1 First Blood

by Claire Rayner

  ‘Shows you what?’ George was too irritable now to watch herself. Normally she let Danny’s outrageousnesses pass over her head. It was important to be on good terms with him and that meant not rising to the bait. But this she couldn’t let pass. ‘It wasn’t exactly his choice to die when he did, I imagine, and I’m sure if he’d realized how much it might affect the collection at the concert he’d have been more thoughtful.’

  ‘Well, yes.’ Danny seemed oblivious to irony. ‘Like I said, it could ha’ fetched in a few bob. And even that’d help. It’s not that it’s growin’ that fast, the fund, no matter what we do. Sales we’ve had, and sponsored walks to work we’ve had, and all sorts, and it never seems to grow by more’n a hundred or two. They got to be doing something wrong with it.’

  ‘No doubt,’ George said and let it go. What was the point of ever discussing anything with Danny? He made for the door, but before he could open it, Sheila was there, her head poking round the frame.

  ‘It’s too bad,’ she said. ‘No matter what we do, it makes no odds, it still happens. This one’ll really put the cat among the whatsits, though. I mean, twenty thousand they cost, or so I’m told. Each of them.’

  ‘What?’ George squinted at her in puzzlement.

  ‘The new microscopes.’ Sheila came right into the room to stand there with her arms akimbo, red in the face with annoyance. ‘It took three years, I swear to you, to persuade them up in the office we needed them, and now this! I haven’t had them more than a month, I swear to you, and now this!’

  ‘What?’ George said again. ‘You’ll have to explain yourself.’

  ‘They’ve taken them back,’ Sheila said. ‘Would you believe it? It seems there’s a fault in them or something. At twenty thousand a time? The man came yesterday, Barbara in haemo. said, took all three of the new ones, said they had to go back to the factory for checking because of some errors or other. Now here am I with a load of work and not enough ’scopes to do it. Even after the hospital spent all that money.’

  ‘What did you do before last month?’ George asked.

  ‘We were doing the best we could with the old ’scopes. Terrible old things they were, and –’

  ‘And where are they now?’

  ‘In the stores,’ Sheila said. ‘I think. They said something in the office upstairs about trying to sell them but I didn’t want them cluttering us up here, did I? Not once I had three good new ones.’

  ‘Then you’d better contact the stores and see if they’re still there, and pray that they are.’ George got to her feet as she heard a large vehicle stopping outside and feet scraping on the concrete driveway. ‘You can manage with them till the others come back.’

  ‘But they’re so old and –’

  ‘Jerry manages very well with an extremely old one,’ George said firmly. ‘So you’ll have to do the same. I’ll look into the matter of the return of the new ones as soon as I get the time. Right now I have an autopsy to think about. Danny, go on down. I’ll be right there. OK, Sheila?’

  Sheila looked at her a little sullenly, with an expression that threatened more argument on her face, but George stood and stared at her, and at length her authority won. Sheila made a grimace and went back to the door. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll try. But don’t blame me if there are errors and the consultants complain. It won’t be my fault, it’ll be –’

  ‘Yes, I know. The manufacturers. Look, get out the paperwork for me, will you? I know the original stuff will be in the purchasing office, but we must have some sort of documentation here. Let me see it and I’ll call the purchasing office and –’

  ‘Don’t waste your time with that lot. Asleep from June to January, and snoozing the rest of the time.’

  ‘Then I’ll call the manufacturers direct. Either way, I’ll sort it out. On your way, now, Sheila. I really do have to do this autopsy.’

  Sheila stopped at the door and looked back at George with a totally new expression on her face; a kind of awe. ‘It’s one thing when they come in and you don’t know them, isn’t it? But it must be funny to do an autopsy on someone you’ve seen walking round alive not all that long before.’

  ‘It’s never funny to do an autopsy,’ George said as repressively as she could. ‘But they have to be done. I’ll see you later about the microscopes.’ And she walked past Sheila down to the mortuary to perform the last and most drastic surgery that Richard Oxford would ever have.

  8

  Danny was holding court down in the mortuary when she got there. He had an electric kettle and quantities of tea bags, sugar sachets, milk portions and biscuit packets he’d filched from the hospital canteen tucked away in his cubby hole and liked to ply visitors with his brews. Using the mortuary as a sort of café was highly improper, George felt, but she had more sense than to object to a time-honoured practice; and if he could enjoy his tea while surrounded by deep drawers containing very dead bodies that was up to him. She had to admit other people seemed serene enough about their silent companions. The police and the coroner’s officers were regular guests of Danny.

  Now he was sitting with Harold Constant, the coroner’s officer who most frequently attended at Old East, perched uneasily on his small table while he told his hair-raising tales of unpleasant autopsies at which he’d assisted. Harold, experienced as he was, looked grateful when George arrived and stopped Danny in full flow.

  He scrambled down from the table and brushed biscuit crumbs from his chin. ‘Morning, Dr Barnabas. All very unexpected, this, isn’t it? Mr Porteous’ll be very taken aback when he discovers it’s Mr Oxford.’

  ‘Oh?’ George’s interest sharpened. She had to admit it was as Sheila had said, rather funny, in the sense of being odd, to be about to perform an autopsy on a person so well known to so many people around Old East. One of the bulwarks against the natural repugnancy all human beings feel when faced with evidence of their own mortality in the form of other dead humans is anonymity, she had long ago discovered. This body had none at all, and the thought of having to cut into the soft pampered flesh she had known in life, albeit briefly, was disagreeable. ‘The Coroner knew him, then?’

  ‘Everyone knows – knew him around here. Very involved in the community, Mr Oxford.’ Danny shook his head. ‘Quite a loss he’ll be. He was always generous when he was asked to contribute to anything.’

  ‘Well, maybe his wife’ll continue the pattern,’ George said. ‘I imagine his death will leave her well provided for, looking at their flat.’

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t theirs,’ Harold said. ‘She lives right up in the West End, she does. It was his. Didn’t you know that?’

  George couldn’t resist pumping him, and put on a look of innocent surprise. ‘Oh! That’s a bit – well, it’s not what married people generally do, is it? How could I have known that? How do you, come to that?’

  ‘Oh, everyone knows it.’ Harold looked pleased with himself. ‘It’s just you’re new on the patch.’

  ‘I’d ha’ told you if you’d asked me, Dr Barnabas,’ Danny said smugly and George threw him a look but didn’t answer. There was no point.

  ‘Well, it’s not quite noon, but I suppose I can start now. Are we ready, Danny?’

  ‘Near enough,’ Danny said. ‘He’s on the slab, and I’ve done up your kit.’

  ‘Right,’ George said. ‘Now, identification. You doing that, Mr Constant?’

  ‘I could do, but I’ve got a document here …’ He dug into his briefcase. ‘His wife came to the flat this morning to do the necessary before he was shifted. So that’ll be enough, won’t it?’

  ‘If you say so.’ George had changed into her cotton suit on her way down, leaving her clothes in the shower room, and was now putting on a heavy rubber apron before picking up her gloves. She checked her pockets for her dictating machine and the small Polaroid camera: they were there, of course; she’d put them there herself. ‘So we’ll get going.’

  ‘Aren’t you waiting for the police?’ Harold said.

&nb
sp; She turned back from the door to the autopsy room. ‘Why? You’re here. That’s all that’s necessary, isn’t it?’

  ‘Well, legally, yes, but they told me they wanted to cover this.’

  ‘Who did?’ She was frowning. Bad enough she’d caused such a fuss last night with the police. She really didn’t want to have to face them again so soon.

  ‘I did.’

  She turned and there he was, standing in the doorway and looking at her with his brows up. He was wearing a heavy overcoat over a crumpled blue suit. His hair was sleeked hard to his head this morning, quite unlike the bush of curls it had been last night, though it was clearly trying in places to escape whatever gunge he’d put on to control it. His rather round but well-shaped face looked rosy and healthy with the bite of the cold morning he’d left outside.

  ‘Oh,’ she said and turned away.

  ‘Morning, Mr Hathaway,’ Harold Constant said with a deferential note in his voice. ‘We haven’t started, of course. I was just telling Dr Barnabas we’d have to wait for you.’

  ‘You weren’t going to wait though, were you?’ Hathaway looked at George who had pushed the door open and was almost through it.

  She looked back at him coolly. ‘No,’ she said, letting the door swing back to blot him out of her view, and marched over to the slab and glowered down on the pyjamaed figure that lay on it. ‘Nerd,’ she muttered under her breath. ‘Creep.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Danny lifted his head from his own contemplation of the body.

  ‘Not a thing,’ she said savagely. She stretched her neck and relaxed her shoulders consciously, before glancing at the clock and hooking the dictaphone out of her pocket and clipping it to the front of her apron. She’d had the case adapted to make that possible so that she could dictate while keeping her hands clear; she’d always enjoyed gadgetry of all sorts, and fixing this one had given her a great deal of pleasure. Then she pulled out the camera and checked it had its full complement of film and that the spare packs were set ready.

  ‘Eleven forty-five February 26th,’ she said into the dictating machine and at the same time took a shot of the whole body. Behind her the door of the autopsy room opened and she felt Hathaway come in. Harold Constant was already in, at the side, leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and Gus Hathaway joined him. She saw out of the corner of her eyes that he’d shed his overcoat and had shrugged into a white overall, clearly wanting to protect his clothes from unpleasant smells. Huh, she jeered inside her head. With a suit like that, he’s worried?

  She nodded at Danny who began to remove the body’s clothes and put them in a plastic bag. She took more photographs, of the whole body, of the head, and of the hands, dictating all the time and then looked very carefully, using magnifying lenses, at the skin to search for any evidence of punctures that would suggest he’d had injections. There were no such marks, and she made a note of that. There was nothing else to report at this stage; just the body of an over-nourished white male, aged … she looked at Harold Constant and paused while he checked his identity document and told her promptly that he was – had been – fifty-seven. Then the measurements. She always liked to have lots of these, even more than was called for in the usual protocol laid down for an autopsy, and she measured him from crown to soles, then the chest and belly dimensions and several more, with Danny’s grunting help. He also had to help as she took samples from all the body orifices, nasal and throat swabs (could he have had a sudden overwhelming infection? Possible) and even from the ears, since she was nothing if not thorough, and finally a rectal swab as well as a sample before at last setting to work proper, pulling her trolley of instruments closer and picking up the big knife. From now on she had to concentrate even harder.

  She worked swiftly, with big sweeps of her knife, as Danny stood by watching unperturbed ready with his dishes to take the viscera to the examination table, and whistling softly between his teeth. Harold and Gus Hathaway murmured to each other from time to time and at one point she looked up and saw Hathaway’s look of distaste, just as she lifted the abdominal viscera into clearer view and away from Oxford’s carcase. His expression was quite wooden but his mouth was set so firmly she could see a thin white line above his upper lip, and she thought with satisfaction, There, that’ll show you! Though quite what it was he had been shown she would have been hard put to it to say.

  As she worked it became ever clearer to her that this man had died peacefully. There was no evidence of any bruising, only hypostasis, the post-mortem staining that was quite normal; there were no signs in the carcase that there had been any gross disease. A good deal of microscope work would be needed to identify anything that might be there, she told herself.

  The same applied to the brain. Once the skull was off and she could see it clearly there was no evidence of any haemorrhage or loss of blood supply to a particular area. Finer dissection would be needed to be sure of that, but certainly on first inspection he hadn’t had a stroke.

  The room was silent now except for the hiss of the running water on the examination table as Danny prepared it, and when she turned away from the carcase, having completed her dictation and her photographs there, her empty stomach announced protestingly and remarkably loudly that she’d had no breakfast and it was now well past lunchtime.

  Hathaway grinned at her. ‘Take you out for a sarnie after, if you’re good,’ he offered. She looked at him witheringly and got on with her work. Harold laughed a little uneasily and began to talk about the last case the two of them had attended together. Hathaway responded cheerfully enough. Clearly he wasn’t going to allow himself to be put out by her display of bad temper, and that made her feel even more bad-tempered.

  She went on, and slowly her heart began to thud against her chest in a heavy, dispiriting fashion. She really had made a considerable fool of herself. All the evidence she was seeing in this man’s body pointed the same way. A peaceful expiry as the result of heart failure. There was no evidence of previous disease in the heart or any of its adjacent structures to suggest why it should have failed, but she knew perfectly well that that was not unusual. A heart can choose to stop simply because it is ready to stop; perhaps a fault in the conduction system, she told herself, perhaps a sudden immune response, who could say? She certainly couldn’t.

  At this stage. Slowly she finished: dictated the weights and dimensions of the organs as she dealt with each one; taking her materials for histology; making certain the body fluids had been collected; blood; urine; stomach contents (very meagre; he hadn’t eaten for some time before he died); all of which confirmed her original idea that he had died in his sleep in the small hours of the morning after having been in bed for several hours, and at last turned away from the examination table and washed her hands for the last time beneath the running water before pulling off her gloves and switching off the dictating machine.

  ‘Well, doctor?’ Hathaway said with great geniality. ‘Can you give us a cause of death?’

  ‘Heart failure is all I can say at the moment,’ she said carefully, not looking at him, and Danny let out an unexpected chortle.

  ‘Like my Grandad used to say to me when I asked him why someone had popped his clogs. “‘E stopped breathin’,” he used to say. “‘Is ’eart stopped beatin’,” he used to say. Well they do, don’t they?’

  They all ignored him as he went on cheerfully replacing the viscera in the carcase ready for the surface stitching to be done.

  ‘Can you find a reason for it?’ Hathaway persisted.

  ‘At this stage, no.’ George lifted her eyes to look at him now. He was standing with his head a little tilted, looking at her with a benign expression. ‘I can’t. That doesn’t mean to say we won’t find out more when we do the histology and get the blood tests dealt with.’

  ‘Nor does it mean to say that you’ll find anything even then, hmm? Could it be, doctor, the way Roop reckoned it last night? A simple died-in-his-sleep, nothing at all wrong with him?’

  �
��Could it? – Yes, it could,’ she said after a moment. ‘But I don’t know. And the reason I’m a pathologist is that I have to know. I can’t do with mysteries. So far this death is a mystery.’

  He sighed. ‘Then we can’t send Harold here back to the Coroner with the news that we’ve got a simple death by natural causes so that the inquest can be easy and the body can be released for burial?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he said and walked to the door to hold it open for her. ‘Coming, then?’

  ‘Ready to close, doctor,’ Danny sang out and she stopped. She’d been about to walk to the door, not stopping to think.

  ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘I’m not finished yet.’

  ‘Right.’ I’ll go and get some lunch then, and see you later.’ And he went. Harold gave her an apologetic look and ambled off behind him.

  It was quite irrational. She was furious with him for going off and leaving her alone to finish tidying the body and putting in the great surface stitches that restored it to some semblance of humanity, or would once it had a shroud to cover the great length of the incision and its black sutures. Why should he stay, after all? He’d been present at the important part of the autopsy and had discharged his duty – indeed, hadn’t even needed to do that much, since the coroner’s officer was present. So being annoyed with him was juvenile. And she tried not to think of him and Harold sharing sandwiches and beer in a riverside pub while she, positively hollow with hunger, still stood here dealing with his case.

  What case? she thought then, as at last she finished and helped Danny shift the body on to a stretcher to be put in its place in one of the great rows of drawers outside. They said there wasn’t one and I’ve tried to make it into one. I’ll have to climb down, of course. They were right and I was wrong and there it is. Well, at least they’ll have to wait for the rest of the tests, the histology and the blood and urine work.

  She went back upstairs after showering thoroughly and changing, carrying her dictaphone and the Polaroid as usual. Sheila was coming from the main hospital corridor as she arrived on the ground floor and George handed it all over to her to get the notes transcribed at once, so that she could write her report properly and very soon, and for the pictures to be filed. Sheila looked eager as she took them from her.