Page 73 of The Guilty Girl

‘The amount of blood spatter in the living room bothers me. Could Lucy have lost that much blood from superficial wounds if the final stabbing occurred upstairs?’

‘I was about to mention that. It’s unlikely she lost that amount of blood downstairs.’

Blowing out her cheeks, Lottie let out a low whistle. ‘You think someone else was assaulted there?’

‘I’ll leave that up to you.’

‘We have a missing fifteen-year-old boy.’ She pictured the scene in her mind. ‘If someone fell through a patio door and the glass shattered, could that have caused the blood spatter?’

‘Enough speculation, Lottie. Allow the scene to be fully processed and the evidence tested and analysed; only then might you get the answer.’

‘Fair enough.’

Jane called in her assistant and picked up a scalpel. ‘Are you staying to observe?’

‘I haven’t time, but please send me your report as soon as you have it. Day or night. Even a prelim would be a huge help.’

‘Sure. That coffee we were to have—’

‘I know, I’m terrible. Soon, Jane, I promise.’

‘You break my heart, Lottie Parker.’

‘I think Boyd would agree with you there.’ Lottie smiled, once again thinking she could do with Boyd by her side offering his controlled judgement and assessment. ‘See you soon.’ She headed for the door.

‘Wait a minute,’ Jane said. ‘Meant to tell you about this. Take a look.’ She lifted Lucy’s arm.

Lottie’s heart palpitated. She had tried to view the body as a means of gathering evidence to convict a murderer, but the closer she got to the table, the more she saw Lucy as a young girl with her life viciously snuffed out. Who would take a life so brutally from one who had yet to live it?

‘What have you found?’ she asked tentatively as she looked at the girl’s dark hair spread over the slab of steel propping up her head.

‘See this area here? Side of her chest, under her right arm.’

‘What am I looking for?’ Lottie struggled to make out anything because of the stab wounds on the girl’s torso.

Jane pointed with the scalpel. ‘A section of skin has been cut away on the upper right side of her rib cage. It was done shortly before death occurred.’

Lottie stared at the wound, her earlier hastily eaten sandwich and coffee curdling in her stomach. ‘I’m not sure, but has it a particular shape?’

‘I’ll photograph it and zoom in, but to the naked eye it appears to be a crudely shaped heart.’

‘Shit, that’s what I thought.’

‘Shit is right,’ Jane said, surprising Lottie. The pathologist rarely swore.

Not normally squeamish, Lottie sensed nausea bubbling in her stomach. She made her escape before she had to witness the pathologist cutting into Lucy’s body. She didn’t want to embarrass herself by emptying her stomach contents on the sterile tiled floor.

She held onto it until she reached the car park.

34

On the motorway, driving back to Ragmullin, Lottie’s phone rang on the hands-free set.

‘Gráinne, please tell me you have good news.’

‘Can you meet me at the crime scene, Inspector? I’ve something you need to see.’

‘I’ve a team meeting in twenty minutes and I’ve just left the state pathologist. Make sure all the blood spatter in the living room is analysed. Jane seems to think it might not all have come from Lucy. And the glass shards from the patio doors need to be examined for blood. You know the drill.’