Sorrow Bound by David Mark Page A

happening, Guv. Her arteries were furred up and her cholesterol was above average so the shock of it all sent her into cardiac arrest. By that point though she was on the ground and she was getting hit in the chest. There’s a bruise to the back of her head. She went down hard but not hard enough to knock her out. There’s bruising around the hinge of the jaw that suggests pressure to the lower half of her face. Perhaps a hand, holding her mouth shut. Dr Woodmansey says she was pummelled with a large flat implement with a softsurface, whatever that may mean. Repeated strikes to the ribs and chest. Ribs broke under the stress and punctured inwards. Eventually the ribs punctured the lungs and then finally the heart. He says twenty minutes all in. Twenty minutes, pounding on her chest. No evidence of sexual assault. A few fibres, under her nails. Red and black threads, soft cotton. Some substance, as yet unidentified, but organic. Could be anything, but he’s sending it off for analysis. Should have it back in a couple of days if we fast-track it. Dr Woodmansey says that it was furious but sustained. Whoever did it would have had blood spray on them, but wouldn’t have been covered. Her breath was full of blood particles and the killer would have been in close.’
    Here, now, McAvoy closes his eyes. Tries to put the day’s findings into some kind of order. Tries to work out why somebody would kill Philippa Longman so brutally. Whoever killed her, it was important to them that she suffer. Somebody hated her. Was it a random stranger, hating the world? Or has she done something so terrible that her murderer wanted her to endure that much agony in her dying moments? He thinks of Darren Robb. Tries to imagine the pitiful fat man having that much rage inside of him. He struggles to see it. But he has been wrong before.
    ‘Did I tell you I met your friend Helen? She was up by Mel’s shop.’
    ‘Helen Tremberg? Detective constable?’
    ‘Yeah. Big girl. Nice. Got hurt when you were both in Grimsby …’
    ‘Yes, DC Tremberg. Did you say hello?’
    ‘Just briefly. She was with some snooty cow.’
    ‘Detective Inspector Sharon Archer?’
    ‘I dunno. She just sat there with her hand on the horn.’
    ‘Yeah, that would be her.’
    McAvoy wonders how he feels about his wife chatting to his work colleagues. Unbidden, a blush rises from his shirt collar up to his cheeks. He imagines her telling Tremberg about their new home. Their plans. He imagines her inviting her to the housewarming. Telling her to bring a friend. Imagines Archer asking her junior officer whom she was talking to. Sees Tremberg, spilling her guts. Telling her about Aector McAvoy’s traveller wife. About what he did to the men who attacked her when she was young. Fuck. Fuck!
    ‘The lady who died,’ says Roisin, shifting position so she can look up at her husband. ‘Why did they kill her?’
    McAvoy gazes into her for a few seconds. Her eyes are innocent and guileless.
    ‘We’ve got a few ideas. It may just have been a random nutter, but it doesn’t feel that way.’
    ‘Had she been putting it about or anything? Any affairs?’
    McAvoy shakes his head. ‘We don’t think so. She was just a nice lady. Mattered to people. Did her bit. And somebody caved her chest in. Splintered her ribs like she was made of twigs.’
    ‘What with?’
    ‘We don’t know that either.’
    Roisin makes a face, mildly disappointed in the detectives of Humberside Police. ‘They break easy, ribs. Even when you’re doing CPR, you can break ribs. I think I saw that in an episode of
Holby City
, actually …’
    McAvoy has gone still. He breathes out, slowly, through his nose, and without saying anything, sits up and rolls Roisin onto her back. He places one hand on her chest and the other on top of it. Roisin looks up at him, happy, but confused.
    ‘We trying something new?’
    He gives the slightest push. She winces, but doesn’t stop smiling.
    McAvoy rocks himself back,