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Kim sprinted down the path towards the River Stour and the men in high-vis jackets, but Keats emerged from the pack shaking his head.
‘He’s gone. Lost him a few minutes ago.’
‘Damn it,’ Kim said, stepping around one of the paramedics collecting together his equipment.
The crime scene was an absolute mess with equipment bags, wrappers, footprints, knee marks in the ground. Again, Mitch was going to get nothing from this chaos.
‘Couldn’t save him even though we knew what he’d been injected with?’ she asked, assuming he’d received the same email from the toxicology lab she’d seen.
‘Fentanyl is an opioid. It binds to and activates opioid receptors on cells located in the brain, spinal cord and other organs in the body. There are opioid antagonists like naloxone which, if used quickly, can reverse an opioid overdose. It’s unlikely that even a couple of doses would have saved our victim even if the paramedics had had it on board. This isn’t an accidental overdose. This dosage is being administered to kill. The quantity detected in Eric Gould’s system would likely have killed an army.’
She raised an eyebrow.
‘Okay, not quite, but definitely between five and ten men.’
She turned away and took a good look at the victim while Keats completed the handover with the paramedics.
She guessed the man to be early thirties and around two stone overweight. He wore navy jogging bottoms that had a small hole at the knee. His trainers were a decent name but well worn. The paramedics had pulled his plain red tee shirt back down once they were done, and she could see his stomach straining against the fabric.
Her gaze travelled up to the rugged skin on his cheeks that looked like old acne scarring. His lips were slightly parted to reveal a couple of missing lower teeth. His brown hair was untidy and long.
This man bore no resemblance to the honed perfection of their first victim.
Bryant had taken a quick look before heading over to two runners in the company of a constable. He’d guessed they were the ones who’d found the victim.
Keats approached once more as the paramedics headed back up to the car park.
She gave him no chance to speak. ‘Please tell me you have—’
‘Jimmy,’ he called, beckoning over his assistant.
‘Boss?’
‘Show the inspector the photos.’
Jimmy took out his phone and scrolled to the first one. She moved from frame to frame. There were seven photos, all from different angles, trying to get a decent picture around the paramedics.
She forced down her frustration at not seeing the scene before it got tampered with. Of course the paramedics had no choice but to try and save the man’s life.
She flicked back to the first photo. ‘Had they moved him at all in this one?’
Jimmy shook his head. ‘The paramedics actually took that picture before they started work on him.’
She disregarded the other photos and focussed on this one. It was the only one that mattered.
‘Did they touch him?’ she asked, nodding towards the runners.
‘No,’ Keats answered.
So this photo was the closest to how the killer had left his victim.
The image showed the man lying on his left side. His head was pushed down into the ground. The left arm had been raised in an arc that brushed the side of his head, and the right arm had been stretched out to meet it, forming a perfect circle. His left leg was straight, but his right was positioned as though he was about to kick something.
She turned the phone a few times to try and get a clearer picture.
‘You told me this one was worse,’ Kim said.
‘It is. You see that perfect circle formed by the arms?’
