‘What are your initial thoughts?’
Annie, the neighbour she’d spoken to only minutes earlier, had returned with her husband and several other neighbours and they were beginning to flock around the cordon.
‘I think we should go inside.’ Bernard glanced at the forming crowd.
Gina agreed. A little privacy would make things easier. She followed Bernard through the front door, straight onto the stepping plates in the hallway and up the stairs.
‘We’ll go in the spare room to talk.’ They took a left through the first door.
As Gina followed him, she glanced to the side and saw a woman in a white suit snapping away in the bathroom.
‘Finally, a place with no eavesdroppers. Right, we got here forty minutes ago and sealed the scene off immediately. What we have is the body of a young woman identified by her husband as Francesca Carter. She is lying dead in the bathtub. My initial thought is that she died by drowning.’
‘Intentional or accidental?’
A serious expression washed over his face. ‘Definitely intentional. There are signs of a struggle. The bathroom is soaking wet and there is a lot of red bruising to her chest and neck. A clump of her hair has been pulled out and discarded onto the bathroom floor. Her ankles and feet have bled quite a lot and there is blood on the taps. It looks like she’d been kicking them during the struggle. Everything is leading us to conclude that her death was intentional. The shower curtain and pole are on the floor too.’
‘She or the perp may have grabbed it.’
‘We will need to carry out the post-mortem to confirm exact cause of death.’
Gina felt her head beginning to thump. She wanted to stand in a dark room, just like Briggs had been doing. She wanted the noise of everything to quieten just for a moment so that she could order her chaotic thoughts. ‘Only a few days ago, Holly Long was suffocated to death. Today, Francesca Carter has died in what looks to be a drowning. Both starved of oxygen but both being killed in different ways. Both had been bridesmaids at the same wedding. Can you give me the time of death?’
‘Given all that we’ve tested and found so far, the water temperature in the bath and that of the body suggest that Francesca Carter was killed approximately two hours ago, give or take half an hour each way.’
‘So around seven this evening?’
‘Give or take half an hour to an hour each way. Do you want to see the scene before her body is taken away?’
She nodded. She didn’t want to see any such scene. She wished there wasn’t one to see, but she owed it to her victim to see exactly what her attacker had done to her. A sinking feeling washed through her. Only a few hours ago, Francesca had been in the station telling them of the assault against her and Gina had failed in her duties. Samuel Avery had walked. If he’d done this, she knew she’d struggle to forgive herself. She felt a lump forming in her throat as her gaze fixed on the bathroom.
Bernard covered his mouth and beard again, then beckoned her to follow him.
Lights on, the starkness of the bathroom almost made her wince. The crime scene assistant sidestepped around her and out of the door, giving Gina and Bernard some room to step inside.
The young woman lay crumpled in the murky bath, the sole of her bent over foot wrinkled. Her large brown eyes had a glassy death stare where she’d finally rested on the curve of the bath. She looked more petite than Gina remembered. When Gina lay in the bath, she often had to throw a leg over the side as it never felt long enough. Francesca was almost cocooned by the tub. Her brown hair splayed all around her.
‘Any sign of flowers anywhere?’
‘No, none. We found her phone though. It has been catalogued and placed with the evidence.’ Bernard awkwardly waited by her side. ‘There was also a note found in the bath but the ink had ran all over the page. I couldn’t tell what was written on it.’
‘Thank you.’
The shower curtain had been pulled from the rings, some of which had pinged across the room, lying broken on the floor. Gina took a step back. Before she went, she needed to speak to Francesca’s husband. She needed to be able to read his expressions herself and she needed to get to the bottom of their relationship.
‘Keep me updated as you get results.’ What she really wanted to know was if something had been lodged in Francesca’s throat.
Bernard nodded and gave a muffled reply under his mask. ‘Will do. We’re going to be collecting evidence for most of the evening and through the night. I’ll keep you posted.’
Gina let out a sigh as she left the room and pulled her mask away from her face. A bead of sweat had trickled down the side of her temple and onto her ear. The panic that must have been coursing through Francesca’s body during her murder was already starting to haunt Gina. She swallowed and took a deep breath before heading downstairs to see what Charlie Carter had to say.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Charlie Carter sat at the kitchen table with his head in his hands and a glass in front of him. The bottle of Irish whiskey stood open. He swigged the contents of the glass and refilled it.
‘I wish I’d stayed at home and waited for her. She should have come over to my mother’s and spent the evening with us. Something was wrong. I know it. She hadn’t seemed herself since Holly’s murder.’
Gina gently stepped into the room and sat at the table opposite him. ‘I think the murder of a close friend would do that to anyone.’
