Gina shrugged. ‘Relatives, or maybe it was stolen. Can you get Maura Pickering’s address? I think we need to head over there next, see if anyone else lives there and find out who had access to the car. Can you also ask Wyre to check the system for reports of this car being stolen?’
He nodded and pulled his phone out. ‘I’ll call the station.’
Bernard beckoned Gina over. A crime scene assistant handed her a pack containing a white forensics suit, mask, shoe covers, a hair cover and gloves. She removed her coat and Jacob offered to take it while still talking on the phone to Wyre, then she started to feed her legs into the coverall. Once she was all togged up, Bernard led her through the outer, then the inner cordon.
‘What can you tell me?’
‘Stick to stepping on the plates, as usual,’ Bernard replied. He stood outside the entrance to the tent.
Gina glanced over her shoulder at the oak tree. Their witness was right. The trunk was definitely big enough for someone to hide behind, especially as it was set in a carpet of unruly shrubs and bushes. ‘Bear with me.’ She walked back towards the cordons and PC Smith began to move the tape for her. ‘I’m not leaving yet but when the other PCs arrive, can you go with a forensics assistant to search around the oak tree for anything that might have got caught up in the bushes or undergrowth? The witness we just spoke to thought she heard someone lurking around there last Friday evening around seven, that’s the night before the car was parked up here.’
‘I’ll arrange that, guv.’
‘Thanks.’ She hurried back to the tent. ‘Sorry about that.’
‘It’s okay. You can step inside but be warned, it’s up there with the worst.’
The smell was already permeating through her mask. She took a deep breath and stepped under the canvas cover with Bernard. ‘What can you tell me?’ She glanced at the bloated man in the boot and caught sight of the wriggling maggots on the body as Bernard spoke. She looked away and batted the flies around her face away with her hand. Her stomach took a few seconds to stop churning. Someone had done that to him, left him like that. He was someone’s son. She clenched her fists and not for the first time that day.
‘The victim is a male aged forty-five to fifty-five. Blond hair. Blue eyes. It’s hard to estimate weight or height. As you can see, he’s still scrunched up in the boot and his body is bloated. The post-mortem will tell us more and we’re obviously keen for that to get underway. As for his clothing, you can see he’s wearing track bottoms, a blue T-shirt and no footwear.’
Gina couldn’t see anything. She didn’t want to look. She wanted to hurry up this conversation, escape the smell and get this man’s killer off the streets. ‘How did he die?’
‘Not in the car,’ Bernard replied. ‘When he died, his blood pooled on the right side of his body. He’s scrunched up in the boot with his left side touching the base of the boot which tells us he was placed there post-mortem. There is also a length of cord in the car and you can see signs of restraint on him, such as marks on the wrists and ankles. There are cuts on his arms that are consistent with defence wounds. I can’t actually confirm the cause of death from this scene. Again, we need to conduct the post-mortem to get more information.’
Gina took a shallow breath to try and ease the light-headedness that had crept up on her. ‘When will that be likely?’
‘He’s in an awkward position and moving him is going to be messy but we need to get the body out of here as soon as we can. I’m just waiting for more reinforcements as it’s going to be a delicate process.’
Gina didn’t envy Bernard’s team right now. Her heart started to thrum. She needed to be able to take a full breath soon, before she passed out.
‘As for the post-mortem, I’d say tomorrow, late morning.’
‘Thank you. In the meantime, if you find anything else out that might be useful to the investigation, can you contact me straight away?’
‘Of course.’
‘Have you or your team found anything inside the car that might help us?’
Bernard cleared his throat and to Gina’s relief, he stepped outside the tent. ‘We’re still working our way through it. We’re in the process of taking swabs and looking for all kinds of trace evidence. Again, anything we do find will need to go to the lab.’
Gina took several deep breaths but the scent of death had already coated her nose and throat. Her heart banged harder. ‘I’ll get the results fast-tracked.’ She knew fast-tracked didn’tmean as-fast-as-she-wanted but faster-than-run-of-the-mill was better than nothing.
Several uniformed officers had started scouring the bushes and trees by the house. ‘Thanks, Bernard. I won’t keep you any longer,’ Gina said as she half jogged across the stepping plates, away from him. As soon as she escaped the confines of the cordons, she sidestepped Jacob and headed towards the officers searching the bushes, not to help but to remove her mask and inhale several deep breaths of fresh air. The sight of the maggots sent a shiver through her as she bent over and kept breathing.
‘Guv…’ Jacob came up behind her.
She jumped. ‘Sorry, I didn’t want to be featured looking this green on “What’s Up Cleevesford”.’ The community social media page tended to report every bit of gossip first. And she didn’t want to see her face plastered all over it.
‘It was that bad?’
‘One of the worst. How anyone could do that to a person and leave them like that…’ She stood up straight before inhaling and exhaling slowly. ‘Did you get Maura Pickering’s last address?’
‘Yep. Sandalwood Road, so not too far.’
‘Great, we should go.’ Gina peeled her crime scene suit off and popped it in the waste bin, happily leaving the scene to Bernard and his team. She had seen enough. She sniffed the arm of her suit jacket. She wasn’t sure if it stank of death or if her nose was too far gone to tell. She removed it and took her coat from Jacob before putting it on, hopefully trapping any odours on her person underneath it.
Gina stopped at the car and stared out at the crowd, wondering if whoever murdered that man was watching on as the scene unfolded. Why? Was it gang related? Drugs? Personal? She gazed at the people loitering at the back. There were a mix of onlookers. Old, young, teenagers, people with dogs, a woman in a wheelchair and another woman with pink hair. No one stoodout or looked to be alone or suspicious. She opened her car boot and threw her jacket into it before slamming it closed.
