by Ali Gunn
Locard’s Exchange Principle was so fundamental that, even in Yorkshire, they covered it as part of the forensic training all detectives were mandated to undertake. His new colleagues at the Met probably thought he was some sort of idiot farm boy. He’d have to work doubly hard to dispel that myth. He watched as the assistant photographed the body using an enormous camera that was mounted in a frame attached to a hinged arm. It looked cumbersome.
The assistant saw him looking. ‘It’s to keep the shot in focus,’ he explained.
Before Stryker could make a quip about stating the obvious, Spilsbury scowled at her assistant. ‘Just because I talk through the autopsy, it doesn’t mean you can.’
He shot a guilty grin at Stryker as he deftly pushed and pulled the frame around taking whole-body shots first before zooming in on the face. As he worked, the images were transmitted wirelessly to a computer in the corner which flashed up each picture. It was this monitor that Spilsbury watched like a hawk.
‘Right, that’s enough, Terrence. Thank you.’
The camera frame swung out of the way, and Terrence busied himself taking the camera back out of its mount. He placed it on a bench at the far end of the examination room and then stepped back again to allow the boss to get to work.
‘Now, Mr Stryker, this is the bit where green detectives often get queasy, and it’s only going to get worse from here. Can you handle it?’
His mind screamed no, he couldn’t handle it. A bit of blood was one thing, but the mere idea of yanking the innards out of a corpse turned his stomach. He nodded anyway. ‘I’m not a newbie.’
There was an evil glint in her eyes that suggested she knew something he didn’t. ‘Drug busts don’t prepare you for the smell that’s going to hit you. There’s a bin in the hallway if you need it.’
His neck whipped around to look through the tiny window in the door to see where the bin was, just in case he did need it, and he realised that he’d been played. There was no bin.
She tried and failed to hide a smile as she continued. ‘I’m going to start wide, narrow down to look for the details and then widen out when I give my conclusion. Today is going to be a bit unusual not that you’ll appreciate it when you’ve got nothing to compare it to. What I’m going to be doing today is a combined virtual autopsy, or virtopsy, with a traditional medicolegal autopsy.’
He demurred for a moment, knowing that he was about to ask the obvious question, and then he did it anyway. ‘What’s the difference?’
A derisive headshake met his question. ‘Unlike a traditional autopsy, a virtopsy is non-destructive. I’ll be running the body through a combination of computerised tomography and magnetic resonance images scans.’
‘So?’
‘So, Mr Stryker, I can build up a three-dimensional model of the body. This is a brand-new technique which takes lots of flat images known as slices and then builds up those slices so I can render the body on-screen in three dimensions. That lets me move through it with the click of a mouse. Anything out of the ordinary will stand out like a sore thumb, and if this case is murder then the defendant’s solicitor will be able to instruct their own expert to verify my findings which saves a lot of my time.’
‘You’re taking pictures inside Layla Morgan? And then stitching them together into a great big three-dimensional mishmash? Magic!’
‘And then, alas, cutting her up anyway.’ Spilsbury sighed heavily. ‘Home office rules, you know. The tech might be there but the civil servants will take a few decades to catch up.’
He said nothing. Whatever response he gave, Spilsbury would once again shoot him that look that made him feel like the child being told to sit in the corner of the room.
As she had at St Dunstan, Spilsbury leant in close to the corpse and sniffed. It was like watching a hipster in a third-wave coffee shop hunched over their pour-over sniffing for the slightest hint of the crisp apple and butterscotch promised on the tasting notes.
‘All the senses must be considered, Mr Stryker. What I can smell, what I can feel, these are just as important as what I can see.’
Stryker managed a wan smile. ‘Best start working on a scanner for smells then, eh?’
Without missing a beat, she replied, ‘That’s what mass spectrometry is for. Now, see here where the skin on the wrists is marked. What does that tell us?’
He leant in close, taking in the subtle asymmetrical marks on the victim’s wrists, and then ventured a tentative guess. ‘That the killer pinned her down?’
She tutted. ‘Not a bad guess. No. If she had been pinned, we’d see much more marked bruising. This is subtle. It suggests that the killer massaged the joints post-mortem.’
‘The killer... massaged a corpse? Is that a fetish thing?’
‘I’ve seen it before,’ Valerie said, waving her hand expansively. ‘It’s not a sexual thing. In order to pose a body, the killer had to manipulate the limbs. Normally that would mean being quick enough to do so before rigor mortis set in, or else waiting for it to wear off. The only other way is to massage the body to break rigor.’
‘Doesn’t that give us our timeline?’
‘In theory, it probably means the killer dumped the body during the normal rigor window. It could mean we’re dealing with a forensically aware killer.’
‘Right... right...’ Stryker scribbled the words “forensically aware killer” in his notebook. ‘Does that mean a doctor, a nurse, a cop?’
‘Or simply someone who takes the time to Google these things,’ she said in a mockingly cheerful tone. ‘They’re not state secrets.’
He scribbled in his notebook once more and then paused. ‘Can I ask a really stupid question?’
‘Another one?’
He pouted. ‘When I saw the body at the crime scene, it looked like she was grimacing in pain. Now she’s not. Was I imagining it?’
‘That’s rigor for you,’ Spilsbury said. ‘She wasn’t grimacing because of pain. When adenosine triphosphate levels spike, muscles contract. This can show as a frown or grimace on a corpse. Now that rigor has worn off, the frown is gone. Now, what was your stupid question?’
She laughed heartily at her own joke, a wheezy rasp that sounded as if it came from someone who’d been chain-smoking nonstop for several decades.
‘You said all the senses... can you hear a corpse too?’
She beckoned with one finger. ‘Come and put your ear near her and find out.’
It was only after he stepped forward that she burst into laughter again. ‘Good lord, you are green. No, generally you can’t hear a corpse. Occasionally gases will escape that you can hear.’
The next step was the most humbling. The assistant stepped forward once more to make surprisingly short work of removing and bagging Layla Morgan’s dress. Once her modesty was stripped away, Stryker averted his eyes and busied himself studying the wedding dress that was now enveloped in thick plastic to prevent contamination.
It was older than Stryker had initially thought. The dress had a dirty hemline, and some of the fine detailing was beginning to show wear. It was old-fashioned too with a beaded lace bodice that stretched right down to the hips, and a long train that went well past the ankle. At size six it was markedly larger than Layla was. Elsie had told him that the dress was dated and cheap, especially in comparison to the clothes she’d seen on the victim’s Instagram. Perhaps it was. He opened his phone to have a look for himself. He found her handle easily with just her name. @LushLaylaM had an enormous following and so appeared right at the top of the search listings. Despite that, she had remarkably few likes or comments. As he flicked through her Insta life, he came to the conclusion that the dress was just wrong. It didn’t fit with the hedonistic, modern lifestyle in her photo stream. Layla was obviously unmarried – there was no sign of a ring on her finger in any photo nor were there the telltale untanned bands of a recent divorcee. She was pictured with dozens of people, presumably her friends. Duckface pouts abounded as did arm’s-length selfies which were orche
strated to titillate and tease. Layla was a hottie, and she knew it. Why on earth had she been wearing a wedding dress when she was dumped unceremoniously on the bench in St Dunstan church?
‘Why?’ he said in a barely audible whisper.
‘Why what?’ Spilsbury said. She turned her attention away from the body which she had been combing over while he fixated upon the dress. ‘Oh that. I wondered why she was wearing a wedding dress too. I take it she wasn’t getting married on the day she was killed.’
‘Not as far as we know. I’d have thought an imminent wedding would have been obvious.’
‘I wouldn’t know, never had one,’ Spilsbury said. ‘But if I were you, I’d call her local church and see if they published banns announcing upcoming ceremonies.’
It was a solid suggestion which Stryker resolved to check as soon as he could. He had a feeling there was an equivalent for civil ceremonies too, a notice period before a wedding could go ahead. There was little doubt he would find nothing – if Layla had been engaged then Elsie would have found signs of a man all over her home.
He looked at the pathologist curiously. He had assumed the lack of a wedding band on her hand to be the result of an abundance of caution. It wouldn’t have been wise to wear jewellery while doing an autopsy after all. He had just assumed that there was a Mr Spilsbury given her age. Then again, it wasn’t much of a surprise. Apart from her Friday night poker game, Spilsbury seemed to work around the clock. It would be incredibly hard to have time for a family as well as such a demanding career.
While they talked, Spilsbury beavered away. She plucked hair samples, scraped the victim’s fingernails, and took swabs in case of sexual assault. There was no respect for the privacy of the dead. Now that he looked, cause of death was so obvious that the whole charade was pointless. There was a great big stab wound right through her chest just left of the centre. Someone had stuck a dirty great knife through her heart. The modus operandi was identical to the murder of Leonella Boileau a little over two weeks ago. If it was a serial, no doubt he’d strike again, and soon too. It was common for serial killers to accelerate, the time between murders getting shorter and shorter as their thirst for blood grew until they lost all control and got caught.
‘Isn’t this all a bit superfluous? Even I can see that she’s been stabbed. She can’t have survived that, can she?’
She paused for a moment to make eye contact. ‘Rules are rules, Mr Stryker. I do what I’m told, and then we don’t have disputes in court later. Yes, you’re probably right that the stab wound is the cause of death.’
With that, she turned back to the body and began to carefully pry open the victim’s fist. ‘I once found a scrap of paper in a victim’s clenched fist that turned out to be a bill for a restaurant dinner that she’d had a few hours before her death. The man she’d been out on a blind date with had assaulted her, and her dying act was to make sure the police realised he was her killer. You never know what might be relevant until you find it.’
The body was washed next, and every scar on Layla’s body photographed. Recording Layla’s corpse for the world to see struck Stryker as even more intrusive. Curiously the pathologist worked clockwise radiating from the outside of the body in. It was unlike the left to right approach she had taken while Layla was clothed. He asked why.
‘Because I can,’ she said simply. ‘Either is legally permissible. I get bored.’
There was little to document. A few marks indicated the body had been dragged around post-mortem. There was no petechial haemorrhaging nor was the cartilage in her neck broken which allowed the pathologist to rule out strangulation. It appeared the only perimortem injury was the stabbing. There was no sign of a protracted struggle. Stryker couldn’t imagine trusting anyone enough to let them get near him with a knife. Perhaps Layla had suffered a deer-in-the-headlights moment and frozen on the spot, unable to stop her assailant.
Stryker glanced at his watch. He was as bored by it all as Spilsbury was, and he’d only been there for an hour. ‘How long’s this going to take?’
‘Not much longer. Everything so far is consistent with the Boileau case as you no doubt suspected.’
‘Then it is a serial!’ Stryker said. Elsie would have to surrender the case to Fairbanks, and he’d get the rest of his weekend back. Thoughts of Sunday morning rugby surged in the back of his mind. The Met had a team he desperately wanted to join, and this was his first opportunity to join them for training.
‘Not for me to say,’ Spilsbury said. ‘I can only tell you if it’s consistent or inconsistent.’
Her tone was bored, detached, and professional. They could have been discussing virtually anything. ‘How’re you so... clinical?’ Stryker asked. ‘Doesn’t seeing death every day get you down?’
‘It’s that or quit. I could get bogged down by emotion. I see dozens of bodies a week, many victims of brutal stabbings, fires, and abuse. If I let it get to me, I’d never make it through the day. All I can do is focus on the families. They need to know what happened. I owe them that much. After that, justice is up to you.’
‘No pressure then.’
‘Right, enough of this. Down the hall.’
‘Eh?’ He looked puzzled as the pathologist’s assistant wheeled the body out the door. Where on earth were they going?
‘We’ve got the best tech in existence here at St Guy’s, and I’m going to use it,’ Spilsbury said. She kept up a brisk stride, her right hand resting on the edge of the trolley to help steer it. ‘The court system might be stuck in the nineties, we’re not. If I can make this new process part of the standard operating procedure, I can guard against errors in future cases. You might be right that this time we don’t need it. That data is just as valuable as it helps to show when a virtual autopsy is worth doing, and when it isn’t.’
Her comments left Stryker in contemplative silence. She obviously had an agenda to push. If that meant he got better data to work with than normal, he was all for it.
The procedure was simple enough. Once they were in situ, the pathologist began to place reflective marks on the body.
‘Think of these as reference points,’ she said. ‘We’re going to take scans from all sorts of angles. These markers let us work out how those images relate. Got it?’
‘Like stitching together a panorama in Photoshop?’
‘Exactly, but on a three-dimensional level. You can watch it come together on that screen.’
For the next hour, Spilsbury and her assistant took photo after photo. To do it she used a “locator” device. ‘I’m using this,’ she said, ‘to define the resliced plane. Every scan shows a different depth or slice of the body.’
She dragged the device, which looked like a laser gun, across the body. Each time she rotated it through ninety degrees, and then dragged it back. Again and again, she scanned. Each time a few more dots appeared on the monitor in the corner of the room.
Shallow views, then deeper views. A foot pedal switch let her see inside the body. Eventually, she was satisfied. The whole body had been rendered. She moved across to the computer next to the screen and switched the view around.
‘See how I can now zoom in on any part of the inside of the body? Every millimetre has been mapped. I can see where the knife went through her heart. More importantly, another pathologist can too. It means the courts don’t rely just on my expertise but can test and verify my conclusions.’
‘Well done!’ Stryker said. He straightened up as if to go. ‘When will I get your report?’
‘Hold your horses, Mr Stryker,’ Spilsbury said. ‘We’re nowhere near done yet. Don’t you remember me saying I have to follow the Home Office guidelines?’
‘What now?’
‘Now we’ve got to cut her open, and make sure our virtopsy results are the same as the real autopsy.’
His stomach rumbled. It was going to be a long day.
Chapter 10: Review My Ex
Despite Knox’s non-attendance, Elsie and Matthews had spent a
productive morning working through a few of the more mundane tasks before their midday meeting with the Crime Scene Manager.
Before they’d left, Matthews had quickly sketched out a map of the crime scene for the wall while Elsie had tried – and failed – to read through Annie Burke’s forensic report one more time. The report was so dense, and Elsie’s fatigue so overbearing, that she hadn’t been able to stand the thought of spending all day staring at her monitor. The bright white screen had made the floaters in her eyes – a “minor” part of the CFS – dance in and out of her vision in a most distracting way.
Instead of sitting in a stuffy incident room, she had decided to return to the crime scene early. She wanted to spend the extra time trying to work out how on earth the killer had managed to get in and out of St Dunstan in the East without being seen by a single witness.
Elsie and Matthews parked up on the pavement outside the Walrus and Carpenter public house, a few minutes’ walk south of the crime scene and then headed up on foot, Matthews desperately trying to keep up with Elsie’s long strides. Elsie had to suppress a smirk every time the younger woman broke into a jog to do so. Sometimes, being freakishly tall had its advantages.
‘Boss?’ Matthews called after her in a breathless voice. ‘Can we talk? Before we get too far?’
Elsie stopped abruptly. ‘If this is another apology about Friday, save it. I was angry – justifiably so, I might add – but now I want to draw a line under it.’
There was little point crying over spilt milk. Matthews looked as if she might just burst into tears again.
‘It’s about Knox, actually,’ Matthews said. ‘I wanted to apologise for her too. She’s not usually like this, you know.’
This was a new one – a junior DS making excuses for a woman almost old enough to be her mother.
‘It’s not you who ought to be apologising.’
‘I know that, boss,’ Matthews said, ‘but you don’t know the context. Knox was promised a promotion to detective chief inspector as soon as a spot came up. That was six months ago.’