Death by Beauty by Gabrielle Lord

way to the turn-off
     to her street, so it’s no help in this instance.’
    ‘What about the boyfriend?’ asked Gemma. ‘He was the last person to see her alive.’
    ‘Mmm. I’m not sure about him. One of the reasons I’m telling you all this, Gemma, is because I’m hoping you’ll give me a hand
     with some of the follow-up. Unofficially, of course. Like a second informal interview with him. He might be more relaxed withyou. He says he went to the gym, and a couple of people say they remember him being there but they’re not sure of the time.’
    ‘Okay. I wonder if he’ll talk to me,’ said Gemma, giving up all hope of easing slowly back into work.
    ‘Thanks, Gemma,’ said Angie. ‘I’ll send you his details and a copy of his statement when I get back to the office. I found
     him a difficult character. He was evasive and unhelpful. Maybe you’ll get something useful out of him.’
    Angie turned her laptop around so Kit and Gemma could see it and brought up the crime-scene footage.
    ‘This is the first crime scene. Rachel Starr.’
    She fast-forwarded through the establishing shots of the bushland near the quarry, long since overgrown and disused, finally
     pausing the screen on a stony cliff wall.
    ‘The quarry hasn’t been used for over twenty years. There’s still a road up there that’s passable. We’re looking at people
     who would know about its existence – forestry workers, anyone once employed at the quarry who might have had a connection
     to Rachel. The killer must have driven up there with her body in the car, then transferred her to the driver’s seat, wedged
     the accelerator and jumped out before it crashed into the stone walls.’
    ‘Dangerous way to set something up. What if he hadn’t got out in time?’ asked Gemma.
    ‘And that could be the reason why the killer – if it is the same killer – dropped the second body into the sea,’ said Angie,
     nodding. ‘A safer option. It also saved him the trouble of washing down everything.’
    The camera panned closer to what looked like a pile of car parts and tyres in a corner of the quarry. Slowly, the pile revealed
     itself to be a crumpled car body, distorted out of all shape, onedoor hanging open. As the camera moved to the driver’s side, Gemma could not stop her gasp of horror at the state of what
     had once been a human head, now inextricably embedded in twisted wreckage, the upper body partly impaled on the steering column,
     the lower body invisibly wedged under the dashboard. Angie froze the screen. ‘Now I want you to have a look at Rachel Starr
     as she was.’
    Gemma was pleased to avert her eyes from the horrible mess on the laptop screen to the photograph Angie passed her. Rachel
     Starr had been a delicately beautiful young woman, with refined features, a patrician nose, rosy skin and fine, fair hair.
     Gemma made herself look at the mashed-up flesh and bone on the screen again and then back at the photograph. The word that
     came to mind was ‘desecration’.
    ‘Sacrilege,’ said Kit, voicing her sister’s feelings. ‘The destruction of the temple. Whoever did this is destroying the female
     – her face, her beauty.’
    ‘The other one was horribly similar,’ said Angie, turning off the footage and opening another file. ‘Okay. Crime scene two.
     Marie-Louise Palier. I’ve got a few stills from that one. First, this was Marie-Louise before she washed up on the beach.’
    Another beautiful girl gazed out serenely from her portrait. She was wearing her mortar board tilted at an impish angle, and
     holding the scroll of her degree, her evening dress glittering under the dark graduate robe; glossy chestnut-brown hair framed
     her face and her steady grey eyes shone through dark lashes.
    ‘Now take a look at these.’
    Angie passed three photographs to Gemma, who studied them and then handed them to Kit. The first one showed an object lying
     at an angle at the water’s edge; the second photograph wascloser