Cold as Ice

Chapter 28

The next morning Pauline Murphy’s body was waiting on a trolley in front of the steel fridge doors. She was thawed: her body had come to room temperature.

Harding watched Mark wheel the trolley next to the end dissecting table in the mortuary. He altered the height of the trolley and slid the body across and onto the table. ‘We’ll leave the sheet beneath her while we examine her.’ Harding placed her papers on the table over the sink at the head of the dissection table. Mark nodded his understanding and then mirrored Harding’s actions as he stood across from her and peeled back the sheeting section by section.

‘Be careful to fold it in on itself and catch whatever debris she has around her body.’ Mark didn’t answer. He was looking at the body as it unfolded. Harding held her hand out to indicate where Mark’s eyes should be looking. She wanted him to concentrate on her own hands. She wanted his whole attention. Mark obeyed for a few seconds but then his eyes slipped back to the body. Harding didn’t bark, for once; she understood that he was sensitive. She knew he would be saddened, shocked by the sight of the female form so denigrated. Her eyes were a lot softer when they focused on him than her demeanour as she stood stick-straight, pencil-thin, all hard lines. For Harding this was her sweeter side.

‘Mark?’

Mark looked up at her and nodded. His nod was a reminder to himself to stay focused. It was an acknowledgement to Harding that he knew what was expected of him and he could fulfil it at least over the mortuary slab if not in private. Mark was beginning to understand why this placement with one of the best pathologists in the UK was not an easy one. It might have helped if he had fancied her a bit but he didn’t think so. She was a female predator. She offered herself for intimacy, fornicated, then she crunched loudly on men’s bones. Mark loved to paint, figure painting – he sketched the women’s bodies in the morgue sometimes, although usually just sections of them, the curve of a breast, the soft round of a stomach. The make-up, dressing side of his job was a pleasure to him. There wasn’t much about his job he didn’t like. It meant he earned enough to buy the materials to keep his painting going and he was a better anatomist for it. He was a make-up artist with a flare for making women look beautiful even in death. He had never seen a woman so unkindly brutalized and parodied as Pauline Murphy was. But he was a professional and he was already thinking of how he could undo some of the damage done to her. Mark had got the job, started training in it because he was good friends with Harding’s last diener, Mathew. But Mathew had warned him.

‘She’s going to want to screw you – in every sense. Don’t let her know you’re gay if you can help it.’

‘Bi,’ Mark contradicted. ‘Options are still open.’

Mathew rolled his eyes.

‘Just because you were engaged once, to a woman, doesn’t mean you’re bi. It means you were confused. And that’s what you need to leave her thinking until you’re three months into your contract. That way she can’t dismiss you. Keep her thinking you’re playing hard to get. Keep camp down to a minimum and you might survive better than I did.’

‘I’m not camp.’

‘Yes you are – as Christmas, after a few drinks, and that’s what she’ll be buying you. She’ll engineer it so you have to work late, so it’s better you go to hers. She’ll turn on a charm that’s pretty irresistible in the bedroom. She’ll have you trussed up like a turkey in no time.’

‘Really? You’ve made it sound a lot more exciting than I could have dreamed of.’

‘Believe me, been there, done that and got the T-shirt plus the bruises to show for it. She invented the term rough sex, but it’s all one-way. Invent a girlfriend but not a serious one. Then she’ll think she just has to wait. The main thing in all this is not whether you feel like seeing if you’re really bi; it’s that she gets bored very quickly and then one day you find your job’s been given to another. Remember – treat ’em mean – keep ’em keen.’

‘You still seeing her then? Thought it was over when it lost you your job?’ Mark asked, a smile creeping across his face.

‘Of course.’ Mathew grinned sheepishly.

Harding almost stamped her foot as she waited irritably for Mark to finish observing and start laying out the tools of dissection on a tray. The stamp was transmuted to a series of toe taps. She had a nervous, irritable constant twitch in her demeanour – a coiled spring. She lived on her nerves. But Mathew had been right. She hadn’t given up hope of bedding Mark so she kept her eyes soft as she watched him prepare for the autopsy. Patience.

‘Ready?’ He nodded. ‘Ah, just in time,’ she said as she saw Willis and Carter walked in, suited up in protective gear. ‘Take hold of the camera please, DC Willis. I am about to start the autopsy examination of the female body found on Hampstead Heath yesterday morning. Height: five foot eight inches. Weight: five stone one pound. Colour of hair: dyed black, originally mid brown. Ethnicity: Caucasian. She was wearing a charm bracelet around her right wrist which has been removed.’

She stood back to record the general condition of the body: ‘Severely malnourished. Yellowing of the skin possibly due to hepatitis B infection or liver failure. She has several gangrenous wounds on her that have maggot infestation.’

Mark went to switch on the extractor beneath the table. She held up her hand to stop him. She leaned over the body and breathed in the smell.

‘Rat’s urine,’ she said. ‘Mixed with the smell of gangrene from her infected wounds.’ She nodded to Mark that he could turn it on now. Carter breathed out again as the smell was carried from below the body.

‘Injuries: skin peeled up from over both breasts, done by using a scalpel or razor blade to cut the skin on the underside of the breast. It has then been pulled by hand, cut again around the nipples. The stripping of the skin has led to a feathered tearing around the edges of the flesh.’

Harding ran her gloved hand down the arm; she turned the hand over to expose the inside of the forearm and the irregular sections of missing flesh. She shone a light down and examined the injury.

‘These are bite marks here from rodents; the action is one of gnawing as opposed to tearing. The scars are at many different stages of healing – these bites were inflicted on living flesh. There are other puncture wounds, pairs of fine needle punctures. The chafing in the skin around the ankle is uniform. Wounds are not deep.’ She carried on as she moved up to the wrists. ‘Soft tissue damage here at the wrists too, same type of wound, same width, deeper though. The damage to the flesh is angled as such: it cuts in where there was weight pulling against it.’

‘So she was suspended again – same scenario as with Emily Styles, held with her arms above her head, you mean?’ asked Carter.

‘Yes.’

Harding moved up to Pauline Murphy’s head and examined her neck. ‘There are scars here, tissue still repairing. Not made with the same force as with Emily Styles. They concentrate more on the sides of the neck, over the carotid artery.’ Harding looked up from her examination. Ebony held her gaze. ‘Looks possible that there were previous attempts at killing her or that it wasn’t the first time she’d been strangled in the weeks before she died. Maybe not with the intention of causing death.’

‘Asphyxiophilia,’ said Ebony.

Harding nodded. ‘I agree. ‘An intentional cessation of oxygen to the brain for sexual arousal.’

‘And exact cause of death, Doctor, please?’ asked Carter.

‘The flaying of the skin on her breasts was the last injury inflicted on her. We need to examine her heart to tell whether it gave out but I think the shock, the pain killed her.’

‘One of the oldest forms of torture,’ said Ebony. ‘In Medieval times they used to try and get the skin off in one piece.’

‘He looks like he tried to make an item of clothing out of it,’ Mark said.

‘Yes,’ agreed Carter. ‘He masks and he reveals. He covers the skin in make-up as thick as a mask or he peels back the bare skin to show the raw flesh beneath.’

‘The female form defaced, reviled,’ said Mark.

‘It seems like the actions of someone young to me. Someone finding their way through a minefield of emotions,’ Harding added.

‘Someone seriously mad,’ Carter said. ‘And getting progressively worse. He takes a step further with each woman. He’s a work in progress. He wants us to see that.’

On the way back to Fletcher House Carter looked across at Willis.

‘I’ve been thinking about it, watching that post mortem. I’m not sure I’m happy for you to go into this without knowing more about the man we’re up against.’ Ebony didn’t answer. ‘We could wait till we are further into the investigation to send you into it.’ Ebony still didn’t answer. ‘You know, Ebb, you might understand what it’s like to have a difficult childhood but it doesn’t make you the best at coping with the man when you find him. You’re going to have to act like these women, be sociable, flirt even – that’s a first.’ He joked but his eyes stayed on hers; they were full of concern.

‘I understand, Guv.’

‘Really… you are going to have to lay yourself bare for this one. If you don’t he’ll spot you a mile off. Ebb – you’ve just seen what he’s capable of. He shows no mercy and he eeks out every drop of pain from his victims, but something… something made them trust him. He’s clever, manipulative, like I’ve never seen before. My head and my heart says I don’t want you anywhere near him.’

She looked across at Carter. ‘I would agree – but I believe that Danielle is still alive and I think that from inside that coffin, she’s praying we’re going to find her.’

Carter shook his head and looked at her incredulously.

‘Christ! I don’t think I’ve ever heard you so emotional. You must want to do it.’

‘I do and I think it’s worth me trying. We know that something about his choice of victim says that he grew up either without a mother or with a mother who was a destructive influence rather than a nurturing one. I understand what that’s like. Makes me a good target, Guv.’

Carter turned away for a few seconds to gather his thoughts. He looked back at her. He could see her eyes were hungry for it.

‘Yes.’ He turned back. ‘It does.’