It is at moments like these that I become distinctly aware of what a huge responsibility my work can be. The police, the girl’s parents, the press, and everyone else all want to know the same thing, and I was trying to provide answers. The weight of it can be oppressive.
When I was called to the mortuary, the air smelled strongly of the disinfectant from the footbaths at the entrance, and it was excessively bright, the light harshly reflecting from the metal surfaces. I had already changed into my blue scrubs in the changing room and donned the customary white wellingtons that, of course, did not fit. My feet are as small as a child’s, and I usually have to scuff them along the floor to the metal table where the business is done. I quickly set up a bench with my essential bits of equipment: stainless steel bowl and jug, scalpel, forceps, sample bottles, labels, bottle of bleach, and medicated shampoo. My job was to extract any evidence from the corpse’s hair, as well as her nasal passages, mouth, and her skin. By analysing particulates or fragments of vegetation, or anything else I could find that might have been missed, I might be able to build up a picture of what happened around the time the girl died and, importantly, the kind of place where this happened.
I was surprised to discover that I needed to remove so much plant material from the girl’s body and, at first, thought it might be useful to the case; but I soon realised that whoever had removed the girl’s body from the bin liners had not been careful enough, and some of the grave-fill had landed on her skin as the bags were being opened. Once again, botanical contamination had not even entered the head of the person unwrapping the body. I was only glad that nothing had fallen on her hair – otherwise I would have had to try to separate the palynological profile of the burial site from the one we were seeking.
Lying cold on stainless steel, the girl was in a fairly advanced state of decomposition, even though she was too well preserved to have been at higher temperatures for eight months. Although the body had not decayed beyond recognition, it was still actively decomposing, and the stench as I approached was overpowering. I nearly retched, but managed to internalise the urge and get on with the job. The smell of a decomposing corpse is due to a complex mixture of odours that are the by-products of autolysis and bacterial enzyme action; it is a truly disgusting smell, and it can change over time as decomposition proceeds. When your heart stops beating, your body does not die immediately. Certainly, your brain stops functioning, but it takes a little while for the cells to fail; and the body probably fades rather gradually although it is thought that some parts start decomposing within about four minutes. Certainly, the melanocytes in the skin can still function for at least 18 hours after death. I remember one case where a leaf had floated down from the woodland canopy onto the leg of the young woman’s naked, pale corpse spread-eagled in a clearing. I picked it from her thigh and was very surprised indeed to see the white leaf shape left on the skin. She was fair and her skin seemingly white, but the skin all around the leaf must have become very slightly tanned as she lay exposed in the dappled light of the woodland.
The body in front of me stank of cheese and faeces. Obviously, the butyric acid bacteria were very active at this particular stage of decomposition. The skin was also slimy, probably teeming with decomposer bacteria and yeasts. Because the scalp was already detached, I could just put it into a deep stainless steel jug and agitate it vigorously in a dilute solution of my ‘friend and companion’, medicated shampoo. Once I felt I had treated the hair well enough, and the water was sufficiently cloudy, I poured the washings into plastic universal bottles, labelled each with detailed descriptions, and put them to one side to take back to the laboratory in London. To make sure I was maximising retrieval, I then rinsed the hair with as little water as I could get away with and put the rinsings into another set of bottles. All this dirty water was one sample and I would eventually mix the contents of the bottles together, and then split the mixture into two parts. If one were lost accidentally, I would still have the other portion.
Throughout my time in the mortuary – while I also looked into the girl’s lips, gums, and nasal cavities – the mortuary technicians were friendly and helpful. I was thankful for this because I do not always get wholehearted acceptance, especially by pathologists. Pathologists are a mixed bunch and many of them suffer from the ‘deity delusion’. They are gods in their own mortuaries and, although there are good ones out there, some really seem to be offended by any other specialist coming in with what they think are wacky ideas.
While I was preparing my samples, a voice called out across the mortuary.
‘I’m sure you’d like some lunch, wouldn’t you, Pat?’ I looked around and there was the friendly face of the Senior Investigating Officer who had called me into the case.
‘Oh, yes please,’ I answered.
When we got to the staff refectory, there was little choice because I had taken so long in sampling the body.
‘What would you like, Pat?’
I was too tired to bother and, to be honest, I really did not feel all that hungry anyway. But, I had a long drive back south and needed to have something to keep me going.
‘Why don’t you choose for me?’ I said. ‘Anything that doesn’t have meat, please …’
Moments later, he returned with a laden tray and started placing the plates on the table. I looked, smelled, and immediately felt nauseous. It was cauliflower cheese, a dish I usually relish, but it smelled of butyric acid, with a whiff of hydrogen sulphide; in short, it smelled of the corpse. The colour was of flesh in livor mortis, with slightly grey tinges at the edges of what looked like bits of brain. Well, of course it did – butyric acid came from the cheese and the sulphur compound from the cauliflower. The cabbage family, which includes the cauliflower, produces many sulphur compounds and I suppose this is why some people hate cabbage, cauliflower, and sprouts. Butyric acid is formed by bacterial fermentation, and the bacteria involved in cheese-making are the same ones involved in both corpse decomposition and the smell of sweaty feet. I tried to be objective but, as I tried to eat my meal, it was coming up as fast as it was going down. I mentally slapped my own face and could imagine my grandmother saying, ‘Stop whingeing and get on with it!’ So that’s what I did.
Clutching my precious bag of samples and equipment, I set off on the long drive south. It took over seven hours because of all sorts of hold-ups on the motorways. I eventually got home, flopped down in front of the TV at about 1:00am with my darling Mickey, my one-eyed, silky, Burmese cat, on my lap. I was next conscious at 4:30am with a crick in my neck, and Mickey’s whiskers tickling my cheek. The discordant music of some ridiculous horror film was screeching away on the TV. I switched it off, Mickey still in my arms, and we both went up to bed, not waking until about 10:00am the next morning.
I had discovered that hair was a marvellous source of pollen and spores just by trial and error, and had been amazed at its power of attracting microscopic particles. The results of one of my Masters students had shown us that the presence of styling products or hairspray makes no difference. Pollen and spores will stick to clean, coated, or dirty hair. In post-mortem examinations, I had seen pathologists perfunctorily passing a comb through a victim’s hair and, at the time, always thought that was a bit useless for retrieving evidence. The whole head of hair needs to be sampled, and combing a small portion of a scalp would not even get the larger particles of plant material efficiently. It is amazing how protocols and methods can become so entrenched that their execution becomes a tick-box exercise rather than a meaningful investigation. I never take anything for granted and, because I am rather curious, I always want to go that little bit further. This led to some of my best results in murder cases.
I remember on one occasion the victim was a black Afro-Caribbean lady, dressed in an expensive, but uncoordinated, outfit. I had never even touched Afro-Caribbean hair in my life and, in the mortuary, I tried to wash the victim’s hair in a bowl as I had always done. But it would just not get wet. It was a little li
ke the soft hairy leaf of the lady’s mantle plant; the very fine hairs repel water so effectively that it just sits like little diamond droplets on the surface. The pathologist, one of the most inventive ones I had ever met, came up with a solution. By cutting around her neck and throat, he just slipped off the whole face and scalp. I was left speechless. Here was a glove puppet, and a corpse devoid of face and scalp. I put my gloved hand inside the ‘face glove’ and agitated it thoroughly in the bowl of hot detergent solution. I managed to get a good sample. We then replaced the scalp and the ‘face glove’, and you would never have known that she had even been touched. The eyes fitted back perfectly into the eyelids, and she did not look any different from before. I now realise how a plastic surgeon must regard the face. It is just a thin, flexible covering on top of muscle and bone. What shook me was how easily and neatly a plastic surgeon would be able to cut, shift around, and even remove skin to suit the needs of his patient.
Back in the lab in London, I set about processing our samples, centrifuging them all, and discarding each ‘supernatant’ – the fluid on the top of the little plug in the bottom of each tube. Processing eight samples can take all day and involves digesting the background of unwanted cellulose, other polymers, and silica, with a series of strong alkalis and viciously strong acids, including hydrofluoric acid. Eventually, I had a long line of mounted samples on my bench and I got on with the microscopical analysis. The telephone rang shrilly at the side of my head and made me jump.
‘Anything yet, Pat?’ came the policeman’s voice on the line.
Yes, there was. Already it was coming into view. I could see yet another very neglected, run-down garden, but this time there had been a bonfire. Both conifers and hardwoods had been burned, their specific kinds of wood cells being testament to that: tracheids in the case of the conifers and wide xylem vessels from the hardwoods. Their anatomy was beautifully preserved as charcoal, but there was also a great deal of black, burnt, amorphous material, as well as angular and rounded silica grains – sandy grit. There was too much grit and charred debris in the hair for it to have had brief contact. It seemed to have been lying either very close to, or even in, bonfire ash.
The place jumped out at me. The girl had been placed near a privet hedge that was probably very neglected. It must have flowered quite prolifically to account for the relatively high levels of its pollen in the victim’s hair. This meant it had probably not been trimmed for a long time; possibly the bushes were large and the hedge tall. It also meant that she had lain close to the hedge – privet is insect-pollinated and does not produce vast amounts of pollen, and the victim’s hair yielded more of this than could be expected. Although poplar is wind-pollinated, and the pollen can travel considerable distances, its abundance probably meant that there was at least one tree growing close to the privet. It produces catkins and abundant pollen, but the grains are thin-walled, spherical little blobs, with minute scabs on their surfaces, and it is not very robust so probably breaks down quickly. I have only rarely had cases where I even found this pollen, let alone an abundance of it. To me, this was a good marker.
Other types that might have been important were elder, beech, and Prunus-type: perhaps plum, cherry, damson or sloe. If the pollen were of sloe, this could be a wild hedge – but, when all the herbs started filling the picture that was unfolding in my mind’s eye, it was obvious to me that this place was a neglected garden. First of all, there were 24 grains in my pollen count that I did not recognise at all. They did not key out in my identification keys so they were likely to be non-native cultivated species. I did not want to waste hours on definitive identification; it can sometimes take many hours of working with reference material and literature, and the police wanted quick answers. At this point, it was enough to be able to say that this was a garden, or possibly a park. I decided to be pragmatic and concentrate on pollen and spores that were immediately recognisable; I could always go back to the difficult ones later. The whole palynological profile was dominated by all sorts of weeds, many of which are characteristic of open ground and disturbed soils – dandelion-like plants, goosefoot, nettle, shepherd’s purse, cleavers, and many others. There were also buckler ferns and even Sphagnum moss.
I have long ceased to be surprised by finding bog and moorland plants like Sphagnum in urban settings. When you think how much peat has been cut from our uplands to satisfy the horticultural business – from Scotland, from the Pennines, and the bare but beautiful Irish landscapes – you might imagine the vast quantities of their spores and pollen sitting in flowerpots and urban soil wherever you get keen gardeners. A surprise was that the girl’s hair yielded a large amount of fungal hyphae and huge numbers of fungal spores. It was unlikely that they were growing on the hair itself because very few fungi have the enzymes to break down the keratin of hair, nails, and feathers. Those causing ringworm and toenail infections are soil fungi, and are capable of using hair as food, but the fungi in the girl’s hair were more likely to be those normally growing on plant debris, and the hair had probably picked them up through direct contact with plant litter.
I had also found cereal pollen in the hair. Perhaps this meant that the gardener had, at some time, grown strawberries or rhubarb? This might imply straw and horse dung. Both are used in cultivating these plants, and even well-rotted horse manure usually contains bedding straw from the stables. I gave the investigators a description of the kind of place the poor girl had lain before being buried and, although it was limited, at least it told the police that they were looking for a domestic scenario rather than some wild place. They were also seeking someone who might have a somewhat ‘casual’ attitude to their home and garden.
As early as my first case in Hertfordshire, I had realised the necessity of eliminating any irrelevant, or alibi, sites and I knew I had to do the same thing here. In the case of the Chinese Triad and the murder of the hog-tied man who had been abducted on his wedding day, I had to make certain that the pollen I had recovered from the suspects’ car really had come from the hedgerow where the victim had been dumped. So accompanied by bemused police officers, I made trips to the known haunts of the victim and the accused in the East End of London. I made species lists and collected samples of the ground likely to have been contacted by the offenders in as many areas connected with the suspects as I could. I tried my best to eliminate as many places as possible as being the source of the pollen in the vehicle that had been seized from the suspects. Our mission that day may have been successful, but it sticks in my mind now for altogether different reasons.
Walking along, my head buried in my notebook with an enormous policeman flanking me on either side, I did not understand that anything was wrong until one of the policemen said softly, ‘We have to go now, Pat.’
In those days, I was green; I was taking my first steps into detective work and perhaps I had spent too long in the confident safety of university life to even think about the world to which I was being introduced. I was not ready to go, I protested. There were other places we might visit; other stands of vegetation to list. This was my first attempt at police work and I wanted, above all else, to be thorough. And yet …
‘No, Pat,’ the policeman said, more severely, ‘we have to go now.’ It was only then that I looked up. I was with plain clothes detectives but, somehow, word had got around; somehow it was obvious who we were. Frankly, we must have looked suspicious – and certainly comical: two huge men in dark trousers and smart, white shirts, and a little lady in the middle scribbling in a notebook. I doubt that the residents would have seen anything like that every day. Now, figures lurked on the corner of every street. Eyes watched us from the pavement, from the crossroads, from the end of somebody’s front yard. It was the first time that I properly understood: in police work, you have to be careful about where you go. And yet go you must. The cost of a wrong interpretation is severe, but not being able to back up your findings with comparators is more severe still. Prosecution cases can collapse for the lack of
supporting evidence for claims made in reports. It pays to be thorough.
Back to the case of the girl in the duvet cover, I had to exclude all irrelevant places for elimination purposes. I had already taken samples from the front and back gardens of her home, as well as the last place she was seen. I had to be sure that the palynomorphs in her hair truly represented the place or places she had encountered after her abduction. I had also made long lists of plants, both in these gardens and all those in the close vicinity of her home. Defence barristers are clever, and all they have to do to diminish a prosecution argument in court is suggest that anything from the body could have been picked up at some place, or places, other than those associated with the defendant. Very early in every case, I start thinking of the courtroom, envisaging the questions a defence barrister might hurl at me as they do their best to destroy my evidence. I then try to answer those questions myself and mentally plug every little gap in my investigative protocol.
While I was working away on the pollen, the police were doing inspired detective work. With the story of the girl’s disappearance dominating the news, her face emblazoned on every milk carton sold by the supermarket chain Iceland, two people contacted the police separately implicating the same man. They had both met him through a lonely hearts column, and he lived on the very same housing estate as the girl’s family. This suspect was just another ordinary man, according to his neighbours. He sold pet food for a living, regularly poached in the same woods where the girl’s body had been found, and kept himself to himself – but, as is so often the case, a banal exterior masked an altogether different kind of character. According to his past girlfriends, he had a sexual need for bondage, tying up his lovers and locking them in cupboards. To her horror, he had confessed to one of his past lovers that he wanted to bind her daughter in cable ties and have intercourse with her.
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