Room 13 was open and the SOCO was inside. Tommy glanced around and shook his head. They thanked him and he left the same way he’d come, no doubt to deal with inquiries about why the police were crawling all over the hotel. She hoped he didn’t lose business over it but there was little she could do.
They pulled on gloves and masks and covered their shoes.
Their first impression was that room 13 was a mess. Drawers were pulled out, the bed was in disarray, glasses were smashed, the contents of a wardrobe were scattered all over the floor, andthe TV was cracked. The SOCO stepped over some of the detritus and greeted them.
Kelly spotted a heavy lamp stand on its side and knew she’d found the assault weapon. Remnants of what looked to her like human tissue clung to the base and Kelly reckoned the broken shaft might be responsible for the hole in Angelina’s hand. Her throat constricted and her stomach tightened as she imagined a sustained aggressive attack on Angelina in here where there was nowhere to hide.
‘This would have caused a hell of a noise,’ Kelly said. ‘And yet nobody heard a thing.’
‘The interesting stuff is in the bathroom.’
Kelly’s heart sank. She followed the SOCO to the small bathroom and was shown pooling stains in the shower cubicle. They were brown and dried.
‘I’ve done prelim swabs. Kastle-Meyer test was positive,’ the SOCO told her.
The test was the most common indicator of blood at a scene when it couldn’t be seen easily with the naked eye. It was obvious to Kelly that some form of liquid had been spilt and smudged all over the bathroom, but they must be certain. It could turn out to be coffee.
They all knew it wasn’t.
‘Did you see the lamp?’ the SOCO asked. Kelly nodded gloomily.
‘I’ve given it a cursory examination and it’s also positive for blood protein, and somebody tried to wipe it off. I guess whoever did it panicked. It’s not clean and tidy. It’s not professional. She fought back. She crawled here and here.’
Kelly wracked her brain to see if there was any scenario that would make sense to her that Jamie had done this and then killed himself.
There wasn’t.
The SOCO walked her through the trauma blow by blow.
‘Then she fell here, hitting something on here.’ She pointed to the bathtub. ‘Then there’s handprints here and here. Finally leading to the inside of the shower cubicle where blood pooled significantly.’
‘This explains why there wasn’t much blood at the dump site,’ Kelly said.
‘Poor bugger. It looks like she died here. All the splatter and drop patterns suggest the same thing.’
Kelly glanced at her feet. ‘She wasn’t dead when she was dumped. I attended the autopsy yesterday. She drowned.’
‘Oh Christ. Bastard.’
Kelly stared at the floor.
‘Are those prints?’ she asked. The SOCO nodded.
‘They look similar to our prints at the Heron Hall Hotel, but then generic men’s boots are notoriously common at crime scenes,’ Kelly added.
‘We’ve scanned them,’ the SOCO confirmed.
‘Anything else? I’m looking for a paper trail; it’s a possibility she was hiding something here and died protecting it.’
The SOCO nodded. ‘No laptop or electronic equipment, that explains that then. No phone. We’ll continue looking. Thanks for the heads-up; we’re taking down the panels on the wall.’
‘What panels?’
‘Look.’
The SOCO led Kelly back to the bedroom where Fin was chatting to an officer. They were peering under the bed and the forensic officer had pulled it up, supporting it with his strength while Fin looked underneath. There was a large hole in the mattress and Fin pulled something out and held it up.
‘What is it?’ Kelly asked.
