Fever of the Bone

CHAPTER 15

Carol had lost count of the number of times she’d stood in a pathology suite watching a pathologist performing their precise and grisly duty. But she’d never grown inured to the pitiful nature of the procedure. Seeing a human being reduced to their component parts still filled her with sadness, but it was always tempered with the desire to deliver justice to whoever was responsible for bringing the cadaver to this place. If anything reinforced Carol’s need for justice, it was the morgue rather than the crime scene.

The pathologist today was a man who had become her friend. In a reflection of his mixed heritage, Dr Grisha Shatalov ran his department at Bradfield Cross Hospital with a paradoxical blend of White Russian authoritarianism and Canadian moderation. He believed the dead merited the same respect as the living patients whose histology slides he studied under the microscope, but that didn’t mean things had to be run with chilly formality. Right from the start, he’d welcomed Carol into his world and made her feel part of a team whose goal was to bring secrets from obscurity into the light.

Lately, Grisha had begun to share the pallor of his subjects. Long hours coupled with a young baby had left his skin grey, his long triangular eyes surrounded with dark patches like the bandit mask of a racoon. But today, he’d recovered his colour, almost seeming healthy and fit. ‘You look good,’ Carol said as she settled herself against the wall to the side of the dissecting table. ‘Have you been on holiday?’

‘I feel like I’ve had a vacation. Finally my daughter has learned how to sleep for more than three hours at a time.’ He grinned at her. ‘I’d forgotten how wonderful it feels to wake up naturally.’ As he spoke, his hand moved automatically to the tray beside him, instinctively selecting the first of a chain of instruments that would expose what was left of Daniel Morrison to their prying eyes.

Carol let her thoughts run down their own roads as Grisha worked. She didn’t need to pay close attention; he would make sure he alerted her to anything she needed to know. Her team were liaising with Northern Division to make sure all the routine elements of the investigation were in place. Something might leap out from those initial interviews and inquiries. Stacey’s brilliant computer skills might produce a loose thread for them to pick at. But that would only be if they got lucky. There was little else that could be done now until the information started flowing back to their squad room so they could pore over it, trying to identify something that didn’t fit. You could never explain in advance what that bad fit might turn out to be. There were no guidelines, no training, no checklist. It was a mixture of experience and instinct. It was an indefinable quality that each of her officers possessed, and one of the main reasons they were on her squad. Each of them had different areas where their antennae were most finely tuned, and together they were more than the sum of their parts. What a bloody waste it would be if Blake had his way and they were scattered to the four winds.

She was so absorbed in her own thoughts that the post mortem flashed past. She could hardly believe it when she heard Grisha invite her through to his office to go over the key points again. ‘Again?’ she said as she followed him, sparing a glance for the body on the table. An assistant was closing the long incisions that Grisha had made on Daniel’s torso. When it was possible these days, he used a keyhole approach to the task, avoiding the traditional Y-incision that left everyone looking like a victim of Baron von Frankenstein. That wasn’t possible when he was dealing with a murder victim. Shuddering in spite of herself, Carol wished it was.

‘It makes it easier on the families,’ he’d explained to her. ‘They’ve got this horrible image in their head of what a cadaver looks like after a post mortem, so if we can explain that it won’t be like that, they’re more inclined to agree to post mortems when it’s a medical rather than a forensic exercise.’ Looking at Daniel now, she could see the force of his argument.

Carol followed him into his office. It was hard to believe, but there seemed to be even less room for Grisha and his visitors than the last time she’d been there. There was paper everywhere. Charts, folders, periodicals and stacks of books filled shelves, stood in piles on the floor and leaned precariously against the computer monitor. When Carol shifted a mound of computer print-outs to sit on the visitor’s chair, she could barely see Grisha behind the desk. ‘You’re going to have to do something about this,’ she said. ‘Don’t you have a PhD student with nothing better to do?’

‘I swear to God, I think other people have started dumping their shit in here. Either that or the peer-reviewed stuff is breeding.’ He shifted a heap of folders so he could see her better. ‘So, your boy Daniel . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It always feels wrong, looking at a bunch of organs that have seen so little use. It’s hard not to think of all the good things he’s missed out on. The things we enjoy doing that leave their nasty repercussions waiting to ambush us.’

Carol had no response that didn’t feel sentimental or trite. ‘What’s the verdict, then? Cause of death?’

‘Asphyxiation. Heavy-duty polythene bag taped over his head effectively cut off his oxygen supply. No signs of a struggle, though. No blood or skin under his nails, no bruising anywhere apart from a mark on his thigh which looks about three or four days old and is, in my opinion, completely not sinister.’

‘Do you think he was drugged?’

Grisha frowned at her over his glasses. ‘You know I don’t know the answer to that. We won’t have any kind of answer till we get the tox screens back, and even then we’ll be none the wiser if it was GHB because the levels we already have in our blood rise after death. If I was dumb enough to make guesses about this kind of thing, I would guess he was incapacitated by drugs. Not drink, because there was no smell of alcohol in the stomach. His last meal, incidentally, consisted of bread, fish, salad and what looks like jelly babies. Probably a tuna salad sandwich, and probably eaten no more than an hour before he died.’

‘And the castration?’

‘Judging by the blood loss, I’d say post mortem, but not by long. He’d have bled out if he’d still been alive.’

‘Amateur or professional?’

‘This is not the work of a surgeon. Nor of a butcher, I’d say. Your killer used a very sharp blade, a scalpel or something similar with a small cutting edge. But in spite of that he still didn’t get it off in one clean slice. He didn’t hack at it, but it took him three or four separate movements of the blade. So I’d say this is not something he’s had a lot of practice at.’

‘First timer?’

Grisha shrugged. ‘I couldn’t say. But he was thorough, he didn’t just slash at it. Have the penis and testes turned up? Were they at the scene?’

Carol shook her head. ‘No.’

‘Trophies. Isn’t that what your Dr Tony would say?’

Carol gave a tired smile. ‘He’s not my Dr Tony, and I would never be crazy enough to second guess him. I wish he was here to weigh in with his tuppence worth, but that’s not going to happen this time out.’ Her voice was edgy.

Grisha stretched his neck so his head moved backwards, like a man avoiding a blow. ‘Whoa, Carol. What’s he done to upset you?’

‘Not him. Our new Chief Constable, who thinks if I want profiling expertise I should stay in-house.’

Grisha’s mouth made an O shape. ‘And we don’t like that idea?’

Whatever Carol was planning to say was overtaken by a knock at the door. The familiar ginger curls of DS Kevin Matthews appeared round the edge of the door. ‘Sorry to interrupt,’ he said, wincing a smile at Grisha.

‘You looking for me?’ Carol said, getting to her feet.

‘Yeah. There’s another teenage lad on the missing list. Central patched it straight through to us.’

Carol felt a heaviness in her stomach. There were times when this job felt too much to bear. ‘How long?’

‘His parents thought he was having a sleepover. Only, he wasn’t.’

Long enough, thought Carol. More than long enough.