"Stab wound?" Jack ventured, receiving a nod from Nikki in response. She switched on her tape recorder.
"Sharp force injury. No weapon present."
"Stabbed in the back, eh?" Jack interjected.
"Small irregular tear. Bruising visible where the handle of the weapon hit the skin." Nikki continued, largely ignoring him.
"What's he doing in a children's playground, hmm? Yeah, nobody really wants to answer that one." He was right - whatever this man was doing here, it couldn't be good. Nikki glanced at Jack. Something had caught his attention and he started sniffing. "Can you smell bleach?"
Nikki nodded in agreement, before continuing her primary observation. "Yeah, I guess it could be. Strands of hair in the victim's right hand."
Jack handed her a bottle to put the hairs in. "Here. Struggle?" His phone rang before she could answer and he moved away slightly to answer it. "Clarissa, hi. I'm at a scene, love. Now?!" Nikki glanced up, surprised at his indignant tone. "All right, text me the address. All right, cheers." He came back over and packed up his case, before commenting to Nikki, "Gotta go."
"What?"
"Clarissa says it's urgent." He explained. "Tell your man, I'll be back." He added, indicating the Detective approaching them.
Nikki wasn't up for doing Jack's dirty work for him. "You tell him."
Jack shook his head at her with an air of irritation. "I don't want to get into a long conversation."
Nikki sighed impatiently. "Jack, you don't have long conversations."
Jack shook his head again. "Mm-hm" Oh, ha-de-ha, he thought, she knows me so well! He began walking off, only to come face to face with the Detective - who looked about 12.
"Detective Inspector Rory Drennan." The man said brightly, holding his hand out to make Jack's acquaintance.
"Nice to see you!" Jack exclaimed loudly, sauntering straight past the astonished Detective's out-stretched hand. Nikki smirked. She had been watching with interest to see what Jack would do after she had refused to help him out. He had dealt with the situation in a very 'Jack' way - as she had pointed out, Jack Hodgson didn't do long conversations.
"Nikki Alexander" She told the baby-faced Drennan, when he appeared next to her.
"Carry on, Don't...let me interrupt." He answered with obvious nervousness, before contradicting himself by adding; "Killed here or was the body dumped?"
"Er, almost certainly killed here. No blood trail. Discolouration matches the body position - it hasn't been moved." Nikki switched on her tape recorder to continue her observation. "Livor has set in..."
"Any sense of time of death?" Drennan interrupted.
"Not yet." She answered, slightly impatiently. "That's what I'm doing - I'm trying to establish it."
"Sorry - eager!" He explained apologetically.
Nikki tried again. "Rigor is fully pres3ent..." Only for the eager detective to interrupt again.
"Is the forensic bloke coming back?...sorry." He had caught Nikki's eye and apologised again. She couldn't help being slightly amused.
"Rigor is fully present." She finished. She began her next observation and upon seeing the implement she was about to use, Drennan appeared to come over all nervous again.
"That's not going under his tongue, is it? He asked with obvious discomfort.
"No"
Drennan shuffled from one foot to the other. "I might just...check something in the car."
Back at the Lyell...
In the cutting room, Nikki began her post-mortem. "Bruising from a hand grip is visible on the left forearm...as well as scratch marks." This man - whoever he was, had obviously been in a struggle. Her thought process was interrupted by knocking.
Jack popped his head around the door, a look of tormented concern etched on his face. "There's a wee girl gone missing. Police have issued a child rescue alert. She had brown hair, Nikki. Long, brown hair - like you found in your victim's hand. The crime scenes are about half a mile apart. It's not going to be a coincidence, is it?"
"Do you have evidence?"
"Naturally" He continued, "I've taken hair from the brush in her room and a toothbrush."
Nikki nodded, taking charge. "Well, let's run them and see if they match. Compare the hairs for similarities to see if they're consistent with each other while we wait for DNA."
Jack nodded, "Yup" and disappeared back to the lab.
In the lab...
"Grandparents' or an aunt or something, that's where she'll be." Clarissa commented, with the aim of reassurance. "That'd be my guess."
"And that's all it would be - a guess." Jack answered. Cases involving children always got to him.
Clarissa tried again. "Stranger danger is unbelievably rare. 11 kids out of 11 million. It's literally 1 in a million." She was good with statistics and statistics usually reassured Jack, but today he wasn't biting.
"Reassuring stat, unless you're the '1'."
Clarissa tried one more time. "You don't take her clothes if you're intending to kill her, do you?"
"No, but you might if you were part of a paedophile ring. If you were selling her."
Clarissa sighed. "Who's selling her?"
"I don't know. The parent's?" Jack muttered, closely examining the hairs under a microscope.
She shook her head at his back and turned back to what she was doing. "That is very dark."
"And we live in a dark world." He answered vaguely.
"Yes." Clarissa chuckled, "Well, I'm just trying to stay positive." Her humour was met with silence. "Jack? I said 'I'm just trying to stay positive' and you say: 'That's unlike you, Clarissa' and then I say..." She trailed off when she turned around to find Jack's empty lab stool staring at her. "Jack?"
In the cutting room...
Nikki was in full swing during the post-mortem. She had just found a hair in a wound under the victim's chin and had carefully placed it in a bottle, when she turned to find Drennan and Jack watching her through the meeting room viewing window. They both clearly had something to tell her.
The three of them gathered i9n the meeting room. "The hairs share significant similarities. We won't know if it's a definite match till the DNA results come back." Jack began.
"I found another strand of hair in a wound under the chin" Nikki added, "I can't be sure if the wound occurred post-mortem or ante-mortem, but the hair was captured in congulated blood, so we might suspect it was ante-mortem."
"Result of a struggle?" Drennan asked.
Nikki nodded. "Bruising from the grip of a hand and scratch marks on the forearm are consistent with this. Preliminary investigation indicates that the victim died of a penetrating stab injury to the aorta by a sharp object that passed through the mid-thoratic area T4..." She gestured at Jack, who obediently turned around allowing her to demonstrate on him. Though compliant, he subconsciously reacted when she prodded her finger in his back and Nikki had to grasp his shoulder to steady him as she continued her explanation, using him as a dummy. "...entered here, through these ribs and cut the aorta."
Drennan scratched his head. "We never recovered the knife?"
"No" Jack answered, still with his back to them, unsure of whether Nikki had finished with him.
She squeezed his shoulder affectionately in response to his unasked question, before releasing him - allowing him to turn back and rejoin the conversation properly as she explained, "The weapon wasn't a knife. The tear of the skin and shape of the wound make me think that the murder weapon was cylindrical. 6 and 3/4 inches long with a hexagonal handle. You can see the hit mark of the handle consistent with a screwdriver."
Drennan nodded. "How quickly would he have died?"
"From the size and location of the wound, very quickly, minutes. He might have thought it was a punch at first, but he would have been in immediate distress. Most of the bleeding was internal."
"Right." Drennan made for the door, but Nikki wasn't finished yet.
There were wounds on his genitalia. The skin was broken...by teeth. I've swabbed the bite for saliva DNA. There are 5 noticeable tooth impressions. There should be a sixth. The two-two - the upper right maxillary lateral incisor is missing. The lateral incisor erupts at...between 8 and 9 years old. I think he was bitten by a child."
She caught Jack's eye. He looked as sick to the stomach as she felt. They hated their job sometimes.