Written In Blood

Chapter Five

"How can you be so certain the girl you found was murdered?" Mitchell asked; he was suspicious of the way the stranger talked so casually about murder, and how long he thought the body had been there. "And how did you find her?" He had to lengthen his stride to keep up with the younger man. "This isn't the sort of place people come without a good reason. Even the local fishermen use the other side of the village. The last person I can recall that came out this, way was an archaeologist we had in the village last autumn, and he only came out here because of the old watchtower, that one up on the hill." He gestured to the ruined structure not too far away. "He seemed to think it's Roman, reckoned there's an old Roman fort around here somewhere."

"I was out jogging, that's how I found her," Zack said. "I was heading along the other bank from the pub, saw something out of place, got curious, and waded across. Wish I'd ignored it and gone on jogging, I wished that before I was even sure what I'd found; wading the river wasn't my brightest idea.

"As for how I know she was murdered, there she is." He indicated with a nod of his head. "You'll understand when you see her."

"Bloody hell!" The oath escaped Mitchell's lips the moment he got within a dozen feet of the girl Zack Wild had stumbled on. There was no question about her being dead, or about her having been murdered. He swallowed convulsively against the urge to throw up. "You'd better stay back, Melissa, you don't need to see this," he said when he had himself under control.

"Oh god!" The warning came too late for Melissa, who turned away from the body on the ground, disgusted by the sight of what had once been a teenage girl, dropped to her knees, and vomited. She heaved until there was nothing left in her stomach, and only when she was finished did she realise that she had done so all over the feet of the man she had only recently met. "Sorry," she apologised in a weak and miserable voice.

"Don't worry about it," Zack said unconcernedly. Kicking off his running shoes, he took them to the river so he could wash them and his feet off.

"No, I'm sorry, they must be ruined now. Let me know how much they cost and I'll pay you back."

"There's no need to do that," Zack told her. "I was thinking about getting myself some new running shoes, now I've got the perfect excuse to do so, I should be thanking you."

Mitchell ignored both Melissa and Zack Wild as he moved closer to the body on the ground. His first glimpse of the girl had been bad enough, the sight got worse as he drew closer, though. Her face was such a mess that it was all but impossible to tell that she was a girl from it, let alone who she was, but that was nothing compared to the rest of her; it looked to Mitchell as though there wasn't an inch of her body that wasn't either bruised or covered in blood, if she hadn't been naked, he wasn't sure he would have been able to tell her sex. The worst was her abdomen, as if the injuries done to the rest of her body weren't enough, the person who had killed her had taken a knife – he assumed it was a knife – and carved letters into her stomach.

It was the letters that made Mitchell feel as though he was going to empty his stomach, as Melissa had. Try though he did, he simply could not imagine why someone would have done that, it was an act of evil beyond his comprehension.

"Is it Georgina?" he asked of the doctor, who was at his elbow.

William Kelly, the village's only doctor, studied the face of the girl on the ground dispassionately for several long moments. He was not as affected by what he was seeing as the two police officers – he had seen plenty of horrible things during his career as a medical professional – but was not unaffected; he was more saddened by the sight before him than sickened. Finally, he shook his head. "At a guess, I'd say it's Georgina, but I wouldn't want to be held to that. It could be just about anyone, if I'm honest."