Dead of Winter

Chapter 35

Ebony watched Mathew finish laying out Tanya’s remains on the steel mortuary table. He rested her head on the stand. Mathew had a bruise just under his eye. Ebony had no intention of asking him how he got it.

Carter walked in and laughed at him. ‘Fuck. . that’s a good one. . how did you get that shiner?’

Mathew’s eyes went towards Harding. He gave a sheepish grin. ‘Tripped over the other night. Had too much to drink.’

‘Took an uppercut, or a jab. . bam, bam. .’ said Carter, guard up as he shadow-boxed. ‘Somebody shorter than you. “Fell over”, my arse. You should take up boxing, Mathew. It’s a great way to keep fit.’ Ebony gave Carter a sideways look. He raised an eyebrow back.

Harding pulled down her visa and pulled on gloves. She came over to the table and handed Ebony a mask.

‘Follow me round, Ebony. Take the photos I tell you to,’ said Harding. Mathew stood ready to help turn the body, collect samples: neatly laid trays poised. Harding smiled at Ebony and handed her a camera. ‘Do you know how to use it?’

‘Yes. I used one in college.’ She turned it over in her hands.

‘Start with a view of the whole body from each side.’

Carter didn’t enjoy the autopsy side of the job. He stood back with his notepad ready.

Harding spoke into the dictation machine as she walked the length of the table and got an overview of the body.

‘Detective Sergeant Dan Carter and Detective Constable Ebony Willis are present to assist and record and Mathew Cummings is diener. I am about to perform an autopsy on the body of an adult female discovered earlier today on the side of the M25 ring road around London. We had to wait for the autopsy as her body was still partly frozen. The body is in one piece.’ Harding walked around the table. ‘The woman is well muscled, her body weighs sixty-five kilos. Her height is five foot eight. She has no obvious scars, tattoos or birthmarks. I estimate her age to be late twenties. We have identified her as a dancer named Tanya.’

Harding pulled down the light and a magnifying lens to examine the joints. She called Ebony in to take a picture.

‘Bruising on her shoulders corresponding to finger marks where she appears to have been held down.’

‘We’ll get Bishop in here and see if we can get a print off her,’ Carter said.

‘An incision from pubic bone to sternum has been made already: I’m going to widen it to take it from each shoulder down to join the centre cut in a Y-shape.’ Mathew passed her a scalpel. She made a cut across from the nape of the neck to each shoulder and cut through the muscle and flesh. ‘Someone has sawn through the clavicle; the ribs and the breastplate have been removed. Heart and lungs have been taken out in a block. Takes a good degree of skill to remove these so cleanly.’

She talked as she worked her scalpel beneath the flesh and skin of the neck. ‘I will be removing the tongue and windpipe by working up from the skin in the upper chest.’ She pulled the tongue down from under the jaw and handed it to Mathew.

‘All the major organs have been removed.’ She moved back down and opened up the body further. ‘The stomach is still present.’ Mathew handed her a large syringe and she proceeded to empty the stomach contents.

Harding moved back up the body to Tanya’s skull; she opened up Tanya’s eyelids one after the other.

‘Unable to collect ocular fluid. . not present.’ She glanced up at Carter and Ebony. ‘Corneas are missing.’

‘Is that the same as Silvia?’ Carter asked while Harding picked up each of Tanya’s fingers and cut away the nail and the nail bed. She tapped the contents into a tray Mathew held for her.

‘We don’t know about her corneas; the eyes were too degraded to tell. But if you mean that she was missing her internal organs, then yes. The whole of the torso section was missing, including major organs.’

‘There are incisions on the femur and sections have been sawn through and extracted.’ Mathew handed her a steel ruler which she laid alongside the leg. ‘Fifteen centimetre sections have been removed with a fine-bladed handsaw.’ She gestured for Ebony to get as close to the femur as she could and take a look through the magnifier. ‘These injuries bear a significant resemblance to the type of dissection we saw in Silvia.’

Mathew helped to turn the body over.

‘There are two areas of skin grafting on the backs of her thighs and buttocks, carried out within hours prior to her death. The area is still in trauma.’

‘It wasn’t just organs then?’ asked Carter.

‘The skin is an organ.’

‘I know but. .’

‘No. . not just. . she has had sections of bone removed from her femurs the same as Silvia.’

‘Why sections of bone? What is that about?’ Carter asked.

‘There are stem cells in the marrow,’ answered Ebony as she stared across at Harding for confirmation of her thoughts. ‘Organs, corneas, skin and bone marrow?’

Harding nodded. ‘Yes. She wasn’t just murdered. She was harvested.’