Not Dead Enough

cropped into a buzz-cut. Duigan was the duty SIO called to this scene earlier, Grace had learned on his way here. Duigan had subsequently called Kim Murphy over, because of similarities with the Katie Bishop murder.
    After exchanging brief pleasantries, Murphy played Grace the video that had been taken of the scene. He watched it on the small screen on the back of the camera.
    After you had done this job for a number of years, you started thinking that you were immune to horrors, that you had seen it all, that nothing could surprise or shock you any more. But the footage that confronted him now sent a black chill worming deep through him.
    Staring at the slightly jerky footage of the white-suited and hooded figures of two more SOCO officers on their hands and knees and another standing, and Nadiuska De Sancha on her knees at the end of the bed, he saw the alabaster-coloured naked body of a young woman with long brown hair lying on the bed, with a gas mask over her face.
    It was as near as possible a carbon copy of the way Katie Bishop had been found.
    Except that Katie did not appear to have put up a fight. The camera now started to show that this young woman certainly had. There was a smashed plate on the floor, with a mark gouged out of the wall above it. A shattered dressing-table mirror, bottles of perfume and jars of makeup lying all over the place, along with a smear of blood on the wall, just above the white headboard. Then a lingering shot of a framed, abstract print of a row of deckchairs, lying on the floor, the glass shattered.
    Brighton had had its share of murders over the years, but one thing, mercifully, it had never been clouded by before was the spectre of a serial killer. It wasn’t even an area Grace had needed to know much about – before now.
    Nearby, a car alarm beep-beep-beeped loudly. He blanked it out as he stared at the freeze-frame of the dead young woman. He had regularly attended lectures given by SIOs on serial-killer cases at the International Homicide Investigators Association annual symposium, which was mostly held in the USA. He was trying to recall the common features. So far, Spinella had kept his word and there had been no mention in the press about the gas mask, so a copy-cat killing was unlikely.
    One thing he did remember clearly from a lecture was a discussion of the fear that could be created in a community when it was announced that a serial killer was out there. But equally, the community had a right to know, a need to know.
    Grace then turned to DCI Duigan. ‘What do we have so far?’ he asked.
    ‘Nadiuska’s best guess is the young woman has been dead for about two days, give or take.’
    ‘Any idea of how she died?’
    ‘Yes.’ Kim Murphy started the camera running and zoomed in, pointing to the young woman’s throat. A dark red ligature mark was visible, then even more clearly for an instant as the burst of flash from a police photographer’s camera strobed across it.
    And Grace’s own leaden innards sank before Kim confirmed it.
    ‘Identical to Katie Bishop,’ she said.
    ‘We’re looking at a serial killer – whatever that description actually means?’ Grace queried.
    ‘On what I’ve seen so far, Roy, it’s too early to be able to say anything,’ Duigan replied. ‘And I’m not exactly an expert on serial killers. Luckily, I’ve never experienced one.’
    ‘That makes two of us.’
    Grace was thinking hard. Two attractive women killed, apparently, in the same manner, twenty-four hours apart. ‘What do we know about her?’
    ‘We believe her name is Sophie Harrington,’ Murphy said. ‘She’s twenty-seven and employed by a film production company in London. I answered a phone call a little earlier, from a young woman called Holly Richardson, who claims to be her best friend. She had been trying to contact her all yesterday – they were meant to be going to a party together last night. Holly last spoke to her about five on Friday afternoon.’
    ‘That helps us,’ Grace said. ‘At least we know she was alive then. Has anyone interviewed Holly Richardson?’
    ‘Nick’s gone to find her now.’
    ‘And Ms Harrington clearly put up one hell of a fight,’ Duigan added.
    ‘The place looks smashed up,’ Grace said.
    ‘Nadiuska’s found something under the nail of one of her big toes. A tiny bit of flesh.’
    Grace felt a sudden surge of adrenaline. ‘Human flesh?’
    ‘That’s what she thinks.’
    ‘Could it have been gouged out of