The Scent of Death

Chapter 27

I took a break after Ainsley had gone. There was a water cooler in the corridor, so I went to get a drink while I thought through what I’d just heard.

The commander’s visit had thrown me. The good news was that Ward was still SIO, and as long as that was the case then anything I had to report would go through her. I’d no intention of going behind Ward’s back, as Ainsley wanted. But the fact he’d asked was troubling. Ward was more than capable of looking after herself, and I’d no doubt she’d be well aware of how precarious her situation was. Even so, for a senior officer to undermine her like that didn’t bode well.

Ainsley’s other news was even more disturbing. He was right about Jessop: the contractor was a threat to himself and others, and the sooner he was in custody the better. But unless the police could find hard evidence that he’d been involved in the St Jude’s murders, the investigation was back where it had started, with no leads or suspects. I’d only just started to believe that Gary Lennox could be guilty and that his mother might be lying to protect him. Now it had emerged that the fingerprints from the crime scene didn’t belong to either of them. We’d been wrong all along.

And I’d caused all that grief for Lola and her son needlessly.

I felt out of kilter, as though the ground under my feet was constantly shifting. Some of it was probably a reaction to the hit-and-run the night before. I’d seen a man I knew deliberately ploughed down and killed by a car, and another badly injured. If that had happened to anyone else, as a former doctor I’d be advising counselling or therapy. But I had my own way of dealing with things.

Finishing my drink, I dropped my cup into the bin and went back to work.

As the door of the examination suite slowly shut behind me, I felt my earlier focus begin to return. The cracked teeth on both Maria de Souza and Darren Crossly had provided the first intimation of what we might be dealing with here. Now I just had to prove it.

Mears had told me there were thirteen of the burn-like marks on the woman’s skeleton, spread out on different bones, apparently at random. At first glance I saw only eight. There was one on the bony protuberance of the mastoid process, just behind and below the right ear. Another was on the right clavicle, and there were two more on the seventh and eighth left ribs. The pubic bone had what looked like a single large burn, several times bigger than any of the others, while the remaining three were all on the metatarsals of the feet, two on the right and one on the left.

With the exception of the one behind the woman’s ear — which I was beginning to have an idea about — all of the yellow-brown marks were front-facing. Meaning they’d probably been inflicted when Maria de Souza was strapped to the bed. At first I was at a loss how Mears had counted thirteen rather than eight, before I looked more closely. The large patch of discolouration on the pubic bone wasn’t one large mark but several, close enough together to overlap. I nodded when I saw that. A large burn wouldn’t have fitted my theory, but several small ones did.

And I was in no doubt that’s what they were: burns. Mears had been right about that. Although the small, tobacco-yellow patches looked insignificant, I knew they would have been agonizing. But I didn’t agree that they were brands, or that they’d been caused by something similar to a soldering iron. True, that might have resulted in small, localized burning to the bones not dissimilar to these. It would also have resulted in far more tissue damage than we’d seen. The skin and flesh above the bone would have been almost completely burned away.

I picked up the skull, turning it to see the mark on the mastoid process. There was a chance it could have happened while she was lying down, her head turned away to expose behind her ear. I didn’t think so, though. I thought this would have been done while Maria de Souza was standing. And it had been the first one.

Mears, what were you thinking? It was right in front of you.

I quickly carried out an inventory on the rest of her skeleton, finding nothing of note, then packed it back into its box. Wiping down the surface of the table, I changed my gloves again and then began to unpack and reassemble Darren Crossly’s bones. They told a similar story to Maria de Souza’s. Numerous small burns the colour of nicotine stains, all on bones that had only a thin covering of skin and subcutaneous fat. In his case, ribs, tibia, the metacarpals of both hands and feet. There was no sign of a burn to either mastoid process, which briefly puzzled me. But he had one on his sternum, low down towards the bottom of the blade-like breastbone. When I saw that I began to understand what had happened to him as well.

Packing away the former porter’s skeleton, I turned to the sections of burnt bone Mears had prepared. Cutting a sliver thin enough to examine with a microscope — especially from fragile, burnt bone — isn’t easy. He’d set the bones he’d selected in resin and then used a microtome — a specialized cutting tool — to pare off wafer-thin slices. That took a good eye and a steady hand, but whatever his other flaws the forensic taphonomist was meticulous when it came to fine details. The sections he’d made were perfect, saving me the trouble of preparing my own.

Putting one taken from Maria de Souza’s rib under the microscope, I bent my head to the eyepiece.

The world became an illuminated display of brown-greys and white. I was looking specifically for the cylindrical structures called osteons, which the outer layer of lamellar bone is made up of. Osteons carry blood through a central canal, although there was obviously no blood in these any more. They’d been discoloured from the burn, and I could see where micro-fractures had formed between them. The periosteum — the fibrous membrane covering the bone’s exterior — had suffered damage too.

In burnt bone that was only to be expected. What interested me was the scale. I’d been struck from the start by how small the burns were, the patches of discolouration tightly focused. Mears had concluded that meant whatever had made them was small as well, something like a soldering iron, where the heat would be concentrated at its tip. It was a reasonable assumption to make, and all his thinking had progressed from there.

That was his mistake.

I examined the rest of the bone sections, seeing the same thing each time. Packing them away, I considered calling Ward to let her know what I’d found. But there was one more thing I needed to check first.

Something I wasn’t looking forward to.

The sun was struggling to emerge from behind the clouds during the drive to St Jude’s. By the time I arrived at the gates it had won a temporary battle, gilding the stone pillars and rusting ironwork with a hard-edged light that was already dimming as dark clouds built up again.

The young policewoman and the older PC were on duty again. She gave me a cheery smile.

‘Back again?’

‘Hopefully not for much longer.’

‘Tell me about it.’

She waved me through, and as though waiting for its cue the sun chose that moment to slide behind clouds once more. Driving past the humps of rubble, I felt the usual heaviness at the sight of St Jude’s rising up ahead of me. Neither Ward nor Whelan had answered when I’d tried calling them. I’d left a voicemail confirming that the woman’s remains belonged to Maria de Souza and that we needed to speak urgently but hadn’t said why. It wasn’t something to leave in a message, and I was due back at St Jude’s anyway to continue with the cadaver dog search. I thought I’d probably find one or both of them there.

Parking with the trailers and police vehicles, I climbed out and saw them both on the steps outside the hospital’s pillared entrance. They were talking to Jackson, the police search adviser. He was in a pair of dirty coveralls, and as I approached a few other white-clad officers were trooping out of the hospital’s cavernous doorway. It looked like the search team had either finished or was taking a break. Not wanting to interrupt if Jackson was briefing Ward on their progress, I hung back until they’d finished.

I was shocked at Ward’s appearance. She’d looked exhausted the night before. Now she was positively haggard, her face hollowed out and drawn. Even the unruly hair seemed lifeless as she nodded at whatever Jackson was saying before turning away. As the PolSA headed towards the trailers, she and Whelan came down the steps.

‘If you’ve come for the cadaver dog search, you’re too late,’ she said, as I went over. ‘The dog trod on a nail so his handler’s taken him to the vet. Doesn’t look too bad, so we should be OK to resume tomorrow.’

She sounded as tired as she looked, listless and flat.

‘Did you get my message?’ I asked.

‘About Maria de Souza?’ She nodded. ‘Thanks. We’re still trying to track down Wayne Booth’s dentist to see if the palate from the boiler was his. You’d think someone would know if he wore a bloody denture, but no one seems sure.’ She seemed to collect herself. ‘You said you’d something else to tell us?’

‘I’ve had a look at the burns on Crossly and de Souza,’ I said. ‘They’re not thermal.’

‘Come again?’ Whelan said.

‘They’re electrical burns. The victims weren’t branded. Someone repeatedly gave them electric shocks, strong enough to burn the bone.’

‘Are you sure?’ Ward’s fatigue had suddenly gone.

‘As sure as I can be. Visually, they’re very similar, but thermal burns are bigger and less focused. That’s why these were so small, and why there wasn’t much external scorching. The current passes directly through the skin and muscle. Both types of burn can cause fractures, but with electrical ones there’s damage on the microscale as well. You get microscopic cracks in the bone’s structure, which is what I found here. It explains the other injuries too, like the larger fractures on their arms. And the abrasions from the straps weren’t from them being beaten or trying to escape, they were from seizures. That’s why both victims’ teeth were cracked, because they’d been clenched so hard during muscle spasms.’

‘Jesus.’ Ward was fully alert now, assessing what this could mean. ‘What was it, some sort of stun weapon like a Taser?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t think so. That wouldn’t carry enough charge to cause injuries like these. But with no mains electricity in the hospital, it would have to be something portable.’

‘We found car batteries inside,’ Whelan said. ‘We thought they’d just been dumped, but if someone ran jump leads from them would they have been powerful enough?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admitted. ‘Perhaps if there were enough of them.’

This was entering unknown territory. Not much research had been done on electrical burns to bone, and I’d come across them only a few times before. And they’d been the result of massive shocks from faulty wiring or workplace accidents, and in one case a lightning strike. Nothing remotely like this.

‘Whatever it was, I don’t think it was just used for torture,’ I went on. ‘From their placement, most of the burns look to have been made when the victims were lying down. But Maria de Souza had one behind her ear, and Darren Crossly had one in the middle of his breastbone. I think they were given shocks to stun them. Him when he was facing forward, and her by someone standing behind her.’

‘Maybe she was trying to escape,’ Whelan said. ‘You’d stun the big one first because he’s more dangerous, then the girlfriend as she tries to run away.’

Ward was nodding. ‘Makes sense. But why the hell didn’t Mears spot it?’

‘I think he did. He just didn’t want to admit it,’ I said. ‘He’d started off assuming the burns were thermal and then couldn’t let go of the idea. Not once he’d committed himself and told you about it. I think that’s why he was taking so long — he couldn’t accept that the facts didn’t fit his theory.’

It was known as cognitive bias. I’d known more than a few academics who’d fallen prey to it, stubbornly refusing to admit they’d made an error, despite mounting evidence. It happened with older individuals as well, but with Mears his arrogance had been compounded by inexperience. He’d been so desperate to prove himself on his first major case that he’d lost sight of what he was supposed to be doing.

It was the least of his problems now.

Ward obviously thought so too. ‘Well, leaving Daniel Mears aside, at least we know how the victims were overpowered as well as tortured. That’s a step forward. Was there anything else?’

It was said with the air of dismissal, but I hadn’t finished. ‘Actually, there is. I think the same thing happened to Christine Gorski.’

That got their attention. ‘I thought she didn’t have any burns?’ Ward said, frowning.

‘None that I could see, no. But she could have had one somewhere we wouldn’t know about.’

I saw Ward’s face change as she realized. ‘You mean her stomach.’

‘I think so, yes. We know there wasn’t a big wound because there was no blood on her clothes. But she was wearing a cropped top that would have exposed her midriff, and a contact burn from an electric shock could have broken the skin without it bleeding. That’d be enough to attract flies when she died, especially if it became infected first.’

That met with a sombre silence.

‘You don’t know that for sure, though,’ Whelan said after a moment. ‘You said yourself there was nothing on her body to say that’s what happened.’

‘Not on hers, no.’ I took a breath, loath to say it. ‘But there was on the foetus.’

At first I’d thought the minuscule fractures on the delicate bones must have occurred when its mother’s body was moved. But after I’d seen Darren Crossly’s and Maria de Souza’s injuries, I’d examined the foetal skeleton as well and seen how similar the injuries were.

‘Muscle contractions from an electric shock can cause bone fractures,’ I told them. ‘That’s what caused them on Crossly and de Souza, and I think that’s what happened to the foetus as well. The womb and amniotic fluid might have offered some protection, but… not much.’

‘Jesus,’ Whelan muttered, shaking his head.

But Ward was unconvinced. ‘If someone gave Christine Gorski an electric shock, why didn’t she have any fractures herself?’

‘They don’t always happen. The foetus was much smaller and closer to the charge. And Christine Gorski did have a dislocated shoulder. The muscle spasms can cause that as well, so it’s possible that happened at the same time.’

‘Her waters broke.’ Whelan’s voice was a rasp. ‘That’s what those splashes were on the loft steps and loft insulation. Some bastard gave her an electric shock and her waters broke.’

I’d reached the same conclusion. And then, when she’d tried to get away, someone had followed her up to the loft and bolted it behind her.

Whelan seemed relieved when his phone rang. He moved further away on the steps to answer as Ward continued.

‘So we’re looking at the same person being responsible for all three victims.’ She squeezed the bridge of her nose, rubbing her eyes. ‘Christine Gorski, Crossly and de Souza, and probably Wayne Booth as well, although we can’t prove that yet.’

‘I spoke to Ainsley earlier,’ I said. ‘He told me they weren’t Gary Lennox’s fingerprints you found at St Jude’s. Did Lola change her mind about letting you take them?’

Ward’s earlier animation had died. ‘No. She was still withholding consent, so we seized his feeder cup and a mug she’d used from their house. It wouldn’t be admissible in court but it meant we could run their fingerprints against the ones from St Jude’s. None of them matched.’

So that was that. After all the fuss and trouble, the case against Gary Lennox had been a waste of time, just as Ainsley had said. True, at least now he was receiving proper medical care, but I doubted that would count for much with Lola. Good job, Hunter.

‘So where does that—’ I began, but Ward raised her hand.

‘Hang on.’

She was looking at Whelan. He was still on the phone, frowning as he listened to what was being said at the other end.

‘Something’s up,’ he told her, before speaking into the phone again. ‘Say that again, you’re not…’

His frown deepened, and as it did I heard a car engine approaching. An unmarked red van was being driven slowly down the driveway towards the hospital. Walking in front, as though escorting it, were two uniformed police officers. I recognized the cheerful young PC and her older colleague who’d been on the gate, but even when I saw the van driver’s hand extended from its open window, holding something aloft, I didn’t realize what was happening.

Still on the phone, Whelan’s face had turned ashen at whatever he was hearing. ‘Oh, fuck,’ he breathed.

‘What’s the hell’s going on, Jack?’ Ward demanded, as other police officers turned towards the strange procession.

There was no time to answer. Suddenly, the van accelerated, forcing the two PCs ahead of it to break into a run. The young woman I’d spoken to earlier stumbled and fell, and for an awful second I thought the van would run over her. Instead it braked and the driver’s door was flung open.

Jessop climbed out.

The contractor carried a sports holdall slung over one shoulder, bulging and sagging from whatever was inside. He still had one arm raised in the air, and I could see there was something small and square gripped in his fist. At first I thought it was a mobile phone, but then I saw the wires curling from the open bag.

He was holding a detonator.