Talking to the Dead: A Novel

by Harry Bingham

There’s a long beat. Jackson uses it to glare at me.

  “I did ask if her husband might have enjoyed rough sex with prostitutes,” I admit finally.

  “That’s what you said? You used those words?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And?”

  “I interpreted her look as confirming my suspicion.”

  “A look? You interpreted a look.”

  “It was a legitimate question to ask. His bank card was found there.”

  “It might have been a legitimate question coming from an experienced member of the team, after appropriate consultation with the operation commander. It was not an appropriate question asked by a lone detective constable operating without permission, with no supervising officer present, and addressed to the grieving wife of a dead man.”

  “No, sir.”

  Jackson glares at me again, but his heart’s not in it and he rocks forward, all businesslike. He riffles through some papers on his desk, till he finds the sheet he was after.

  “Vice Unit records. A few contacts with Mancini. Never on the game full-time, as far as we know, but she was certainly open to it when she needed cash.” His eyes move rapidly down the printout. “We let her know the risks she was running. Help lines, that kind of thing. Probably didn’t make a difference—Well, it didn’t, did it? Look where she ended up.”

  “You never know. It might have helped a bit. Seems like she mostly tried to look after her kid.”

  “Mostly.”

  Jackson puts a lot of emphasis on the word. He’s right, of course. It’s not much use being mostly good enough when your occasional lapses include heroin, prostitution, your child being taken into care and ultimately murdered. Whoops, April dear, sorry about that.

  I shrug to acknowledge his point but add, “For what it’s worth, I am pretty certain that Mancini wasn’t selling plain vanilla, at least not where Brendan Rattigan was involved. Charlotte Rattigan’s reaction wasn’t just the reaction of someone whose husband has cheated on her. It was more than that.”

  “Go on.” Jackson’s voice is still grim, but he wants to hear what I have to say. A victory of sorts, I suppose.

  “Rattigan had his pretty model wife for social and domestic use. She ticked all the right boxes. But I think he liked women that he could abuse. I don’t know in what way. Slapping them around, maybe. Roughing them up. If you want me to speculate wildly, then I’d guess that Allison Street would all have been part of the fun. The squat, I mean. The squalor.”

  “Wild speculation is exactly what we expect from our officers.”

  Jackson is already moving on. From his point of view, he’s got what he needs. Vice Unit’s records place Mancini as an occasional prostitute servicing an on-off drug habit. My jaunt down to Penperlleni added nothing. Maybe Mancini sold her services to clients who liked it rough, but then most prostitutes will cater for most tastes. No big deal. Jackson is about to let me go with a senior officer type caution not to let myself get carried away while interviewing multimillionaire widows, when his phone bleats. I’m about to make a move, but he raises a hand, stopping me.

  I’m alert for the first few seconds of the call. I’m worried that it is someone from Cefn Mawr House ringing to complain about me. Then it’s clear it’s not that kind of call and I dim my attention accordingly. It’s coming up to five o’clock in the afternoon. There’s not much point in going home before meeting with Brydon, so it’s probably more of Penry’s paperwork instead.

  Jackson clatters the phone down. “That’s the pathologist. They’re not done, but they’re mostly done and they’re ready to brief us. You can come over and take notes. A reward for your initiative at Cefn Mawr.”

  Because neither of us is planning to come back to the office afterward, we drive up to the hospital separately. The North Road is its normal bad-tempered rush-hour crush. Stop-start all the way. I can see Jackson’s shirtsleeved arm hanging out of the window, thumping the side of his car to the beat of some unheard music. When we get up to the hospital, we park in the big, thirteen-hundred-car-capacity car park. I take a “police business” notice out of the glove box and stick it in the windscreen. It saves the pay and display charge. Jackson’s ahead of me, hurrying over to the entrance, out of the wind, lighting up.

  “Want one?” he says as I catch up.

  “No thanks. I don’t smoke.”

  “Are you the one who doesn’t drink?” Jackson tries to remember me from beery police piss-ups. I’m usually the one holding the orange juice and leaving early. But he doesn’t really care, and carries on without waiting for my answer. “Only time I smoke, pretty much. Bloody corpses.”

  Three or four puffs, a grimace, and he’s done. A shoe heel does the rest. We go on in.

  I’m not good with hospitals. The endless buildings, trees dotted around like apologies, and inside, it’s job functions you can’t understand and that air of incomprehensible busyness. Curtained-off beds and death settling like falling snow.

  But it’s not the hospital itself that concerns us. We head over to the least signed building in the entire complex. Aidan Price, the senior pathologist, meets us at the mortuary door. He’s tall and thin, with the fussy pedantry you need to do what he does. Right now he’s fussing over the time, shooing out support staff, and checking keys.

  Hospital mortuaries have two or three functions. Number one, they’re storage units. Larders. Any big hospital generates plenty of corpses. Folk get antsy if the corpses are left on the wards too long. So the dead are whisked away, to be replaced with clean sheets and a smell of detergent. The bodies have to go somewhere, so they come here to the mortuary, like aircraft in a holding pattern, before being sent onward to the undertaker or the crematorium.

  Number two follows on from one. If grieving relatives want to grieve over something, they need a bit more than clean sheets and a smell of detergent to get their tears flowing. And in any case, hospital PR wants the relatives off the public wards almost as badly as they want the corpses gone. So hospital mortuaries all have a place where next of kin can come to view the corpse. It’s a functional space, snipped away at by architectural practicalities and budget restrictions. The University Hospital facility has a framed print of birch trees in spring and a view out over the roof of a catering facility downstairs.

  Then there’s number three, the one which brings us here. The University Hospital of Wales runs the largest forensic and high-risk postmortem autopsy service in the country. Two bodies a day are sliced and diced. Most of the work is routine. A drug addict dies. The coroner needs a cause of death. The public health authorities need to know whether the corpse had HIV, hep B, hep C. So toxicology panels are run, organs removed and weighed, the brain examined. The pathologist reports to the coroner. The coroner delivers a verdict. A report is filed. A life ends.

  We get changed, and Price waits for us at the door of the autopsy suite. He’s in a long-sleeved white coverall with a plastic apron, worn over surgical scrubs. Plastic boots, face mask, a white cotton hat. We have to put on similar gear ourselves before moving farther.

  When we’re done, we enter the suite. Price closes the door behind us. There are two gurneys, both in use, both covered with pale blue cloths. Strong overhead lighting and the hum of ventilation. The circulation in these rooms sucks from clean areas to dirty, changing the air at least once an hour, passing it through a HEPA filter before releasing it. Filtering out germs, filtering out the dead.

  Price pulls the cloth away from the larger body. Janet Mancini.

  She’s pretty. That was clear from the photos, but she’s more delicate in real life, fine-boned and sensitive. I want to trace the line of her eyebrow with my finger, lay my hand against her coppery hair.

  Price doesn’t like dead people, and he doesn’t like drug-addicted prostitutes with their high-risk, infectious corpses. He doesn’t like policemen. I get out my notebook and clear a space down by Mancini’s feet so I can write as he talks. She has small feet and slim ankles. I find myself
arranging the gown around her feet as though wanting to show them to best advantage. I stop as soon as I notice Jackson staring at me.

  Price begins to speak with fussy precision.

  “Let’s start with the easy bits. We’ve tested urine and blood for drug use. Urine tests were negative for marijuana, cocaine, opiates, amphetamines, PCP, and various other substances. We detected low levels of alcohol and methamphetamine, but her bladder was relatively full, so we can’t be sure of the extent or recency of her drug use. A clearer positive result for heroin. I’d guess a more recent use there.”

  “That’d be consistent with what we found lying around the house,” says Jackson.

  “Yes. Quite.” Price isn’t interested in crime scene details, and it takes him a moment or two to restart. “Blood tests offer a more reliable guide, because they’re less affected by fluid intake. Immunoassays confirm heroin use. Either very heavy use some time before death or moderate to heavy use closer to death. It’s not possible to distinguish the two. Moderate blood alcohol levels. She’d have been below the drink-driving limit, for example. Some methamphetamine use, but not heavy and recent.”

  He talks a bit more about drugs and general health and the size of her liver and the absence of various conditions. I take notes, but Jackson is impatient for Price to get to the point, which finally he does.

  “Cause of death? Uncertain. There are only two ways a person can die. Their heart or their lungs. Drowning, fire, gunshot. It all comes down to whether the heart or the lungs stop working first. In this case, it could be either. Her heart is in the state of health consistent with her age and lifestyle. You wouldn’t expect a twenty-something heart to stop beating, but if you bombard it with drugs, then of course you can’t rule out an attack, even a lethal one. Methamphetamines are a known risk factor. Plus as soon as you start mixing drugs, the interactions can become highly unpredictable.”

  I’m writing as fast as I can, and my handwriting starts to space out and get messy as I speed up.

  “All the same, I’d say that the lungs would be a likelier cause. Fatal respiratory depression. Slow breathing. Disorientation. The problem is the buildup of carbon dioxide. Acidosis. Taken too far, that’ll kill you.” Jackson nods and looks at me to make sure I’ve got it, which I have. But Price is still going. “Do I understand that the user may have been in an unfamiliar environment?”

  It takes Jackson a moment to respond.

  “Unfamiliar? We don’t know. It wasn’t her home environment. We don’t know how long she’d been there.”

  “Or with unfamiliar people? Or in some other way in a new situation?”

  “Yes, definitely possible. Probable, in fact.”

  Price nods. “A lot of heroin overdose isn’t overdose at all. It’s the same dose as normal, but taken in an unfamiliar setting it overrides the body’s homeostatic mechanisms.”

  This is a new one on me and on Jackson. Price explains at excessive length. The gist is this. When somebody starts taking heroin, the body does all it can to counteract the effect of the drug. When the drug is taken in a familiar environment, the body is prepared for the toxic assault and is already doing its best to counteract it. The result is that users come to tolerate very high levels of the drug. If you pull them away from their home environment, the body’s defense mechanisms haven’t been primed to respond. Result: Even an ordinary dose—the same dose as the user was tolerating in the home environment—can become lethal.

  “So,” Jackson says, “she leaves home. She’s having a bad time. We don’t yet know why. She takes heroin. Same dose as normal, but it’s a big mistake. Her body’s not ready for the drug. Next thing, bang! She’s dead.”

  Price fusses over this summary. It’s all too clear and sharp for him. He starts qualifying every statement and then starts adding riders to his qualifications. He prefers the fog of precision to the clarity of a decent hunch. On a look from Jackson, I stop taking notes while Price’s pedantry burns itself out. Jackson looks like an idiot in his white overalls and plastic boots, but then so do I. We exchange smiles. When either one of us moves, we rustle like taffeta. Price is wearing more or less the same kit, but it suits him for some reason. Also, he doesn’t rustle.

  When Price is done with his pedantic overdrive, he goes back to his briefing. Routine, necessary, boring. I take notes. Jackson prowls. Price lectures. I think he enjoys boring us. They haven’t found HIV or anything like that, but the tests aren’t yet complete. No obvious sexual assault. No recent semen found in or by the body.

  Then we’re done with Janet. I wrap up her feet again and cover her head, only this time I can’t resist and I move one of her coppery locks as I bring the gown down over her face. Her hair feels recently washed, clean and silky. I want to put my head down to smell it.

  The second gurney holds April Mancini. Someone has taped a dressing over the top of her head so that the splatter of her skull and brains is hidden, but the dressing sags where it should be smooth, a gap where there should be a head.

  “Cause of death,” says Price, coming dangerously close to a joke, “is fairly evident. No drug use. We haven’t been able to find any evidence of sexual abuse. No semen. I think we can say there was no major violence—aside from the sink, I mean—but there’s plenty of stuff that can happen without leaving marks. We haven’t yet found any infection, though blood analysis is still ongoing. I’m not sure what else you want.”

  He stands at April’s head and tweaks the dressing, trying to stop it sagging. I don’t know if he’s fidgeting, if he wants to preserve the little girl’s dignity, or if he’s just a neatness freak. I’m guessing it’s the last of those.

  Jackson isn’t looking at either body. He’s over in the corner where an anglepoise lamp hangs over a workbench. He’s swinging the lamp around, working the springs.

  “Any sign of struggle? Blood under the fingernails, that kind of thing?”

  “We’ve taken a look, of course. Haven’t yet completed DNA testing and we might find something there, but if there is anything, it’s certainly not a lot. No obvious signs of struggle, anyway.”

  Jackson is frustrated, but Price is just a pathologist, a reader of evidence. He can’t look into the past any more than we can. I’ve filled out thirteen pages of my notebook in the loopy handwriting that I dislike. My first job tomorrow will be to type it up and get it on Groove. But there’s one big question still to be asked. If Jackson doesn’t ask it, I will, but Jackson is an old pro. He bends the anglepoise down until its springs groan.

  “Fatal respiratory depression,” he says.

  Price nods. He knows where this is going.

  “What about respiratory depression that isn’t enough to be fatal? Presumably the symptoms are still there. Slow breathing. Weakness. Disorientation?”

  “Correct. There’s not enough air coming into the lungs to permit the necessary gas exchange. Taken too far, it’ll prove fatal. But even if it doesn’t go that far, you’ve still got a person who’s badly disoriented. Maybe conscious, maybe not. Weak and uncoordinated. Quite possibly not able to stand. Perhaps temporary problems with vision.”

  “A near overdose, in other words,” says Jackson. “If she’s left alone, she’ll live. Lucky to be alive, maybe, but she’ll recover.”

  Price nods again. “And if she’s not left alone …”

  “Whoever it is has got themselves the perfect victim. If anyone wanted to kill her, they could just put their fingers over her nose, close her mouth, and wait.”

  “A minute or two,” says Price. “Easy.”

  Job done.

  We’re standing in a little reception area that boasts an empty desk, a row of empty chairs, and one of those office plants that look as though they’re made of plastic and never seem to grow, flower, form seed, die, or do any of the other things that ordinary plants do.

  Jackson and Price are outside the men’s changing area, talking about when the autopsy report will be finalized, how long DNA identification will take, a
nd the like. Man talk. I’m not included. I’m standing next to them in my long white gown and ridiculous boots, feeling like an extra from some low-budget horror movie, when I notice that my heart is fluttering. Not a bad flutter, like when I had my moment at Cefn Mawr, but something definite all the same. I pay attention to these signals, because I often need physiology to show me the way to my emotions. A jumpy heart means something, but I don’t know what. I let my awareness expand and go where it wants.

  Almost instantly it finds the answer.

  I haven’t finished in the autopsy suite. I need to go back there.

  The answer, when I find it, clicks into place. It makes sense. Why it makes sense, I have no idea, but I don’t always bother with the whys. I just do what I have to do.

  “Oh, just a minute, I think I left my spare pen in there,” I mumble.

  The two men don’t break their talk. Jackson just looks down at me and nods. He’s about six foot two, I guess, which makes him about a foot taller than me, and Price isn’t much less. It’s worse than I’d thought. I’m not just in a horror movie, I’m a dwarf in a horror movie. I taffeta-rustle back through to the autopsy suite, letting the door swing shut behind me.

  The peace of the room welcomes me. I relax almost instantly. I can feel my heart rate slow and lose its jitteriness.

  I reach for the light switch but realize that I like the violet twilight that’s starting to possess the room, so I leave the switch alone.

  I take my only pen and shove it under the cloth shrouding Janet Mancini, so that I have something to “find” if need be.

  Apart from that, I don’t do anything. I have one hand on Janet’s enviably slim calf, the other on the gurney. The peace of the room sinks into my bones. It’s the most peaceful place in the world. I bend my face down, so it’s touching the blue hospital cloth over Janet’s feet. There’s a faint medical smell, but the human smells are long gone.

  I’d like to stay there for ages, quite still, just breathing the empty, medical air. But I don’t have long, so I force myself to move. I uncover the two bodies, just so I can see their faces again. Janet’s expressionless one and April’s smiling half of one. April’s head bandage has fallen in again, so I smooth it out for her.