‘Sent for analysis. I don’t know yet whether there’s any blood or DNA traces in there.’

‘And what about Natalya?’ Dani asked, looking over again at the corpse of the young woman. ‘The wounds on her wrists and ankles?’

‘Not much more to tell than what I said the other day. Those wounds look relatively new, so I don’t think they were more than a day or two old. But there were other wounds on her. Scrapes and gashes to her feet from having run barefoot. One hand was badly grazed and there’s a graze on her head too.’

Ledford went over to Natalya and pointed out each of the wounds.

‘All wounds were very fresh. These happened in the moments before she was stabbed.’

Dani tried to think about the sequence of events. Natalya running. Running away from her killer. The grazes. Then the stab wounds to her front.

‘Do you think she fell? That’s how the attacker caught her?’

‘Fell or was pushed. There were elements of grit and tarmac in the wounds so that would be my conclusion.’

‘What about sexual assault?’

‘No evidence of violent sexual assault, nor were there any traces of semen found in her or on her.’

Dani again flinched at the words, even though it was welcome news, of sorts. There was silence for a few moments as Dani tried to process the information and the significance of it all.

‘You look disappointed, Detective,’ Ledford said.

‘What? No. I just… I expected more similarities in the deaths.’

Because wasn’t a single killer the most likely explanation here, given that the victims were linked to each other?

‘Similarities? Well, they are and aren’t there. Natalya was stabbed in a quite straightforward manner – in and out wounds. She died from blood loss but it took quite a few minutes, I’d imagine. Reeve, on the other hand, took a horrendous blow to his gut. Now, this might surprise you, but in a normal in and out stab wound, it’s very difficult to cut into the intestines. A bullet to the gut, well that cuts through anything in its path. But the speed and pressure of a knife is usually too small and the intestines just bounce about and slide around the blade when it penetrates the area. Here, though, we have massive damage not just to the intestines but to the abdominal aorta too. The knife was pulled about inside his body. Now that was no accident.’

Dani shuddered at the graphic words, but tried to remain focused.

‘For Reeve the killer wanted to make sure there was significant damage that would result in a quick death,’ Dani said.

‘That’s a hypothesis consistent with the wounds, yes.’

Dani’s brain was racing with different thoughts.