by M. W. Craven
Bradshaw frowned.
‘That was irresponsible,’ she said. ‘Excessive flatulence can be a warning sign for something serious. He should have referred you to a gastroenterologist.’
‘It’s a Tommy Cooper joke, Tilly,’ Poe explained.
‘Who?’
‘Google him when you get the chance. He’s one of the best comedians there’s ever been.’
‘I will, Poe.’
He knew she wouldn’t. Other than her weird sci-fi shows, she eschewed all forms of light entertainment.
‘I suppose the real reason is that I’ve studied insects and arachnids my whole adult life,’ Carroll said, his eyes never leaving the kite. ‘It seemed only natural to have a hobby that included an element of flying.’
They watched him for half an hour more but Poe could tell the thin coat Bradshaw was wearing wasn’t keeping out the biting wind. He told Carroll they had somewhere to be.
The man promised he’d get back to them about the logo designs as soon as he could.
Chapter 25
Bradshaw hadn’t attended a post-mortem before. Poe wasn’t sure she was even allowed to. He’d leave it up to Estelle Doyle – as she’d said many times before: ‘My house, my rules.’
They found a parking space close to the mortuary at the Royal Victoria Infirmary. The last time Poe had been there some building work had just begun. This time it was in full swing.
The mortuary was in the basement but the corridor he usually followed no longer existed. Instead there was a new sign and a ‘You Are Here’ map with their location marked with a red star. Poe memorised the new layout and, with Bradshaw in tow, set off to find Estelle Doyle’s new hangout.
Part of the ongoing renovation work included the mortuary. Gone was the door anyone could walk through, the door that always had one of Doyle’s trademark signs Sellotaped to the frosted window – ‘Pathologists Have The Coolest Patients’, ‘People Are Dying To Get In Here’, and Poe’s all-time favourite: a straight to the point ‘Go Away!’ – had been replaced with an automatic, sliding glass door.
It opened with a quiet ‘whoosh’ as they approached. The room that used to contain the staff lockers was now a reception area.
Poe pressed the bell.
‘Bit different to last time I was here,’ he said.
‘It smells new, Poe.’
It did. And everything looked clean and shiny and untouched.
A man stepped through a door behind the reception desk.
‘Can I help you?’
Poe flipped his ID card. ‘I’m here to view a post-mortem at two. One of Estelle Doyle’s.’
The man took their names and asked them to take a seat. Two minutes later he was back.
‘That’s all fine. If you’d like to follow me.’
He led them through a keypad-protected door into the staff area.
‘You ever worn a forensic suit before, Tilly?’ Poe asked.
‘I haven’t, Poe.’
He hadn’t thought so. There’d have been no reason for her to. Although she got out into the field these days, her role was still primarily analytical.
‘And you won’t need to wear one this time,’ the man said.
‘Oh, why not?’ Poe said. He hoped the post-mortem hadn’t been cancelled. Nightingale asking him to attend in her place had been a bonus.
‘Professor Doyle has a dedicated PM room now. She’s been asking for one for years and the lab she works for offered match funding if the hospital agreed to her demands. It has a bespoke, fit-for-purpose viewing area.’
Poe whistled in admiration. Doyle was in high demand. She was a partner in the private laboratory that handled most of the forensic and pathology work for the north-east, a Home Office pathologist and a highly paid guest lecturer at any university and teaching hospital who could afford her.
They had occasionally spoken of what her ideal mortuary would look like. It would have a dedicated room so that the urgent nature of forensic post-mortems wouldn’t disrupt anything and it would have a new viewing area. She’d never liked the old one. It was too far away from the examination tables, the dissecting bench couldn’t be seen at all and it could only comfortably fit four people. It was why she’d always insist on the SIO being suited and booted and in the room with her. If they didn’t need to get changed then Doyle must have got the viewing area she’d wanted.
The man led them down a new corridor and to a door with ‘Observation Area’ stencilled on the frosted glass. It was a small waiting room, about ten feet by ten feet. A low table with a jug of water was in the middle. Plastic-moulded seats were stacked against the wall.
‘You should stay here, Tilly.’
‘I’d like to come in if I may, Poe?’ she said. ‘I believe seeing a post-mortem will make me a better analyst.’
‘OK, but if you want to leave then do. Plenty of cops can’t cope with them. There’s no shame in it.’
He opened the other door in the room. The familiar smell greeted him, one he hoped he’d never get used to.
The new post-mortem room looked state of the art. It was square and designed for efficiency. The expensive fixtures and fittings were robust and easy to clean. The floor’s channel gratings were in short, detachable sections so they could be removed and submersed in one of the large sinks fitted against the wall opposite. Even the ceiling looked as though it could be hosed down.
The wall on the right was lined with fridges. Poe suspected they would have doors on both sides so Doyle and her team didn’t have to enter the main post-mortem room to collect their cadavers.
The observation area they were in wasn’t enclosed. Instead, a tall, angled glass divider separated them from the business side of the post-mortem room. The observation area was above the dissection bench. They were so close that when Poe leaned over he could see the digital read-out on the weighing station. The observation area was spacious, at least twice the size of the previous one, and afforded excellent views of all parts of the post-mortem room.
Poe could feel air on the back of his neck. That made sense. It would be designed to flow from the so-called ‘clean area’ – the waiting rooms, the viewing and bier rooms – and into the designated ‘dirty’ areas: the body store, the PM rooms and the used instrument stores. It was the most modern post-mortem room he’d ever been in, and it was utterly cheerless.
An examination table with a hoist and adjustable lighting above it was in the centre of the room. Estelle Doyle was working on the cadaver of Howard Teasdale, the victim found in his bedsit. He looked even bigger on the slab. His pallid skin was waxy with a blue tinge. His chest and shoulders were marbled and his abdomen had a green tinge. Shrunken, milky eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. His bloated head was raised with a block. Poe could see a cut that started behind his ears and went over his crown, made so that Doyle could pull down the front of the scalp to expose his face, and the back to expose the skull. Removing the top of the skull with a Stryker saw was how pathologists accessed the brain.
Estelle Doyle had started without them.
Chapter 26
Estelle Doyle was bent over Teasdale’s neck, dictating as she worked.
‘The fatal wound measures three hundred and nine millimetres and is above the thyroid cartilage, in between the larynx and the chin. It has broken the skin in several places but not torn it.’
As she manoeuvred herself around Teasdale’s head, she saw them watching her. She took her foot off the splash-proof foot control that turned the dictation system on and off.
‘When I was told it was you who’d be attending, Poe, I assumed you’d be OK if I made an early start? There’s a lot of Mr Teasdale to get through.’
‘Not a problem.’
‘And who’s your little friend?’ she said.
‘Matilda Bradshaw, Professor Estelle Doyle,’ Bradshaw replied. Already paler than a cavefish, she’d blanched even more since entering the post-mortem room. Poe didn’t embarrass her by asking if she wanted to step out.
&nbs
p; Doyle removed her safety glasses and walked over to them.
‘I won’t shake your hand, Matilda Bradshaw, but can we assume that if I could I would?’
Bradshaw nodded.
‘I owe you a debt of gratitude,’ Doyle continued. ‘I gather it was you who dragged this temerarious man out of a burning building?’
Bradshaw said, ‘He’s my friend.’
‘Temer what now?’ Poe said.
‘Temerarious, Poe,’ Doyle replied. ‘It means recklessly confident. And I gather you’re also the one who made the links on the Jared Keaton case?’
‘Poe and DI Stephanie Flynn do all the real work,’ Bradshaw said. ‘I just help with the science.’
‘And what colour crayons do you use when you explain things?’ Doyle said. ‘I use blue. I find it calms him.’
Bradshaw giggled, then said, ‘He knows more than he lets on, Professor Estelle Doyle.’
‘Loyal too, Poe,’ Doyle said. ‘She’ll do, she can stay.’
‘You got your second room then, Estelle?’
She looked around and nodded. ‘Thanks in part to all the additional work you’ve been bringing across.’
Poe said nothing.
‘I’m serious, Poe. The respective boards of the lab and the RVI read the papers like everyone else. Not including this one, you’ve embroiled yourself in some extremely high-profile cases over the last couple of years. The exposure we got working on them helped bring in funding.’
‘Happy to help then,’ Poe said. ‘What you got so far, Estelle?’
‘Death came quickly to this man,’ she said. She put her safety goggles back on and walked back to the corpse. ‘Although not that much quicker than if nature had been allowed to play its hand.’
‘Explain,’ Poe said.
‘If your killer hadn’t got to him, I’d have said Howard Teasdale had no more than a year to live. He wasn’t being treated for it so I assume it was undiagnosed, but he had stage-four lymphoma. It had spread beyond his lymph nodes and into his liver, his lungs and his bone marrow.’
‘You think he might have been selected because he was terminally ill?’ Poe said.
‘I don’t have anywhere near enough data to comment on that,’ Doyle said. She peered at him over the top of her safety goggles. ‘And neither do you, Poe.’
He made a mental note to tell Nightingale anyway.
‘I’ve almost finished my examination. I’ll send the full report later … Are you OK, Matilda?’
Bradshaw’s brow was beaded with sweat. Her breathing was shallow and rapid. She couldn’t take her eyes off the corpse. She nodded.
‘It helps to think of this as a scientific process, nothing more,’ Doyle said. ‘I’m here to gather evidence and interpret it. You’ve done the same thing countless times only with a different cache of data. Poe tells me you’re the best he’s ever come across.’
Bradshaw gulped and breathed out carefully, winning the fight against the gag reflex. Doyle saying Teasdale was just evidence awaiting discovery would allow her to compartmentalise a PM she probably hadn’t really wanted to attend.
‘Thank you, Professor Estelle Doyle.’
‘Cause of death?’ Poe said.
‘Asphyxiation. This is supported by a thin ligature mark and associated bruising around the neck. The strap muscles are also haemorrhaged.’
‘Manner of death was garrotting, I take it?’
‘Almost certainly.’ She lifted Teasdale’s head and turned it left, showing them the back of his neck. ‘Note the small bruise on the left side of the cervical vertebrae.’
She turned the head right and showed them a similar mark on the other side.
‘Where he used his thumbs as leverage when he tightened it?’
‘The evidence supports that. And if you wait a moment I’ll show you something else.’
She engineered the hoist into position and moved the twenty-five-stone cadaver onto its side. A faint bruise, roundish in shape and about the size of a coaster, stood out on Teasdale’s mottled flesh.
For a moment Poe didn’t know what he was seeing.
Doyle helped him out. ‘He was a big man, Poe. Out of shape and dying but he had big muscles in his neck and shoulders.’
‘The killer used his knee for extra leverage,’ he said, the answer obvious when he put himself in the killer’s mind. ‘He put his knee against his back so he could pull harder.’
‘Again, the evidence supports that,’ Doyle said.
‘How long to die?’
‘Not long at all. Ten seconds before he was unconscious, probably dead in under a minute. And there’s something else you need to see.’
Doyle picked up a remote control. A screen on the wall of the observation room flickered into life. She moved a slide under the lens of a powerful-looking microscope. At the same time, an image appeared on the screen. Doyle turned a knob on the side of the microscope and the image came into focus.
‘You want to tell Poe what that is, Matilda?’
Bradshaw leaned towards the image. She pushed her glasses up her nose and squinted slightly, her lips pursed in concentration.
‘It looks like carbon, Professor Estelle Doyle.’
The pathologist nodded. ‘We’ll confirm when the sample’s back from the lab but I’m fairly certain it’s industrial diamond dust.’
‘Where did you find it?’ Poe asked.
‘Embedded in the neck wound.’
‘Shit.’
Poe had heard about wire impregnated with diamond dust being used as garrottes but he’d never expected to see it in a case he was investigating. Eastern Bloc special forces were rumoured to use them. In theory, if their intended victim somehow managed to get some fingers between the garrotte and their neck, the killer could move his hands backwards and forwards and saw through them.
Garrottes couldn’t easily be bought on the internet but wire embedded with industrial diamond dust was available in any hardware store. Garrottes were easy to make and they were the perfect weapon. Easy to explain, even easier to conceal. It could be wrapped around the wrist like a friendship bracelet or kept in a toolbox without arousing suspicion. Poe had even heard about one being used to hang a painting. All it needed to transform it into a deadly weapon was a couple of handles. The toggle buttons used on duffel coats were ideal.
Doyle talked them through a couple of minor points and promised to have her preliminary report with Nightingale by midnight. The full report would be available when the lab results were back.
When they were ready to go, Doyle approached the viewing area.
‘Be careful with this one, Poe,’ she said.
‘I will.’
She removed her safety goggles and fixed him with an intense look. ‘I’m serious, Poe. This man’s not a street fighter; he’s a stone-cold killer.’
‘I said I will.’
Doyle shook her head. ‘You won’t. You’ll try and do it yourself and, while that’s worked for you in the past, it won’t this time. Not with this man.’
She addressed Bradshaw.
‘Miss Bradshaw, I’d be very grateful if you could curb Poe’s baser instincts on this. When you do find him, remind Poe that calling in the men with guns isn’t a sign of weakness.’
Bradshaw looked worried. ‘I’ll call them myself, Professor Estelle Doyle. Even if Poe tells me not to.’
Doyle nodded. ‘Thank you.’
She turned back to Poe.
‘But … if you do happen to come up against him, you find yourself a weapon of convenience and you put him down. You don’t warn him and you don’t try and play fair. He won’t with you, Poe.’
‘It’s not like you to get spooked, Estelle. What’s up?’
She smiled at him sadly. ‘Alas, Poe, there are some secrets which do not permit themselves to be told.’
‘What was all that gothic stuff about?’ Poe said as they walked back to the car. ‘She’s not usually like that.’
‘I’ve just checked,’ Bradshaw
replied, reading from her phone, ‘and that was an Edgar Allan Poe quote she said at the end. It’s from “The Man of the Crowd”.’
Poe frowned. That had all been very strange.
Chapter 27
They made it back to Carleton Hall in time for the final briefing of the day. They found a seat at the back next to Flynn. Nightingale had drafted in almost two hundred officers and the incident room was hot and humid and smelly. Poe grabbed a half-empty carton of curry and sniffed it. It was a dhansak. All the meat had been eaten. He spooned down the cold, spicy lentils anyway.
Bradshaw glared at him.
‘It helps my sore throat,’ he lied.
She reached into her bag and handed him an apple.
‘I’ll have it later.’
‘Now.’
He shrugged and bit into it.
‘I think you’re putting too much faith in the restorative power of fruit, Tilly. “An apple a day keeps the doctor away” isn’t supposed to be taken literally.’
‘Just eat it, Poe.’
‘Will you two behave?’ Flynn hissed.
Nightingale finished by updating them on how the surveillance of the kite was going. So far no one, not even a farmer, had been anywhere near the wood. The teams were rotating but it was becoming a less popular gig. Surveillance was exciting when things were happening, but when they weren’t, cops could moan with the best of them.
Nightingale spotted Poe and waved him to the front. She asked if there was anything relevant from Howard Teasdale’s post-mortem, and when he confirmed there was she gave him the floor.
For fifteen minutes he talked about what Estelle Doyle had found. He saved what he considered to be the most significant findings until last.
‘Howard had an untreated stage-four lymphoma. It was in his lungs, liver and lymph nodes. According to Professor Doyle, he would have been dead within the year, and although Teasdale’s registered sex offender status probably rules out a mercy killer, I don’t think we should discount it just yet.’
Nightingale said, ‘Pam, can you get warrants to view the medical records of Rebecca Pridmore and Amanda Simpson, please?’