspicions.
‘This is the last of it, I promise.’
‘Go on…’
‘After I cut her open, I found something I wasn’t expecting.’
‘Right. What is it?’
‘Well, she was pregnant. Had been for about three months. She was just one of the lucky ones who doesn’t look it.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Tomek wanted to be the one to tell the Whitaker family about what had happened to their daughter. Well, not all of it. There were some details, some pieces of information he thought best to keep from them, to save them the horror and grief of hearing it all. Instead he would keep it light.
Joining him was Anna. In the short time that Anna had been acquainted with the family, she’d reported that none of them had taken the news well: Johnny had claimed more priceless treasures from his parents’ travels as his playthings; Roy had shut off completely and wasn’t eating or drinking anything; and Daphne had spent the morning staring at old photographs of Angelica and Johnny playing in the garden.
‘It’s like watching a play,’ Anna whispered as she opened the front door for him. ‘And not a good one. Honestly.’
Tomek admired her Eastern European brashness. There was no colour to her speech. She said what she thought, dealing with black and white only.
