Assassin by Tara Moss

was leaning in the entryway, letting them make their observations uninterrupted. Agent Harrison was staring at the heavilybloodstained hardwood floor near the back windows. She looked a little pale.
    ‘You been to a lot of crime scenes?’ he asked Harrison quietly, walking over and stepping clear of the yellow plastic cards, like upright Scrabble tiles, marking out the exhibits of interest — smears of blood, the smudgy remnants of fingerprinting powder, the place where discarded panties had been discovered.
    Agent Harrison shook her head. ‘He tied her up here on the floor, near the window,’ she said. ‘That’s not very private.’
    The room was familiar from the crime-scene photographs, but it always looked different live. Andy squinted, looking from the dark stains to the large window, recalling the position of the body, the state of her when she’d been found after some bastard had assaulted her and bled her out.
    Andy opened the doors that led onto the walled courtyard, and stood in the doorway as the humid Sydney air hit him like a cloud. Harrison walked past him to step outside. He followed, watching her. She took a deep breath and looked around, adjusting her ponytail with an efficient, distinctly feminine movement of her delicate hands. The fountain was turned off. Weeds crept up between the terracotta tiles. The air was still. Andy looked up. The back of the terraces in the next street encroached onto the little courtyard, throwing the rear half into shade. Windows peered down on them.
    ‘Did I remember that the curtains were open?’ Harrison asked.
    ‘The victim is gone, but everything else should be unchanged,’ he told her, observing that the curtains, which were a light cream colour and made of some kind of gauzy fabric, were tied back on one side and pulled partially backon the other. He hoped to hell nothing had been altered. Forensics had left their mark. He could see the smudgy residue of white Lanconide and dark carbon fingerprinting powders on various surfaces. The murder weapon, or weapons, had not been left at the scene, but several sets of latent prints not belonging to the victim had been recovered. And the crucial DNA — the semen. It would take another two or three days to be analysed.
    ‘The curtains were open?’ he shouted to Mahoney.
    The detective sauntered over and leaned in the doorway. ‘Yeah, they were open,’ she replied. ‘ISRAPS will take another few days, but I’ve got video.’ ISRAPS, the Interactive Scene Recording and Presentation System, allowed for a three-hundred-sixty-degree, high-definition view of the crime scene, with the ability to zoom in and out on any details. It was a new visual technology, like something out of Blade Runner. It could take a week to process.
    ‘Got a copy of the video for you.’ Mahoney handed the DVD disc to Andy with a cheeky smile, as though it were a box of chocolates. They closed the outer door and came inside. Andy propped his laptop open on the coffee table and slid the disc into the side. Harrison hovered nearby.
    ‘Shall I?’ Detective Mahoney said and pressed ‘play’ on Andy’s laptop. She fast-forwarded to the footage of Victoria Hempsey’s body at the scene, recorded to show what the officers had found. He asked her to freeze the frame.
    Victoria.
    What he saw was a stark contrast to the vital, smiling woman on the corkboard. What the video showed was lifeless flesh — abused, tortured and utterly dehumanised. Exposed. Staged for maximum humiliation and shock. The perpetratorhad arranged her dead, naked body with the legs open, the arms pulled behind her back to thrust her bare chest upwards. Bra pulled down. Undies torn open and thrown to one side. There were ligature marks around her ankles and wrists, though the attacker had taken the ties off her ankles to pose her for whoever was to later discover her — her sister, who would need a lot of therapy to deal with what she’d seen. The blood on the floor was