Chapter Two

NOT EVERYBODY KNOWS this – or cares probably – but the first law of forensic science is Locard’s Exchange Principle, and it says ‘Every contact between a perpetrator and a crime scene leaves a trace. ’ As I stand in this room, surrounded by dozens of voices, I’m wondering if Professor Locard had ever encountered anything quite like Room 89 – everything touched by the killer is now in a bath full of acid, wiped clean or drenched in industrial antiseptic. I’m certain there’s not a cell or follicle of him left behind.

A year ago, I wrote an obscure book on modern investigative technique. In a chapter called ‘New Frontiers’, I said I had come across the use of an antibacterial spray only once in my life – and that was a high-level hit on an intelligence agent in the Czech Republic. That case doesn’t augur well – to this day, it remains unsolved. Whoever had been living in Room 89 clearly knew their business, and I start examining the room with the respect it deserves.

He wasn’t a tidy person and, among the other trash, I see an empty pizza box lying next to the bed. I’m about to pass over it when I realize that’s where he would have had the knife: lying on top of the pizza box within easy reach, so natural Eleanor probably wouldn’t even have registered it.

I imagine her on the bed, reaching under the tangle of sheets for his crotch. She kisses his shoulder, his chest, going down. Maybe the guy knows what he’s in for, maybe not: one of the side effects of GHB is that it suppresses the gag reflex. There’s no reason a person can’t swallow a seven-, eight-, ten-inch gun – that’s why one of the easiest places to buy it is in gay saunas. Or on porn shoots.

I think of his hands grabbing her – he flips her on to her back and puts his knees either side of her chest. She’s thinking he’s positioning himself for her mouth but, casually, his right hand would have dropped to the side of the bed. Unseen, the guy’s fingers find the top of the pizza box then touch what he’s looking for – cold and cheap but, because it’s new, more than sharp enough to do the job.

Anybody watching from behind would have seen her back arch, a sort of moan escape her lips – they’d think he must have entered her mouth. He hasn’t. Her eyes, bright with drugs, are flooding with fear. His left hand has clamped tight over her mouth, forcing her head back, exposing her throat. She bucks and writhes, tries to use her arms, but he’s anticipated that. Straddling her breasts, his knees slam down, pinning her by the biceps. How do I know this? You can just make out the two bruises on the body lying in the bath. She’s helpless. His right hand rises up into view – Eleanor sees it and tries to scream, convulsing wildly, fighting to get free. The serrated steel of the pizza knife flashes past her breast, towards her pale throat. It slashes hard—

Blood sprays across the bedside table. With one of the arteries which feed the brain completely cut, it would have been over in a moment. Eleanor crumples, gurgling, bleeding out. The last vestiges of consciousness tell her she has just witnessed her own murder; all she ever was and hoped to be is gone. That’s how he did it – he wasn’t inside her at all. Once again, thank God for small mercies, I suppose.

The killer goes to prepare the acid bath and along the way pulls off the bloody white shirt he must have been wearing – they just found pieces of it under Eleanor’s body in the bath, along with the knife: four inches long, black plastic handle, made by the millions in some sweatshop in China.

I’m still reeling from the vivid imagining of it all, so I barely register a rough hand taking my shoulder. As soon as I do, I throw it off, about to break his arm instantly – an echo from an earlier life, I’m afraid. It is some guy who mumbles a terse apology, looking at me strangely, trying to move me aside. He’s the leader of a forensic team – three guys and a woman – setting up the UV lamps and dishes of the Fast Blue B dye they’ll use to test the mattress for semen stains. They haven’t found out about the antiseptic yet and I don’t tell them – for all I know the killer missed a part of the bed. If he did, given the nature of the Eastside Inn, I figure they’ll get several thousand positive hits dating back to when hookers wore stockings.

I get out of their way, but I’m deeply distracted: I’m trying to close everything out because there is something about the room, the whole situation – I’m not exactly sure what – that is troubling me. A part of the scenario is wrong, and I can’t tell why. I look around, taking another inventory of what I see, but I can’t find it – I have a sense it’s from earlier in the night. I go back, mentally rewinding the tape to when I first walked in.

What was it? I reach down into my subconscious, trying to recover my first impression – it was something detached from the violence, minor but with overriding significance.

If only I could touch it … a feeling … it’s like … it’s some word that is lying now on the other side of memory. I start thinking about how I wrote in my book that it is the assumptions, the unquestioned assumptions, that trip you up every time – and then it comes to me.

When I walked in, I saw the six-pack on the bureau, a carton of milk in the fridge, registered the names of a few DVDs lying next to the TV, noted the liner in a trash can. And the impression – the word – that first entered my head but didn’t touch my conscious mind was ‘female’. I got everything right about what had happened in Room 89 – except for the biggest thing of all. It wasn’t a young guy who was staying here; it wasn’t a naked man who was having sex with Eleanor and cut her throat. It wasn’t a clever prick who destroyed her features with acid and drenched the room with antiseptic spray.

It was a woman.