She was thirty-two years old, had shoulder-length raven black hair, a trim but well-rounded figure and was about five foot seven. She lay on her stomach in the middle of a king-size divan bed, her head turned over to the left and facing the outside wall. Her ankles, wrists and elbows were roped together and she had been gagged with a pair of tights. The green silk dress she was wearing had been raised above her hips and somebody had burned her thighs and naked buttocks with the glowing ember of a cigarette. That same somebody had then held a small-caliber revolver to her head and put two bullets into the brain.The media were going to have a field day with this one, Coghill thought bitterly. It was the kind of juicy murder with sexual overtones they could really get their teeth into: well-to-do, attractive young housewife tortured and shot dead in her secluded, executive-style house, half a mile from the grounds of the All England Lawn Tennis Club. They'd been quick off the mark too. The 999 call had been received by the police station in Wimbledon at nine twenty-seven; by the time he'd arrived from V District headquarters in Kingston some fifteen minutes later, two local reporters and a press photographer were already loitering outside the house.The press would want a statement from him and soon, but right now there wasn't much he could give them, apart from the victim's name and age.
