It was a maypole in name only. It comprised a tall timber post, painted white, with a pink twirl around it. A few ribbons had been dangled from it to indicate its purpose, but these were inconsequential. The most obvious item of interest was perched on top, about twelve feet in the air. When Heck, Shawna McCluskey and Gary Quinnell first spotted it from the nearby country lane, it initially resembled a doll that some deranged child had brutally disfigured. But when they got closer they saw that it was a human body. At least, that was what it once had been. She was female, and the tip of the maypole must have been sharpened to a very slender point, because she’d been impaled upright on it, possibly through the vagina, but most likely, to keep her in a vertical position, through the anus. Her arms had been bound to her sides with what looked like garlands of briars, some kind of dark circlet encased her brow, and her face was charred beyond identification. A grim-faced medical examiner, who’d already been up there on a ladder, told them that the circlet was iron and that it had been red-hot when first placed on the victim’s head.
