Read Online Rope Enough (The Romney and Marsh Files Book 1) by Oliver Tidy - Free Book Online Page B

dig out the information?’ Romney waited and listened to the woman’s fingertips tapping away at her keyboard. ‘Let’s see. Yes,’ she said. ‘Lovetex was the make.’
    ‘Good,’ said the DI, pleased for the crumb of evidence, which would lend weight to his belief that this had been a pre-meditated sexual assault. ‘Were any tests performed on it?’ He waited again while she checked her screen.
    ‘It was too small to lift even a partial print from. Sorry.’
    ‘What about a saliva test?’
    ‘Sorry?’
    Romney was glad that the phone system was between them. He was no prude amongst his peers, but he was prone to awkwardness when discussing things of a sexual nature face to face with women not that much older than his daughter. And in this case, especially, it was clear to him that any half-intelligent person would quickly make the connection that what he was about to suggest was probably based on personal experience. On top of this, the probability that whoever he was discussing it with would then make the short leap of the imagination to visualise him struggling in the  throes of sexual passion to tear open a condom packet and do whatever a logical imagination would lead one to suppose came next brought him further discomfort.
    ‘I was thinking,’ he said, ‘it’s possible, as he was wearing gloves the whole time, that he may have had difficulty opening the packet.’
    ‘Ah, of course,’ said the woman. ‘I see what you’re getting at. They can be slippery, can’t they?’ To Romney’s relief it seemed a rhetorical question. ‘And if you can’t get into something with your digits, what do you use? Your teeth,’ she finished. ‘I’ll do it myself this morning, Inspector. I’ll let you know as soon as I have the results.’
    He thanked her and hung up. Romney looked up to see Marsh hovering at his door. Frowning, he beckoned her in.
    ‘Sir, looks like we have a jumper in the town centre.’
    ‘That’s uniform’s job,’ he said, turning his attention back to his desk.
    ‘Sorry. I mean had a jumper. White female. Dead in the parking area at the rear of Priory Towers on Priory Road.’
    Romney looked up and said, ‘That’s Claire Stamp’s address.’
    ‘Yes, sir.’
    ‘Is it her?’ he asked, a suggestion of melancholy in his tone.
    ‘She needs an official identification, but the general description fits. Uniform are there. I said we’d be along shortly.’
     
    *
     
    Twenty minutes later they were standing in the rain under a thick blanket of oppressive low cloud that had blown in from the Channel with the changing tide. They stared down at the twisted corpse of Claire Stamp. A uniformed constable, dutifully accepting his drenching, held up a corner of the tarpaulin covering her. Romney was keenly aware of the drumming of the intensifying downpour on his umbrella. The pathetic sight of the woman, not so much older than his own daughter, lying on her back on the brick paved area behind the communal bins was one of the saddest he had ever had to witness. She wore only a flimsy night dress, plastered to her body by the rain to reveal her most private parts through the gossamer-thin material. The welts from the rape at her wrists and ankles looked even angrier against her ghostly white flesh.
    Maurice Wendell, the local pathologist, waited patiently to get on with the unpleasant task ahead of him in the most miserable of conditions.
    The quiet and the visible eerie exhalations in the cold of those gathered sombrely around the body under their umbrellas, heads bowed, lent the scene a funereal feel.
    Choking off the wretchedness he was feeling, Romney said, ‘Any idea how long she’s been here?’
    ‘Most of the night, I would say,’ said the pathologist.
    When had she jumped, thought Romney? As he and Julie Carpenter were laughing their way through the previous evening’s meal? As they were frenziedly stripping each other for intercourse in the warmth of her bedroom? As he was reaching