Doctors & Nurses

by Lucy Ellmann

  ‘What’s going on?’ she asked sternly.

  The policemen stared at her. Then one said, ‘Body’s been found.’

  ‘What! WHERE?’

  ‘Down there,’ he said, pointing into the depths of the gorge. ‘Or part of one anyway.’

  ‘Stuck in a handbag!’ the other volunteered, before they both creased over in a fit of hysterics and had to go huddle behind a tree.

  Jen had never liked laughing policemen (she didn’t like that SONG either). Nor did she like her gorge defiled with DEATH GOO. She trudged glumly back up to the surgery, hoping Roger would be there. He was! Revolving in his swivel chair and drinking a vast quantity of COCOA.

  ‘There are policemen down below,’ Jen announced.

  Suspecting her of euphemism, Roger checked Jen’s front bottom for policemen.

  ‘In the GORGE,’ she told him.

  Ditto.

  ‘OUTSIDE!’

  Roger stiffened.

  ‘They’ve found a BODY.’

  ‘Well, that is what they’re trained to do, of course,’ said he, before pulling Jen down with him on to the floor and climbing on top of her. It was always quite a climb.

  A Sort of Apology

  The British LOVE a nice little murder! They’re SUCKERS for it. Don’t they ever realise how CORRUPT they are? It’s almost impossible to sell a NOVEL these days unless it’s got a MURDER in it! I know we’ve had plenty of murders in here already, but they weren’t GORY enough to sell BOOKS and I’m SICK of not selling books, sick of people asking me why I don’t write a THRILLER or something with a real STORY that SELLS, sick of reclusively writing these strange little books and then being told NOT to write them but to write NON-FICTION instead, the most POINTLESS, MEANINGLESS, TRUTHLESS, TOOTHLESS pursuit in the world! All because FICTION’S gone out of FASHION. The fickle public, brought up on REALITY TV, don’t know what to MAKE of fiction any more, they don’t know what it’s FOR.

  But what do I care about FASHION, holed up in my little EYRIE eating matzos and confronting my SELF-HATRED every day (or every other day)? Why don’t people just LAY OFF, have a little HEART? Why don’t they APPRECIATE me and my battle with self-loathing, which should be instantly REWARDED with LOVE and CASH! Why can’t they give me more than I DESERVE, just for a little while? Why is it only GOOPS and IDIOTS – thriller writers and people who write about SALT or the POTATO – that get overpaid? Reading that stuff is like being DUPED, like being told what to THINK. It is a kind of PURGATORY.

  I figure there’s enough murder in my present tale to keep me in clover for the rest of my days, enough murder to satisfy ANYBODY. So here goes.

  Soft Tissues

  Bits of body were found all over the gorge in the ensuing days, tucked inside a great variety of handbags! The gorge proved the perfect receptacle for RETICULES: it hid them well. But once the police started looking, the horror-handbags seemed to nestle in every nook and cranny. A heart fell from a pink patent-leather handbag, when a policeman dragged it out of a hole in a tree. A foot peeked out of a navy-blue bag, betrayed by the glint of its pretty gold-chain handle; in an inner pocket was a matching LARYNX. Hastily buried under a gorse bush was a sparkly party bag; inside it they found a hunk of skin covered with pubic hair. Two skulls bobbed amongst ducks in the stream.

  Oh, the body can be thoroughly destroyed! We’re always thinking up new ways to do it. The things we’ve come up with! There’s no GETTING AWAY from the GAS CHAMBERS or the Roman amphitheatres, or Hiroshima and witch-hunts and amputations and beheadings and massacres, no hiding from it! We all take note. We NOTICE how the human body has been treated, the dignity or lack of it. (We even care if people are BURIED right.) A collective HISTORY of misuses of the body is being written in all our heads ALL THE TIME, and it ain’t pretty.

  The bodies in the gorge had been thoroughly mutilated and strewn far and wide. The police never managed to find all the pieces: it was like putting a second-hand JIGSAW PUZZLE together – a frustrating task. But eventually they established that they were dealing with the remains of two bodies, one male, one female.

  From Body No. 1 (female) they assembled:

  the head

  the right upper arm

  the left upper arm

  the left forearm and hand

  the right lower leg and foot

  the left leg and foot

  the left thigh

  the right thigh

  From Body No. 2 (male):

  the head

  the chest

  the back

  the pelvis

  the right humerus

  the left humerus (tags of skin attached)

  the right forearm and hand (portions of fingers removed)

  the left forearm and hand (portions of fingers removed)

  the right femur (with tags of adherent tissue)

  the left femur

  a portion of tissue (fat and muscle) with right kneecap attached

  the right lower leg and adherent bone of foot (astragalus)

  the lower left leg

  the left foot (mutilation of toes)

  Various miscellaneous parts turned up over the next few weeks:

  the heart of Body No. 2

  the brains of Body No. 1

  the tongue of Body No. 1

  the tongue of Body No. 2

  the larynx of Body No. 1

  the larynx of Body No. 2

  the thymus gland of Body No. 2

  the lungs of Body No. 2

  the rectum of Body No. 2

  the bladder of Body No. 2

  the penis of Body No. 2

  the scrotum of Body No. 2

  the breasts of Body No. 1

  the uterus of Body No. 1

  the mons veneris of Body No. 1

  According to police, the remains represented two adults, well developed and well nourished. The dismemberment of each had been effected by disarticulation through the joints and through the spinal column. There was no evidence of the use of a SAW.

  There had been extensive removal of any soft tissues which might have helped in the determination of the cause of death, also removal of personal characteristics that might have facilitated identification, though the left arm of Body No. 1 still showed four vaccination marks.

  The trunk of Body No. 1 was missing altogether, along with practically all the soft tissues clothing the right thigh, and soft tissues from other parts of the body. The terminal half of the distal phalanx of the right hand was also missing, as were almost all the organs of the chest and abdomen. In view of this, it was impossible to ascertain the cause of death.

  With Body No. 2, the right foot, portions of the toes of the left foot, and portions of all of the fingers were missing, along with most of the soft parts and abdominal organs. The likely cause of death: asphyxia.

  An examination of the hairs available indicated that the general colour of the hair of Body No. 1 was light brown and, in the case of the hairs from the front of the left ear, light brown with fairish tips. The hair from Body No. 2 was medium brown on the right side of the head, but the eyelashes were dark brown. The hair on a portion of vulval cleft was of medium brown colour – WHAT, you don’t want to hear about VULVAL CLEFTS? Pah! You asked for murder and you got it!

  The police estimated that the dissection of the bodies had taken place within a few hours of death, and concluded that the task of dismemberment and mutilation was likely to have presented difficulty to anyone without skill, anatomical knowledge, and suitable instruments. But, with these, the bodies could have been divided into the parts as found in about eight working hours. (Or even QUICKER, with the right POP MUSIC.)

  The bodies. After death, your body isn’t YOU any more, but it still BELONGS to you: his body, her body. People say, ‘His body arrived at the cemetery,’ and you want to say, but where is HE and why doesn’t he come and take that body of his HOME where it belongs? The bodies in the gorge had both had previous occupants: Body No. 1 was Urma Thurb’s, Body No. 2 was
Nicky’s. The police identified them with ease, after pinning the time of the murder down to the day after Jen’s WEDDING, which Urma Thurb and Nicky were known to have come from afar to attend.

  Weddings are the cause of all human misery.

  The Usual Suspect

  Suspicion of course fell on JEN: she was FAT, she was an outsider, she lived BELOW GROUND and wore CARGO PANTS, her hair was a jungle and her body as vast and threatening as the MASSIF CENTRAL, the prairies of Oklahoma, or the Steppes of Russia (people could HEAR her step for miles!). This is just what such creatures do, this was JUST LIKE such creatures: they steal into a rural backwater and make murder and mayhem!

  The reasons the police gave for suspecting Jen in the ‘Bodies in the Glen’ case, as it came to be known (thanks to the plucky REPORTER BITCH, who covered the story in the local paper), were as follows:

  1. Nicky and Urma Thurb were the only guests Jen personally invited to the wedding.

  2. Jen made no attempt to communicate with either of them after the wedding fiasco, suggesting she knew already that they were dead.

  3. There were signs of estrangement between Jen and her brother: a whole history of rivalry and, more recently, discord over the sale of the family flat.

  4. Urma Thurb had in fact FIRED Jen from her job on the Children’s Ward, she didn’t just QUIT.

  5. There were traces of both victims’ blood in Jen’s basement flat, and on several small colourful rugs belonging to Jen, found in the glen. Traces of blood and DNA evidence were also discovered in acid stains in and around her jacuzzi.

  6. All the handbags used to conceal the crime had belonged to Jen – and THAT’S A LOTTA HANDBAGS!

  The MOTIVE? Psychotic rage against these two intimate witnesses of her wedding mortification.

  Aw, suspects, motives, alibis! The police make it all sound so simple, so DULL. They reduce any tragedy to TEDIUM, drain everything of meaning.

  Since Jen knew SHE hadn’t done it, she quaked in her bed wondering who HAD, and fearing she would be next! She suspected FRANCINE, and thought with horror of Francine IN HER FLAT, cutting up the bodies and dumping them into the jacuzzi for an ACID BATH. Francine was just DETERMINED to wreck Jen’s pleasure in that jacuzzi!

  When the police first came to interview Jen in her dank and fetid little office (clearly the office of a MURDERESS, they all thought), Jen was quick to lay the blame on Francine. But the police weren’t INTERESTED in Jen’s theories! The police thought Jen was lacking in nursy COMPASSION, trying to frame a LOVE RIVAL of somewhat unsound mind. Also, madwomen in the attic are a literary cliché, and the police HATE books! They carried on with their questioning of JEN.

  ‘Why did you make no attempt to contact either your brother or Urma Thurb after the wedding?’

  ‘They didn’t phone ME! I thought they could at least have sent a CONDOLENCE card or something, but when they didn’t I just assumed they were cross with me. I didn’t want to bother them.’

  Jen wanted to know why TONY had never called to find out where Urma Thurb had got to. But Tony had had a calamity of his own: while trying to fix a LIGHT BULB, he had fallen down the hospital’s grand Victorian stairwell and hit his head! The idiots at the hospital sent him home with CONCUSSION, and the poor fellow died in his bed, not long before the police turned up to tell him his wife had been dismembered and deposited in a GLEN.

  ‘It was very romantic,’ one policeman remarked. ‘He probably died about the same time SHE did.’ (A policeman’s job is macabre; it makes them sentimental.)

  ‘Well, what about Nicky’s colleagues at the dentist’s?’ Jen asked. ‘Surely they noticed when he didn’t come back to work.’ But then she remembered how often Nicky was away. He was always going to Belize or Bermuda, or health farms in TEXAS. His colleagues were accustomed to his long absences. And now he would NEVER come back. Being ELUSIVE is one thing, but DEAD? Who KNOWS how long the moment of dissolution may be, or how terrible?

  ‘Why didn’t the people who run the B & B say anything?’ Jen asked. ‘They must have noticed that Nicky and Urma Thurb never came back to collect their stuff!’

  But the policemen explained that the B & B couple hadn’t wanted to worry Dr Lewis at such a difficult time (right after the WEDDING FIASCO, as the police liked to call it) about a mere moonlight flit: ‘They were paid in advance anyway so they weren’t too bothered. Quite relieved, in fact, not to have to do the full cooked breakfast.’

  ‘THEY did it!’ Jen cried, suddenly convinced that people with a bad attitude to breakfast could well be murderers.

  The police were getting pretty annoyed by now with Jen and her PATHETIC accusations. Enough of zis talk, they wanted a CONFESSION!

  ‘Where were you the morning after the wedding, when the murders took place?’ she was asked.

  ‘On my HONEYMOON.’

  ‘What honeymoon? You’re not married!’

  ‘A mere technicality. I went ALONE.’

  ‘How do we know you weren’t hiding in the glen, waiting to pounce on your brother and Urma Thurb?’

  Jen wished they would stop calling it the ‘glen’. It was a GORGE, a geological vulval cleft. The police make everything sound so PALTRY, seedy, and stale. So MALE.

  ‘I was not waiting to pounce on anyone,’ she said icily. ‘I was trying to get AWAY from everybody. I needed to get away IMMEDIATELY!’

  Then she told them all about her train ride and the Kindergarten Lady and the crumby hotel and the old dolls who dropped their PEAS and the hotel manager and the fish-and-chip shop people and her ACCOSTER and the nice guy with the high voice and the NAKED guy, and even about her night spent naked in the wilderness: this was turning into a veritable ALIBI.

  The police were very dubious about the whole business, especially that night in the woods – just the kind of thing MURDERERS do – and the fact that she used an ALIAS at the hotel (LOATHE SELF) didn’t help. But her story checked out! It seemed that Jen was even more conspicuous than she’d always FELT: everybody who’d SEEN her remembered her! From the ticket collector who’d known on sight that Jen was a Standard-Class Super Saver, to the hotel manager and his serving-wench girlfriend (who’d been talking about Jen BEHIND HER BACK ever since her brief stay), and the fish-and-chip fryers who’d wondered why she needed so many CHIPS, and the Kindergarten Dope and the nice guy with the high voice.2 Even people JEN didn’t remember remembered HER. Boy, did they remember her: the biggest bride they’d ever seen, with BLOOD all over her dress!

  ‘That was TOMATO!’ Jen said, but no one believed her. The nice guy with the high voice had already sent her wedding dress to the cleaner’s, so all trace of the vindicating tomato stains was gone! (He’d even had the PETTICOATS repaired.)

  ‘What about the NAKED guy?’ Jen asked rather wistfully. ‘Did he remember me?’

  ‘We haven’t talked to him.’

  ‘Why not?!’

  ‘He’s in prison. Unreliable witness.’

  ‘What’s he in prison for? Being NAKED? That’s not a real crime. Or IS it?’

  ‘Breach of the peace and causing a commotion in a public thoroughfare –’

  ‘Public thoroughfare? But he’s a member of the public! Why shouldn’t he make use of public thoroughfares? This is just what he SAID would happen: he’s been locked up for having a BODY!’

  This TONE of Jen’s was doing her no favours. The police thought it bore every resemblance to the callous tone of a MURDERER (they HATED all her capital letters!). And she seemed to care more about a NAKED GUY than she did about her own BROTHER. Pretty suspicious. Also, she was SO FAT! Too fat to be allowed to roam free. Too fat to be BELIEVED.

  Body of Evidence

  What a Mess. Murder’s messy! Everyone in that little rural backwater was affected by it, even Dr Lewis. He wasn’t happy that his nurse and sometime FIANCÉE (and still current MAIN SQUEEZE) was being repeatedly questioned by police about the possibility that she’d cut two people up and hidden the pieces in HANDBAGS under BUSHES, not happy a
t all.

  Many of his PATIENTS felt the same: a number of them, already perturbed by Jen’s genitalia insights, signed a PETITION against Jen for being a back-stabbing backwater-invading, handbag-hoarding, doctor-nabbing, MMR-jabbing meringuelike BUTTERBALL. They were all talking about her behind her back – when they weren’t talking about FRANCINE, that is. Francine was the best bit of gossip they’d had in years (even better than a MURDER). Her loyal receptionist work, her secretive but enviable connection to Dr Lewis, the meek non-entity CHILDREN, her mother phobia, her plastic-surgery adventures, her many manic EPISODES, now retrospectively deduced, had inflamed imaginations for miles around!

  All of these excitements were having an effect on Dr Lewis’s general DEMEANOUR: he was becoming DISORGANISED! The usual stuff doctors do was becoming a BURDEN to him. He was starting to make silly mistakes. His usual systematic style was unravelling! NOW, when he gave people morphine injections disguised as flu jabs, he sometimes forgot to SAY it was a flu jab, which kind of wrecks the JOKE. Some patients asked QUESTIONS, some got away! He also gave penicillin to people who were allergic to it – but not with his previous pleasure.

  For distraction, he carried on with redecorating the surgery, though so far he’d only repainted the ceiling in the consulting room, and moved a few piss-soaked chairs around. One of the chairs was now in the waiting room, where ALL the chairs were piss-soaked; the other was in Francine’s station where it wasn’t needed, since Francine had a high-tech SWIVEL chair of her own.

  After the move, the chairs CREAKED a lot, as if they were trying to CONTACT each other, saying, ‘Where’d YOU end up?’ or just, ‘How’s tricks?’ If only chairs COULD talk, a pretty tale they’d tell of the arses they have known! The police could have INTERVIEWED them. But the police didn’t interview the chairs – they were only interested in JEN. They had now found the MURDER WEAPON, not the Shetland sweater-dryer after all but a knife from a knife SET given to Jen and Roger as a wedding present. The rest of the set was in Roger’s quarters but, as he’d told the police, anyone could have taken one from there at any time.

  Roger had found a way of cheering Jen up during this difficult period. No, ANOTHER way. He took her in his Jag to buy handbags! In her present state of confusion and bereftitude, Jen could only face buying one at a time (in better days, she could have bought ten or TWENTY, if she had the dough!), but Roger was patient. He could wait. He knew how hard it was to select a handbag, how much SOFTNESS was required, how many RIDGES, compartments, SPANGLES, and the choices to be made between different properties of leather, felt, cloth, straw and plastic, woven, quilted, or covered with TASSELS. It’s COMPLICATED. Roger was in the KNOW about handbags, and he could wait. That’s what he kept telling Jen. Even if she had to go to PRISON, he would wait. FOR EVER!