Sarah Hall-Chapter 2

Detective Wood ducked under the crime scene tape cordoning of the horrific scene which lay before him. They were still waiting for the post-mortem examination results to find out whether the victim had died from her knife wounds or the flames first. It was one of the worst crime scenes Det. Wood had seen in his years of working in the job. The charred body lay in the middle of a blackened forest floor. The features were unrecognisable- their only hope of finding the name of the woman was via dental records as her teeth were remarkably intact. It was going to be hard to break it to the family when they discovered the victim's name- the body was beyond recognition, it would also be hard to prepare for burial. They were first alerted of the murder last night when a drunken man stumbling home from a friend's house came across the embers of the fire. He felt a body underneath as he stamped out the fire and when he looked down using his phone-light, he threw up before calling the ambulance and police who immediately sped to the scene. When a constable contacted Wood, he walked into the forest with a clipboard and left with no notes- the scene shocked him to the point he acknowledged nothing else. Now, the day after, they were piecing together the events of that night using the ash coated rag, blown out match and the injuries to the woman. As Wood was mentally calculating the killer's route, his cell rang. Around 5 people's head snapped round at the shrill, high-pitched tone which echoed through the dense forest around the before eerily-silent crime scene. He flipped open the screen. The post-mortem results were ready.