Funeral Note

Sarah Grace

Sometimes I worry about myself. I have the feeling that there must be something wrong with the soul of a woman who can look at the aftermath of the darkest human suffering with happiness in her heart.

That’s why I quit pathology when I did. I wasn’t past my sell-by date, or even close to it, but I had an underlying feeling that I should be, and that I had become desensitised. In other words, I felt guilty about liking my macabre job too much.

It didn’t take me long to get that out of my system, just a few months back in mainstream medicine. I was treated well in practice, my workload wasn’t excessive and I didn’t make any life-threatening mistakes, but I found nothing inspiring about it and at the end of every day, I got home feeling flat. I’m not saying that I wished my patients were dead, but it came home to me that I preferred them that way.

Joe Hutchinson got it right; I’m an okay doctor, but a gifted pathologist. Maybe that’s what I needed to prove to myself all along.

I caught Roshan giving me an odd look as the wagon crew. . the para-morticians, as little Joe calls them. . took the entwined corpses from their super-sized body bag and laid them on the examination table, and I realised why. I was smiling. ‘Sorry,’ I murmured. ‘I was somewhere else.’

‘Wish I was,’ one of the bearers grumbled. ‘Wish I was anywhere else.’

‘Then go,’ I told him, ‘but first go get a gurney, please, and set it alongside the table, for when we get these two separated.’

They did as I asked then left. I have a lot of respect for those people; they’re not ghouls, they have a job that very few people would tackle, and they do it efficiently, respectfully and without complaint.

‘What do you see, Roshan?’ I asked when we were alone in the autopsy room. Sammy Pye had sent Griff Montell along as a witness, but he had chosen to stay in the viewing gallery. I didn’t blame him. The table was fully lit, giving us a much more detailed view of the remains than we’d had in the van. The extractor fans were going full blast, but they couldn’t do much about the smell. I can’t describe it adequately; the closest I can get is, imagine marinating a steak in petrol, then putting it in one of big George Foreman’s grills and forgetting about it for an hour or two, multiply that by a dozen or so, and you’ll be in the vicinity of what it was like.

My assistant walked all round the table, slowly, pausing several times to lean in and look more closely at a detail. ‘The body on the right,’ he began when he was ready, ‘the one that was against the side panel of the van, is smaller than the other and may not have been fully clothed. It is barefoot, whereas the other was wearing shoes.’

‘Man and woman?’

‘I would say so,’ he replied, in his clipped subcontinental accent. He had come to us, just after my arrival, with a BSc in Pathology from the University of Western Australia. Normally we’d have looked for a medical qualification as well, but he’d been quite a find. ‘The bodies appeared to have been tied together with some kind of synthetic rope. I believe this was done post mortem, since in addition to the gunshot exit wound which you identified, correctly in my opinion, on the larger body, the smaller, let’s call it the female, exhibits three more exit wounds, on the back. One of these has completely shattered the spine, but given their size and position I would say that any one of them would have been fatal.’

‘So, for the record,’ I said for Montell’s benefit, ‘we are looking at victims of a double homicide. We’re agreed on that, yes?’

‘Absolutely. There is no other possibility.’

‘Okay, let’s try to separate them. Is the rope still intact?’

‘I believe that it has melted into the bodies, being synthetic; it is wound round them three times, so yes, it may still be holding them together. I’ll take care of that.’ He picked up a scalpel, leaned over the mass, and chose a spot to cut the binding. As he did so the remains separated slightly, but not completely as I had hoped they would.

‘Hey, Griff,’ I called out. ‘Would you like to come and give us a hand here?’

‘Not on your life, Sarah,’ he replied sincerely; there’s a mike in the gallery, and speakers in the autopsy room. I could kid with him; I knew him from his time as Alex’s neighbour, and the rest.

Roshan and I decided on the obvious, since it would be easier to move the smaller of the bodies on to the gurney. Luckily they came apart easily when we applied a little pressure. As we rolled the burnt cadaver on to the trolley, it was evident that Roshan’s assumptions about its gender had been correct.

‘Their killers made a mistake,’ I said, for the microphone once again, ‘if they were trying to prevent or hamper identification. They should have untied the bodies before setting them alight. Their being pressed together means that the trunk of each is still recognisably human, and that some of the front of their clothing has survived the fire.’

Hers had been a dressing gown, secured at the waist by a sash. It had fallen open at the chest and three entry wounds were apparent, on a group between her breasts.

‘This is professional,’ I pronounced, speaking once again to the DC.

‘What makes you say so?’ he asked.

‘It’s a cluster; three shots close together. I’ve seen pro hits before. With impulsive, inexpert shootings the wounds are all over the place, and quite often the whole magazine is emptied. Not this one; three taps centre of the chest, quick fire. All done before she’d even hit the ground.’

‘What about the other one?’

Roshan had turned the male cadaver so that it was lying on its back. I walked around and examined it, then told him what I saw. ‘These are head shots, but the same; a cluster of three, middle of the forehead. No wonder the back of the skull’s missing. You’ll find that at the murder scene.’

‘Wherever the hell that is,’ Montell replied, gloomily.

‘Let’s see if we can help. First step, identify the bodies; bar codes on clothing can help you do that. Roshan, will you take his off, please.’

I stood back and watched as he did what I’d asked. It was easy, since most of each garment had been destroyed; that which was left, simply peeled off, revealing mottled, discoloured, part-roasted flesh. He left the dead man’s feet untouched; they’d have come off if he’d tried to remove his shoes, since they were welded to the flesh. When he was finished, he picked up the remnants of what had been the victim’s trousers. ‘There is something in these, Sarah, in a pocket.’

‘Let’s see what it is.’

He found a pair of scissors and cut through cloth. A slim wallet, black leather, fell into his hands. He passed it to me. I opened it, and smiled.

‘You see, Griff?’ I laughed. ‘You never know your luck. What we have here is a photographic driving licence, intact.’ I took it from its slot in the wallet. ‘I can’t match the face to the one on the table, not without a very expensive reconstruction, but I don’t imagine that he’d be carrying anyone else’s.’ I read the name on the plastic, aloud.

I glanced up at the viewing gallery. ‘Did you hear. .?’ I began, then stopped, when I saw that Montell was staring at me as if I’d just told him that the guy on the table, whoever the hell he might have been, had started breathing again.