Like Clockwork

20

Riedwaan followed Piet Mouton to the mortuary, stopping to buy coffee on the way. He would phone Clare in the morning. He did not want Jakes answering the phone. What he felt like doing was punching the bastard in the mouth. That would wipe the smug smile off his face. Riedwaan’s fist was clenched around the polystyrene cup. It spilt, burning him. He balanced the coffee in the open ashtray to avoid doing any more damage to himself, then parked next to Piet’s car. Theirs were the only two in the parking lot. He keyed in the entrance code to the lab and took the lift up. Piet was already setting out his instruments and containers. Riedwaan pushed open the door and gave the pathologist his coffee.

‘No cake?’ asked Mouton.

‘You’re fucking too fat already, Doc. Let’s go.’ Riedwaan sipped his coffee, keeping his eyes off the girl’s mutilated face. He picked up a clipboard and made some notes. Her hand was tied up – just like the last girl. He looked at her long dark hair. A piece had been cut off, close to her scalp.

‘A souvenir for the killer?’ he asked Mouton.

‘Can’t tell, but probably. Sick bastards.’ Mouton was scribbling his own notes.

‘Time of death, Doc?’ Mouton had inserted the probe into the girl’s body. He always did a sub-hepatic probe, moving the metal behind the liver. He didn’t approve of the rectal scope. In a sexual assault case you didn’t want to mess with evidence. ‘I’d say at least eight hours, maybe more. She’s cold.’ He put the instruments down.

‘When was she moved?’ asked Riedwaan.

Mouton turned the body over. ‘I’ll have to do some more tests, but take a look at this hypostasis. The red blood cells fix after a while. I’d take a bet she lay on her side for some time before she was moved. Maybe even since last night.’

‘So when was she moved?’ asked Riedwaan. ‘It couldn’t have been last night because the tide was up in the morning.’

‘I’d say this evening. Her hair is only slightly damp from the rain.’ He pulled a finger through the girl’s thick hair. ‘I would guess not long before she was found.’

‘Such a public place. How? Why there?’

‘You ask your lady to figure that out for you.’ Mouton was bending in close to the body again, tweezers in his hand.

‘What you got there, Doc? More semen?’ The pathologist grunted. ‘Not this time. Looks like bird shit to me.’ He dropped the tiny fibres he had picked off the girl’s back into the bags he used for samples. ‘I’ll send it away for testing.’ He moved around the body, picking up one of the girl’s hands, then the other. Then he moved to her feet, eased off the high, tight-fitting boots, and scribbled again on his notepad.

‘What happened to her feet, Doc?’

‘Same injuries to the extremities as the other girl had. I’m not sure what they are. Gnaw marks. Rats, maybe. Most of the bodies we see that have been left outside for some time have bites from scavengers on them. In the northern hemisphere most dead bodies are found indoors. Makes it much easier to place time of death because you get a constant ambient temperature. And, of course, a body that’s inside is not going to be interfered with by packs of dogs.’

‘Thanks for the free lecture, Doc.’

Mouton straightened up. ‘You could do with an education, Riedwaan. But these boots were put on after death, after she’d been alone somewhere long enough for the rats to chew her.’

Mouton crouched down beside the girl. ‘Come and look here.’ Riedwaan crouched next to him. He could smell a trace of perfume on her skin, she was that close.

‘The throat is cut in the same way. Another Colombian necktie,’ Mouton turned to Riedwaan. ‘The South Americans moving in?’

‘Not that I’ve heard,’ said Riedwaan. ‘I don’t think this is drug related, do you?’

‘Thinking is not my job, Riedwaan. I’ll leave that up to you. But if you asked my opinion, I’d say no. Whoever did this has some unresolved business with women.’

Piet Mouton reached over for the instruments he used to expose the most intimate recesses of the human body. ‘Okay, let’s get to the real work now.’ Riedwaan’s stomach heaved, but Mouton’s patient dissection would reveal where Amore had been in the last few days of her life and the first day of her death. Finding out where and teasing out how she died were the keys they needed to unlock the secret of who had killed her. The mortuary was quiet. Riedwaan prepared himself for a long night.