Gina stopped outside the room and the lights on stands almost blinded her. ‘Does the victim have a name?’
‘Not yet. His fingers have softened and swelled up so fingerprinting him has been a bit more challenging. We’re working on it though. Hopefully when we get the chance to properly search the scene, we’ll be able to get fingerprints from his personal items. There’s always dental records to fall back on, but we haven’t started that process yet. Are you ready to go in?’
Gina adjusted her face mask, to stop the elastic pulling at her hair. ‘Yes.’
The crime scene manager called them in and beckoned them to stand on the plates by the entrance.
‘Sheila, can you fill DI Harte and DS Driscoll in on what we have so far. They’ve come from Cleevesford Station and are working on a similar case. We have reason to believe they’re linked.’
The tiny woman stood by where Gina imagined the wheelie bin had stood earlier. ‘There is a tap at the far end and we’ve already bagged up the hose that had been fixed to it. There are no prints at all on the sink. It has also recently been cleaned.’
Gina glanced over. The sink was wide and deep. It reminded her of the sink that she used to clean her paint palette in at school, in the arts and crafts room.
Sheila continued speaking. ‘The body has been removed from the scene, along with the bin but I’ll talk you through what we found. See the metal beams above.’
Gina nodded.
‘The victim’s legs had been tied together at the ankles using washing-line cord. Marks on the beam disturbing the dirt and dust along with the start of a groove have showed us that he was hoisted up above the open bin and lowered into it, head first. The cord has been taken to the lab but I can send you photos later.’
‘I can’t see any scuff marks on the floor.’ Gina pictured the strength it would take to hoist a human body up like that. Had the killer wedged their heels into the floor while pulling hard?
‘We can also confirm that the floor has been cleaned with a bleach solution so the killer has made an attempt to clear tracks. As for the victim, we have a male, looks to be in his fifties and he was very thin. He was lowered into this wheelie bin when it was full of water. I can confirm that he drowned. There are a few defence wounds but not many. He died here after being submerged in that bin. The cold water would have slowed down rigor mortis. He was still stiff when we got here which is why he had to be taken in the bin. Estimated time of death, between seven last night and five this morning.’
‘That’s a kill gap of almost a week between victim one and victim two. Thank you,’ Gina replied. A crime scene assistant nudged past her. She couldn’t help but stare at the windowless room, imagining what their victim must have gone through.
‘There’s a water supply here?’
‘Yes, in this room and the toilet blocks.’
‘Any electricity?’
DI Kempsey interjected. ‘None at all.’
‘So, all this would have happened in pitch-darkness?’
He nodded. ‘Unless the killer had a light source.’
The killer must have known that there was a water supply. Given that it looked like Kain Pickering had died in the bathtub, drowning seems to have been the killer’s choice of death for the victims. The building had to work for the perp. She was picturing a male given the amount of strength it would take but she wasn’t excluding a team of two or use of equipment to help. She shivered slightly at the thought of their victim being literally treated like rubbish. Was the bin symbolic? Kain had been dumped in the car boot belonging to a deceased woman but was that just out of necessity? Victim two had been left at the scene; Kain had been moved. She wondered if he’d tried to cover up the first one because it was closer to him and gave up on the secondbecause the industrial unit offered no clues as to his identity. ‘Where was the teddy bear left?’
DI Kempsey turned away from the bin. ‘It was on the draining board.’
‘What’s upstairs?’
‘Another huge production floor. I believe it used to be a printworks but there’s not much left now. There’s a room just off the top of the stairs where Rita said the victim had been sleeping. There are a couple of bags containing clothes and an almost empty bottle of white rum next to a rolled-up sleeping bag. We’re obviously going to be doing a full search of that floor soon.’
‘Can we take a look?’
They stepped out of the room and Gina took a deep breath underneath her mask. The heady scent of bleach and death combined had started to cause a throb at her temples.
She followed DI Kempsey and Jacob up what was left of the bare concrete stairs, the banister long gone. On reaching the top, she saw the sleeping bag next to an almost empty bottle of rum. ‘Has someone been through his things?’
‘Yes, there’s nothing in there to help identify him. We will, however, hopefully have fingerprints and DNA from the bottle and other items. This is a huge building with a lot of nooks and crannies. It will take an age to search.’
‘There’s a lot of old equipment and office furniture.’ Gina gazed around the building. An old press sat at the centre of the room with other hunks of metal around it. ‘There are some cabinets and old cupboards back there.’ It looked like most of the doors had been pulled away from the frames and a pile of mouldy files lay in a trodden heap all over a rotten-looking carpet.
‘Again, you can see that we’re still in the process of going through all these things.’
‘May I take a look?’
