Gill did as Phil said; using the stepping plates she skirted around the easy chair that stood near the kitchen door, close to where two markers indicated drops of blood, and past the coffee table to get closer to the victim.
She stared at the body, at the girl’s head angled slightly back and to the right, touching the base of the sofa. There was a slick of blood on the carpet beneath her, some dark stains on the edge of the duvet. Gill didn’t need a second opinion, this was a homicide. She straightened up and got out her phone to ring the coroner. The body legally belonged to the coroner and their authorization would be needed to order a post-mortem.
‘Who called us?’ she asked Phil as she selected the contact number.
‘Boyfriend; came in and found her like this.’
Gill nodded. Because he had been at the scene, the boyfriend would have to submit his clothes for examination as potential evidence and give a witness statement to assist the police.
‘Hello, Mr Minchin, Gill Murray here from MIT,’ she identified herself to the coroner. ‘I’m out at a job in Collyhurst: young, white, adult female. I’m thinking we’ve got ID, not formal as yet, looking like a stab wound. I’m after doing a forensic post-mortem?’
‘Be my guest. I’ll take the details.’
Gill told him the rudiments: the address and the apparent name of the victim: Lisa Finn. Her next call was to the pathologist, Ranjeet Lateesh. No one would touch the body or disturb anything at the scene until he’d arrived and been able to examine the body in situ.
She watched one of the CSIs start work with his fingerprint kit on the doorway and door handles into the room. The silver sooty powder he was smothering over the surfaces would be a bugger to clean off again afterwards.
‘Shoulder bag in the kitchen, bus ticket in there shows her on the bus at half-ten this morning. But we didn’t find her phone,’ Phil Sweet told them.
Gill groaned. The phone was a rich mine of information in any inquiry; traffic to and from helped them build not only a timeline but a network of contacts, and the content of texts would sometimes flag up animosity or threats. They’d have to approach the provider, who would be able to give them a log of incoming and outgoing calls and texts, but not the content of any texts, and not the pictures or music or videos or address book on the handset. With a little more time, the provider would also be able to give them the cell site location data and pinpoint where the phone was when calls were received and made. In effect, a tracking device.
