Touch by Mark Sennen

yacht. The journalist had been tickled pink by the contrast between the little coastal cruiser and the ocean going warship.
    ‘Took the children out a few times in the summer, but managing the boat on my own is a struggle and I can’t seem to persuade Stefan to join me. If he isn’t cold, wet and leaning over at forty-five degrees he doesn’t think he is sailing.’
    ‘Samantha is growing up fast. And turning into the splitting image of you with all that red hair. Very beautiful.’ Nesbit smiled, a twinkle in his eyes.
    Savage blushed, even though she knew Nesbit’s words were small talk intended to make everyone feel relaxed in a stressful situation.
    ‘Ah, well.’ Nesbit shrugged. Then he moved past Savage and walked over the stepping plates and into the tent to examine the body. ‘I overheard you telling Charlotte about drugs,’ he told Oliver as he bent over. ‘No way I can confirm that here of course. And looking at the body now I am not sure you are right about there being no sign of obvious trauma.’
    Nesbit knelt, opened his bag, put on some nitrile gloves and took out a flat wooden spatula. He pressed the rounded end against the girl’s stomach, opening the cut Oliver had pointed out.
    ‘The incision on the abdomen is deep, the hole goes right in. Hasn’t bled though. Strange.’ He moved his hands up and touched the girl’s breasts and then probed her right arm. ‘The skin doesn’t seem quite right either and there is an odd smell, more a fragrance.’
    ‘Soap?’ Savage suggested. ‘Could she have been washed?’
    ‘Possible, the skin is a bit puffy,’ Nesbit paused. ‘But there is something worrying me. Can’t quite figure it at the moment.’
    ‘Do you think she was killed somewhere else?’
    ‘Appears that way. Note the lividity in the buttocks and upper thighs? She was in a sitting position at or soon after death because the blood has pooled there. Quite unusual.’ Nesbit looked around, eyes drinking in every little detail. ‘No sign of a struggle taking place here, but I noticed several sets of footprints in the moss.’
    Nesbit pointed towards the path and Savage spotted some indentations in the bright, green carpet, a trail leading to and from the girl’s body. They would have to work out which belonged to the killer, which to the farmer, and which to the PC who had first attended the scene.
    ‘Finished for the moment?’ Nesbit asked Oliver.
    ‘Yes, got a camera full, close-ups of all of her from tip to toe.’
    ‘Good.’ Nesbit took a digital thermometer with a remote probe from his bag and called across to the CSI. ‘Can you help me, please?’
    Nesbit instructed the CSI to roll over the body and then he bent and inserted the probe into the girl’s rectum. While Nesbit did this Savage reflected on the fact that dignity and suspicious death were incompatible and that there would be far worse to come on the post-mortem table. Nesbit told the CSI to let the body lie flat again and he placed the thermometer display down on the ground. A few seconds later the unit beeped and Nesbit peered at the screen and muttered something Savage didn’t catch.
    ‘Doc?’
    ‘Strange. The core body temperature is way below ambient which is... what? Eight, nine, ten? I’ll measure it in a moment. Overnight I am sure it wasn’t much lower, not with this weather coming in off the Atlantic. It is evident she has been dead for a day or two and kept somewhere colder.’
    ‘We had frosty weather last week and into the weekend,’ Savage said.
    ‘Yes. Perhaps the body was outside in another location and was moved here. That could explain the low temperature.’
    ‘There’s no way this could be...’ Savage wasn’t sure how to finish the question, but she didn’t need to as Nesbit already had an answer for her.
    ‘I can’t tell that here can I, Charlotte? Given the sexual angle I wouldn’t have thought this is anything other than murder, would you? Sorry. I know you need some luck at