the killing blow. Death would have been fairly rapid.’
Gilbourne reached the lifts, pressed the button. Both were on the ground floor. He considered the tightness of the belt around his stomach, another notch away from where it should be. He turned and pushed through the door into the stairwell instead.
‘Anything else you can tell me about the weapon?’
‘Wide blade, forty-six millimetres from side to side. Injuries inflicted with a fair degree of accuracy which might suggest some anatomical knowledge. The stab wounds are clinical, deliberate, between the second and third ribs. Not random. Certainly not a frenzied attack.’
‘So the blade – maybe a kitchen knife?’
‘Or some kind of fighting knife, perhaps.’
‘Injuries in the back,’ Gilbourne said, his voice echoing in the dimly-lit stairwell. ‘Victim taken by surprise?’
‘Possibly. There’s some bruising on the lower right arm but from the colouring I’d say it’s older than the stab wounds, maybe one or two days prior to death. And there are also a couple of superficial burn marks on the back of the left hand. Two identical marks fifty-one millimetres apart.’
‘Like cigarette burns?’
‘No, the skin’s not broken. I would think probably a taser, or a stun gun. Consistent with some kind of electroshock device.’
Gilbourne stopped on the stairs, remembering what Ellen Devlin had told him about the attacker she’d confronted in her house.
‘The victim might have been incapacitated first, before she was stabbed?’
‘Would explain the lack of defensive wounds.’
‘Killed at the scene, or somewhere else?’
‘From the small amount of blood at the scene, I’d say somewhere else. These were sizeable wounds but blood deposition was minimal where she was found.’
‘What else?’
‘No evidence of sexual assault.’
‘DNA from a possible perpetrator?’
‘None that we can find.’
‘None?’ Gilbourne repeated. He could feel the small hairs standing up on the back of his neck. A tick of something in his veins, not excitement. Recognition. ‘No blood, saliva, nothing?’
‘Lots of blood on the victim’s clothing. All of it belonging to the victim.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘We’ve not been able to recover any other traces.’
‘So, no contact DNA, no defensive wounds, nothing under her fingernails.’
‘Correct.’
Gilbourne was silent for a moment. He began walking down the stairs again, from the third floor landing to the second floor.
‘Stuart?’ the pathologist said. ‘You still there?’
Gilbourne could almost feel the tiny pulses of electricity surging in his brain, connections being made. The case that had hung over him for more than a year, the investigation he knew better than anyone else, the hunt that had driven him to the edge and almost derailed his career. The case he had to solve before his time on the force was up.
‘I’m here,’ he said quietly. ‘Just thinking.’
‘Anything you want me to clarify?’
‘Does it remind you of anything?’ Gilbourne said. ‘The lack of evidence, lack of DNA, the victim profile, the area the body was dumped?’
The pathologist left another beat of silence before answering. He wouldn’t use the nickname – Gilbourne knew Rhodri thought it was just a bit of tabloidese – stooping to that level offended his sense of precision, of science.
Eventually Rhodri said, ‘You mean similarity to unsolved cases.’
‘I mean the Ghost.’
Gilbourne could almost hear the tut of disapproval on the other end of the phone line. ‘Yes . . . and no. Some similarities but some significant differences too.’
‘But it could be?’
‘It’s possible, or a copycat. There was something unusual though, a definite departure from previous victims. We’ve got some residue on the skin suggestive of heavy plastic sheeting which infers the victim was wrapped, post-mortem, then the wrapping was removed when she was dumped. Possibly she was wrapped up to avoid DNA deposition in a vehicle, then unwrapped after she was dumped to accelerate decomposition.’
‘He never did that before, did he?’
‘We didn’t find that residue on previous victims, no. He also didn’t shock any of the victims with a stun gun. May suggest he’s being more careful. If it is the same perpetrator.’
‘Or that he’s learning, honing his technique, getting better at it,’ Gilbourne said. ‘All the signature aspects are consistent – lack of DNA, age and gender of the victim, evidence of pre-planning, the area where the body was found. He’s forensically aware and he’s done this before.’
The pathologist grunted reluctantly. ‘I’d tend to agree with you on the last point – I don’t think it’s his first time. But three attacks in the space of three months and then he disappears off the radar for a year before killing again? What kind of offender pattern is that?’
‘I knew he’d do it again,’ Gilbourne