The Doll's House

8

The young woman lay cold and lifeless on the slab. The sand that had encased her for so long had been swept away grain by grain and sent for analysis, leaving the victim looking strangely clean. Now that she was away from the beach, exposed and unadorned in the police mortuary, she was a pitiful sight. She was so thin – skeletal was how Jim Grieves, the pathologist, had put it over the phone. As Helen stared at the corpse, she felt a wave of nausea sweep over her. This had once been a vibrant young woman, but now her skin was grey, her lips cracked and her bones strained everywhere to puncture what remained of her skin. Helen felt profoundly sorry for her.

They had searched the Police National Computer and made the customary missing persons enquiries, but had come up with nothing. So Helen had decided to head straight to the police mortuary to see if Jim could throw any light on who she was and how she had come to this.

‘She’s been starved,’ Jim offered as his opening salvo. He was not without compassion, but he was to the point, years of service and hundreds of corpses having eroded his desire to engage in pleasantries. ‘Her stomach has shrunk to the size of an orange, bone strength has been compromised and I found traces of non-edible objects – wood, cotton, even metal – in her digestive system.’

Helen nodded.

‘I’ve more work to do, but so far I can find no obvious cause of death. The neck and vertebrae are intact, there are no bullet or knife wounds, no signs of manual or ligature strangulation either, so for now we’ll assume that she starved to death.’

‘Jesus.’

‘This would fit with a few other things I’ve observed. Her skin has a grey, leathery quality – even where it has been well preserved – and her eyes have deteriorated markedly. I would say she was virtually blind by the end. Also, bloods show that she had a total absence of vitamin D in her system.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Taken all together it suggests that she was kept in total darkness in the final weeks or even months of her life.’

Helen couldn’t find words to express her horror this time. Had this young woman starved to death in a lightless hell?

‘Anything else?’ Helen said quickly.

‘You’ll note the tattoo – a bluebird on the right shoulder – done sometime in the last three to five years. Also, the pitting around the groin area. Looks like historic evidence of an STI – I would hazard molluscum contagiosum, but I’ll confirm when I’ve done more tests.’

‘How long has she been buried?’

‘Hard to say with any real accuracy. As you can see, the body has started to decompose. Skeletalization is about thirty per cent complete but there is still plenty of skin remaining and the hair is largely intact. Heat speeds up decomposition, cold slows it down and it was pretty chilly down there. So I would estimate two to four years.’

Helen exhaled – those parameters were too broad for her liking.

‘But I do have something else that might help,’ Jim continued. Turning, he offered Helen a small metal bowl. Helen peered into it – a small, electronic device lay inside.

‘Your victim had a heart condition. This is her pacemaker,’ Jim explained, wiping rust and dried blood off the unit, ‘complete with manufacturer’s logo and serial number.’

Helen mustered a half-smile: finally some good news.

‘Run that serial number down,’ Jim continued ‘and you’ve got your girl.’