Then Rowena walked through the door and the agony on David’s face seemed to intensify. But when she reached out to touch his arm, he shifted so her hand met air, then fell helplessly by her side.
‘You wanted an assistant?’ she said to Sarah, stepping forward into the light which revealed new lines etched into her clear, tanned skin. Lines of inner suffering—and perhaps fear.
‘Gowns and gloves first,’ Sarah told her. ‘And a mask across your mouth and nose, and goggles over your eyes. Otherwise, if I drop a bit and something splashes up, you’d be vulnerable. No! Actually, hold the gowns and gloves for the moment. Right now I need you to take photos.’
‘I’ve got the camera,’ Nick said, holding up a professional-looking bag. ‘Spare film and all.’
He still had the Polaroid camera in a bag slung across his shoulder, so looked like a newspaper cameraman who’d strayed into the wrong place.
Without being asked, Rowena took the second bag and unzipped the cover to check it out, while Sarah continued with collecting the detritus from the bottom of the trunk.
‘Photograph everything,’ she said to her helper. ‘The trunk, the skeleton, the little bones. But make sure you write down each shot you take. Is it a new film?’
Rowena checked the camera.
‘Yes, the number counter shows number one, but I’ll need a pencil and paper.’ She looked around, searching through the items on the trolley.
‘OK,’ she told the doctor. ‘I’m all set. I’ll put date and time then write down what each shot is and where I’ve taken it from.’
Behind her, she could feel David’s stillness, only she knew it shouldn’t be possible to feel stillness. Perhaps it was pain she could feel—the same kind of pain which had taken up residence in her heart.
He’d moved away from her earlier, as though her touch might contaminate him, but his agony was so evident she ached to hold him and offer whatever comfort he would accept.
Sarah was removing small bones and setting them on the plastic at one end of the table, so Rowena began her photographic work, first focussing on the still folded skeleton. The young policeman followed her, snapping off shots, not one to one with her but often enough, then waiting for the paper to slide out of the camera before setting each print on the bench to dry.
And he, too, was writing down his shots, scribbling in his little notebook as if his life depended on it.
Rowena found him distracting, though she knew it probably wasn’t him bothering her but David, standing so still just inside the door.
Shot one—the body taken from inside the doorway, four feet away, she wrote. Second shot taken to the right of shot one and closer, maybe two feet, from the body.
She scribbled the words then refocussed the camera, wishing she could twist a dial and refocus her mind. Tune out her own—and David’s—fear and confusion.
Third shot…
She moved around the table and when Sarah declared she had the lot, Rowena photographed the collection of small bones.
‘I’m going to stretch her out after I’ve removed the remnants of her clothing.’
Speaking quietly into the tape-recorder, Sarah shifted the skeleton so it lay on its back, then gently eased the legs into an extended position. Dry sinews cracked and popped like arthritic joints and soon the unfortunate woman lay stretched out on the table, shabby scraps of denim jeans defining the sharp edge of the tibia in each lower leg, shreds of a green and blue checked shirt clinging to her chest, delineating the ribcage.
Rowena had gone right around the room so was back on the side by the door, just in front of David and Nick, when Sarah, handling a fresh pair of tweezers with infinite care, lifted the first strip of material off the woman’s right leg.
Rowena heard David’s gasp and spun towards him, in time to see him reach out to the wall for support.
Lowering the camera, she stepped towards him, aware that Nick was already offering physical support.
‘Hold the camera,’ she said brusquely to the younger man, then she hooked the only chair in the room forward with one foot and steered David’s limp form towards it.
‘Get your head down,’ she ordered. ‘We certainly wouldn’t be able to support you if you pass right out.’
He obeyed, dropping his head down almost to his knees, breathing deeply to replenish the oxygen supply to his brain.
She knelt beside him, feeling his forehead, wondering if fever might explain the sudden collapse. But his forehead was cool, and the hand that touched her on the arm was icy cold.
‘What is it? What upset you?’
‘Nothing!’
His denial was too abrupt to be believed and he must have heard the harshness in the word for he added more gently, ‘I’m all right now.’ But when she saw the eyes he raised to hers, she knew he was so far from all right he might never find the way back.
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ she whispered crossly. ‘It’s probably not even legal to have you looking on. What happened?’
He shook his head, denying anything more catastrophic had occurred, but Rowena knew he’d been holding up well until Sarah had removed the scrap of cloth from his wife’s skeletal leg.
Was it the cloth? What she was wearing? Could that have upset him?
She stood up and looked again at the woman laid out on the plastic, seeking an explanation. Was there a scar, a mark, a tattoo?
Sue-Ellen marring her beautiful, pampered skin with a tattoo? Hardly! And there wasn’t enough skin for a scar or a tattoo to be obvious.
But there was an anklet. A fine gold chain, fastened with a heart-shaped lock.
Rowena felt her heart contract into a small hard ball. He’d come to see Sarah work, still hoping in the depths of his being it wouldn’t be his wife. Then the anklet had confirmed it.
No doubt, it was a present he’d given her—given her with all the love the heart-shaped clasp implied.
Rowena felt as if her heart had cracked open and the blood was seeping out, leaving her feeling cold and shaky.
‘Where’s my photographer?’ Sarah asked, and Rowena knew she had to at least act normally. Heaven knew, she’d had enough ‘acting normal’ practice after Peter and Adrian had disappeared. Surely she could do it again.
Taking the camera from Nick, she returned to her duties, focussing on the anklet as Sarah pointed to it and spoke to record its presence on the tape. Rowena knew she was probably taking more photographs of leg bones than Sarah would need, but concentrating on what she was doing helped with the pretence.
David had read about denial, but hadn’t realised before today just how real the state was. Perhaps the blonde hair had started it, started him thinking the body could be that of some other small woman—after all, it was impossible to identify the remains by sight. So he’d watched and waited, though for what he hadn’t known. Perhaps some miracle to prove this wasn’t Sue-Ellen, that she wasn’t dead and hadn’t been lying hidden in the shed all this time?
The very thought had made him feel ill—so ill the knowledge that once again he’d be the focus of a murder investigation hadn’t bothered him at all.
Except as far as it might affect his friends.
And ruin any chance he might ever have had of forming a relationship with Rowena.
The pain of that idea had helped the denial—it wouldn’t be Sue-Ellen. It would be a stranger. So many women wore jeans and checked shirts.
Then he saw the chain and remembered how she’d flaunted it at him! Teasing him about the new admirer—lover?—who’d bestowed it on her, fastening it himself with some kind of unopenable lock. It would have to be cut off, she’d told him, should she ever wish to remove it!
Which she didn’t! Or so she’d said, only days before Mary-Ellen had come back from Austria and Sue had gone to meet her, then stayed on with her sister in the old family home—catching up, Sue-Ellen had said.
To consider leaving him, that was how the gossips had seen it—and later the police had taken the same v
iew. They hadn’t known Sue-Ellen’s pleasure came from taunting people—from seeing them suffer—so there’d have been no fun in simply leaving him. Not straight away!
He studied the anklet again while all hope that the body on the table might not be his wife fled. Only Rowena’s prompt action saved him slumping full length on the floor and making a complete fool of himself. Now here he was, crouched on the chair with his body shaking so much he didn’t dare try to stand, while his head battled to get around what was going on.
Behind him, the door opened, and he noticed vaguely that it was Jane.
‘David, can you come?’ the nursing sister asked. ‘Margo’s perfectly well, but she’s hysterical and Barry’s only making her worse. I’m wondering if there’s any sedative we can give at this early stage to calm her down, something that won’t stop the natural progression of her labour.’
He looked up at Jane, hearing the words, even processing them, but wondering if he’d be able to function normally. She wanted him to reassure someone?
Of course you will, his sterner self told him. It’s shock manifesting itself. Natural enough in the circumstances.
He stood up—shakily, but he got there—then he smiled reassuringly at Rowena who’d stopped taking photos long enough to look anxiously towards him.
Remembered he shouldn’t be smiling at Rowena so he frowned instead, then wanted to apologise as he saw her own tentative smile fade to disappointment.
Hell, but he was making a hash of things at the moment.
He reached the door—a whole two paces away—and was going out when Sarah called to him.
‘And don’t come back,’ she told him. ‘I’ll be busy here for a few hours so you’ll have to hold the fort. Get yourself some food and, if you’re not needed by patients, have a rest. Accept you’ve had a shock and treat your body accordingly.’
It was safe to smile at Sarah, so he allowed himself a real one.
‘Yes, Mum!’ he said, and saw her eyes glimmer behind the mask.
But it was the memory of Rowena’s eyes he took with him from the room, their grey depths so full of concern and compassion he almost forgot about protecting her from whatever flak might be coming his way and nearly hurled himself into her arms.
Rowena watched him go, then following instructions from Sarah, set the camera on the bench and donned gown, apron, gloves, mask and goggles.
‘I’ve set all the remnants of clothing aside for the moment. We’ll bag them and label them later.’
‘Why are the clothes in such poor condition? I’ve clothes and sheets that have been stored away in trunks for years, but they haven’t disintegrated.’
‘Bodies have a whole host of bacteria in them, and this bacteria starts the process of decay. I imagine, as the body decays, the fluids permeate the cloth which in turn degenerates. Then, if you get insect infestation, and they attack the edible bits that have seeped into the material, it further weakens it.’
Sarah looked up and grinned at her.
‘I’m not a forensic scientist so that’s guesswork, not fact,’ she warned. ‘Now, you’ve got shots of the body without the clothes?’
‘Probably too many,’ Rowena replied, though she was wondering where David was, and how he was faring. It was impossible to imagine how he might feel! ‘I had to load another film,’ she added, responding diligently to Sarah in an effort to calm the jitters in her heart.
‘There can’t be too many,’ Sarah assured her. ‘The people in the city can always throw away anything they don’t want. By rights we should X-ray her so we’ve X-ray film as well, but I can’t see the point when they’ll do it again in the city where the proper autopsy will take place.’
‘So what do we do?’ Rowena said. It was better to stay busy. That way she could keep her mind at least partially off David.
‘Can you remember all the bones of the hand from your anatomy lessons?’ Sarah asked.
‘Carpals, metacarpals and phalanges—they’re the fingers, right?’
‘Exactly,’ Sarah told her. ‘And the foot’s the same only they’re tarsals, metatarsals and phalanges in the toes.’
‘Can we tell them apart?’ Rowena peered dubiously at the pile of small bones Sarah had collected.
‘We should be able to,’ Sarah assured her. ‘Usually, the name denotes the shape so if you take the eight carpal bones you get the scaphoid or boat-shaped—see, here’s one.’
Sarah teased at the bone with her tweezers before separating it from the rest.
‘Lunate, like the moon,’ Rowena remembered from her anatomy lessons. Lunacy has the same derivation and that’s where you’re headed if you don’t put David right out of your mind for the moment and concentrate on what’s happening here. ‘And there’s a triangular as well, isn’t there? And in the same row another—I can’t think of it.’
‘Think of peas,’ Sarah reminded her. ‘Here…’ She teased a small pea-shaped bone free. ‘Pisiform. Then in the next row you have the trapezium, trapezoid, capitate and hamate.’
‘The trapezoid and trapezium are pretty self-explanatory, but capitate—something to do with heads? And hamate—I haven’t a clue. Can’t remember at all.’
‘The capitate has a slightly swollen head, and the hamate is hook-shaped. See, there are the eight. They might not all be from the same hand but as long as we end up with the right number of bones, Barry will be happy. Can you find matches to each of these while I sort through the phalanges to separate feet from hands?’
Rowena found a pair of tweezers and began to search. They were bones, not bits of a woman David had loved. Not bits of any human—just bones!
What had Sarah said about Barry?
‘Why will it make Barry happy?’ Rowena asked, keeping her voice low as she didn’t want Nick to think she was gossiping.
‘Because if we can report that the skeleton’s complete, he doesn’t have to search for more bones. Also, if you think about it, it might show she wasn’t moved into the trunk at a later date. Well, not much later. Moving her a couple of years later could have resulted in the perpetrator losing some of these little bones.’
‘The perpetrator!’ Rowena echoed, reality smashing through her carefully erected reality-barrier. ‘What a truly chilling description!’
‘Worse than murderer?’ Sarah asked, the rising inflection in the words suggesting surprise.
‘I don’t know—they’re both frightening,’ Rowena told her. And neither could possibly apply to David—I know they couldn’t. She wanted to yell the words into the air, but the policeman’s presence kept her quiet.
Sarah glanced her way, obviously expecting more, and Rowena struggled to regain her poise before replying.
‘To me, perpetrator has dreadful connotations of plotting and planning. I could understand, just, someone picking up an axe and doing away with a nagging spouse in the heat of anger, but planning to do away with someone it makes my blood run cold.’
‘Doesn’t do much good for the victim either,’ Sarah joked, and the silly remark eased some of the tension in the room.
Nick had apparently overcome his early nervousness. He’d retrieved the camera Rowena had set down, and was now moving around them, snapping off shots and looking as if he was permanently poised for action.
‘Ran out of film for the Polaroid,’ he explained, ‘and didn’t want to go back to the station for more. But I’ve got the gist of what you want, so I thought I’d keep going. Just tell me if you want something special.’
‘Did you get the anklet?’ Sarah asked.
‘I did earlier,’ Rowena told her, while her mind returned to David’s reaction to the thin gold chain. Again her heart stuttered in its rhythm, and the heavy ache in her chest intensified. Had she been foolish to think love might be possible between them?
She stared at the anklet, still shiny in places. Could love keep something polished? ‘Should we take it off?’
‘I think not,’ Sarah said slowly, ‘but our photos are insurance should
it slip off on the journey. There were enough ankle bones in place to keep it there this long, so my guess is that most of these bones are wrist and the long metacarpals and metatarsals, and phalanges. Well, that’s not a guess—you can see from the shape.’
Rowena returned to her sorting, concentrating on what she was doing to exclude the other painful thoughts, seeing the collection of bones as a puzzle, like a jigsaw, although the anklet had been so decidedly—so pathetically—personal, it was hard to hold onto impersonal!
‘Stop this farce immediately!’
The door burst open and the words erupted into the heavy silence of the small room.
Mary-Ellen had arrived.
‘Where’s the other policeman?’ she demanded, looking at Nick with the kind of disdain a star might reserve for underlings on a movie set.
‘He’s not here,’ Nick said, lowering the camera and practically standing to attention in front of the newcomer.
‘And he’s left you in charge? Some genius he is!’ the little virago stormed. ‘Haven’t you ever heard of collusion? Or destruction of evidence? Don’t you know that woman is David Wright’s friend?’ She thrust a red-tipped finger towards Sarah. ‘And you’re letting her touch the body? She could take away whatever she feels might be incriminating. Do anything she likes.’
‘No, ma’am,’ Nick said carefully. ‘That’s why I’m here and we’ve got a photographic record as well.’
‘Let me see that camera!’ Mary-Ellen snorted.
Nick might have been bemused—perhaps even intimidated—by the woman, but he stood his ground and certainly didn’t hand over the camera.
‘It’s you who shouldn’t be here, ma’am,’ he said, stepping away from her.
But the movement caused her to shift her ground, and somehow she fell, grasping at his arm as she lost her balance and sending the camera crashing to the ground.
Hard pieces of plastic burst up like fragments of a grenade, and the exposed film unrolled, stretching across the floor like grey ribbon.
‘That’s destruction of police property,’ Sarah said, moving in front of the table to protect the body from any further violence.
Her Dr. Wright Page 8