I Will Miss You Tomorrow

by Heine Bakkeid

  It is like watching a doll with limbs made of sand-filled cloth bags. Arms and legs dangle from the table as the pathologist and autopsy technician struggle with the suit. In one instance, they are forced to place the body in a sitting position. Rasmus’s head falls back heavily, his mouth wide open, and his jaws rock gently from side to side as they pull the suit off him and roll it down to his waist. At this point one of the starfish comes loose and slides through his sodden hair to slap down on to the metal bench. The autopsy technician picks it up and disposes of it in a yellow trash container at the base of the autopsy table.

  After they have laid the body down again, the pathologist raises the head carefully and places it in the same position as before, slightly upturned and with the mouth open. The diving suit and underwear are carefully removed, leaving Rasmus completely naked. A further round of measurements and photography ensues, from the legs upwards. Every single mark and tear is recorded and catalogued.

  When they reach the head, the autopsy technician detaches the last of the starfish around the indentation on the back of the head, using a large pair of tweezers, and drops them one by one into the trash bucket. Underneath them we see a rupture in the skin and the bare skull.

  ‘Ante-mortem injury?’ Astrid leans over the wound with her camera and takes three quick photos from different angles.

  ‘Possibly.’ The pathologist rinses the wound with the showerhead before using a sponge to wipe it clean of algae and other forms of sea life. ‘It’s hard to tell them apart in instances such as this, especially when it comes to head injuries. We’ll see what the tissue samples tell us.’

  ‘Could it have been caused by a boat-engine propeller?’

  ‘No,’ the pathologist answers. ‘That would have produced a greater number of larger lacerations in the area of the head and neck.’

  ‘What does the soft tissue injury tell us?’

  He presses his finger on the wound. ‘Even surface, no fracture on the cranium itself. That indicates a simple, short-lived impact. Any possible coup and contrecoup injuries would tell us more about whether the injury stems from a fall or if the body was stationary at the time of the energy exchange.’

  ‘First impressions?’

  ‘An injury from a blow,’ the pathologist murmurs. ‘But we’ll know more when we have removed the brain. Well, boys and girls – let’s press on and open him up. Here we use the en masse method and lift out the organs in the chest first, followed separately by the stomach organs.’

  The autopsy technician picks up a sharp scalpel and stands close to Rasmus’s torso, stretched out on the table in front of him. He begins by cutting a deep incision along his collarbone, from shoulder to shoulder. Afterwards he takes hold of the skin and pulls it away so that the neck, as far as the chin, is cleared of skin, and streaks of greyish-yellow subcutaneous fat and pale-brown flesh emerge.

  The technician continues by making another incision on either side of the body, from the armpit to the iliac crest. The ribs are then cut open with a pair of rib shears, thick curved pliers, before he leaves the shears on the autopsy bench and lifts off the whole of the ribcage. A pungent, pervasive odour seeps out from the open chest and wafts towards us.

  I can see how he ties the major arteries before the chest organs are lifted out in one piece: lungs, heart, liver and gall bladder, pancreas, spleen and kidneys end up on the board, where they are separated before the surface, cut surfaces, structures, arteries, lymph glands, fibrous tissue and nerves are examined in minute detail and the organs weighed. Afterwards samples are taken for cultivation, chemical analysis and other tests.

  ‘OK,’ the pathologist announces, lifting the lungs and holding them up with both hands. Bloated, they have a marbled, doughy appearance and are grey-blue in colour, speckled with dark red, and we can see a clear liquid ooze out when the pathologist squeezes them slightly. ‘What is drowning?’

  ‘Suffocation with the nose and mouth held under water,’ a diligent student in the front row pipes up in a high-pitched voice.

  ‘Water?’

  ‘Any liquid,’ counters another.

  ‘Explain the mechanism involved in drowning,’ the pathologist continues as he permits some of the students at the very front to run their fingers over the surface of the lungs he is holding in his hands.

  Spotty Neck leaps in: ‘With the nose and mouth under water, or another liquid, it sets off a fight to surface in order to be able to breathe again. The struggle subsides in the end as the subject tires, and drowning begins as soon as you can no longer manage to hold your breath. Then the liquid will be inhaled, usually accompanied by severe coughing and vomiting, something that will result in losing consciousness followed by death in the course of a few minutes.’

  ‘There is no specific recipe for drowning,’ the pathologist comments. ‘So that makes it important to search for signs to indicate whether the deceased was alive or not when he entered the water, as well as ruling out any physical factors along the way. Well, then – indicators for drowning. What should we look for?’

  ‘A white froth in the air passages and in the mouth and nostrils can tell us whether the deceased was alive when he sank under the water,’ Spotty Neck says proudly.

  ‘Well, my dear student –’ the pathologist gestures towards the body ‘– would you be kind enough to come forward and demonstrate?’

  The student takes a step forward and bends towards Rasmus’s corpse, which lies there with open chest, empty eye sockets and gaping mouth. It is hard for me to picture the boy in Liverpool shorts standing at the barbecue with his mother and grandparents. This isn’t him – this is something else altogether, runs through my mind as Spotty Neck puts his hands on his knees and inclines his head towards the cadaver. First he peers down into the mouth before twisting the head and neck so that he can access the nostrils.

  ‘For those of you who actually read the set texts,’ the pathologist begins to explain after watching the student in front of him, who has spent some time demonstrating an impressive number of awkward head positions in an attempt to look into the deceased’s air passages. ‘It is fairly evident that this exercise is a waste of time for everyone involved. Decomposition destroys this froth in the air passages after a short period and replaces it with an acrid red-brown fluid filled with gas bubbles, a sort of pseudo-froth, which our good friend here is inhaling while he makes a fool of himself in front of the rest of the class.’

  Spotty Neck swiftly straightens up and retreats shamefacedly into the rank and file again.

  ‘You could check whether the lungs are full of water?’ another student suggests.

  The pathologist nods. ‘But the liquid in the lungs is of the same character as what will result from, for example, pulmonary oedema following cardiac arrest, overdose or head injuries. So what else?’

  ‘Foreign bodies in the air passages, lungs and stomach.’

  ‘They indicate drowning, yes, but water will percolate in through the gullet, windpipe and the major respiratory passages after death also, and in addition smaller amounts will find their way down into the gullet and stomach. But not all the way into the alveoli, perhaps?’ He uses his thumbs to squeeze the lungs he is holding, as if feeling his way through the tissue for something deep inside. ‘There,’ he says eventually, ‘feel here.’

  The students at the front lean forward and run their fingers over the area the pathologist has marked with his thumbs on each lung. ‘And what are the alveoli?’

  ‘Air sacs in the bronchial tubes that allow oxygen to move into the bloodstream.’

  ‘Sometimes you can identify it from the lungs, but you normally have to examine a segment of lung under a microscope in order to confirm the finding. I have my suspicions,’ he says slyly, before dropping the lungs into a bowl together with the rest of the chest organs.

  The pathologist now turns to Astrid, who is making notes on a writing pad. ‘Anything you’d like to add so far?’

  Astrid shakes her head and the pat
hologist nods to himself. ‘Well, then, on to the stomach area.’

  The autopsy technician makes the necessary incisions before lifting out a quivering lump of jelly comprising the stomach and intestines, which he places on a long workbench beside the corpse. A cloying, sickeningly sweet stench of blood and excrement mixed with the rotten smell of sea and algae invades my senses, making it difficult to breathe even through my mouth.

  ‘This is the most salient part of the autopsy,’ the pathologist says. He has produced a scoop and litre measure and hands these to the technician, who at once begins to scoop the reddish-brown liquid from the stomach cavity into the measure while the pathologist approaches the clump of intestines: ‘Little water in the stomach can indicate that the deceased died quickly, or that he was already dead when he fell into the water.’

  The pathologist takes out a scalpel and separates the stomach from the intestines, closing the severed ends with clips. Then he opens the stomach by making another incision and empties out the contents into a bowl.

  The stomach is full of a greenish, bronze-coloured fluid containing a number of tiny molluscs. Still alive, they spin around in the bowl. ‘Here the evidence speaks for itself,’ he says, going on to examine the organs on the bench, handling them with the same dedicated precision as the ones from the chest cavity.

  ‘How’s it going so far?’

  ‘Fine,’ the students reply in unison, before the pathologist takes a step to one side and looks directly at me.

  ‘And what about you? Quiet as a mouse in the back row?’ He points at me with a bloody finger. ‘Are you fine as well?’

  I nod my head in response.

  ‘Any questions so far?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Unwell? Tired? Hungover? Or just one of those days?’

  ‘One of those days.’

  ‘Well, in our line of work we can’t have days like that. They don’t exist. Understood?’

  I nod, and the pathologist turns his attention back to the class as a whole. ‘First the brain, then lunch.’

  He gestures to the technician, who rinses his hands and the yellow washing-up gloves thoroughly under the tap. Then he puts on protective goggles, unhooks an electric saw from the wall and takes up position at the head end of the autopsy table.

  ‘Keep your distance while he is sawing,’ the pathologist advises, and the entire group retreats a number of paces while the technician tests the saw. Astrid also takes a step back and uses her hand to shield the camera lens.

  The autopsy technician puts down the saw again and makes a long incision in the back of the head with the scalpel. He takes hold of the scalp and pulls it loose from the skull, slicing forward to the forehead to expose the cranium. Then he discards the scalpel and fires up the electric saw again.

  The noise is sharp and piercing, and the burning odour clings to my nostrils. The technician saws evenly, with precision, until he is through the cranium. I pinch my nose as the technician cuts through the nerve fibres that hold the brain in place, before he lifts it out and places it on the bench in front of him.

  Astrid takes her camera and moves across to take some photos. The pathologist wipes the scalpel clean and sets the brain down lengthwise on a board on the bench. ‘A coup injury on the occipital lobus,’ he says, pointing with the tip of the scalpel to the point at the back of the head where the indentation on the cranium had been identified. ‘What does any possible contrecoup injury on the frontal lobe, or the absence of such, tell us?’

  ‘In an accidental fall,’ Spotty Neck speaks up, stepping out from behind a student colleague, ‘you will often find a matching contrecoup injury on the frontal lobe. If the deceased was standing still, on the other hand, the frontal lobe will remain undamaged.’

  ‘OK, then, are you paying attention now?’ The pathologist divides the brain into two equal parts and places them in front of him with the insides facing up. He aims the tip of the knife at the paddle-shaped pattern on the frontal lobe. ‘Clean and healthy,’ he says. ‘No sign of injury.’

  Without warning, the pathologist uses the scalpel to point in my direction. ‘You there, sleepyhead! What’s your name again?’

  ‘Aske,’ I answer meekly, struggling to straighten my back and breathe normally through the surgical mask.

  ‘OK, Aske. What have we learned so far today? No, I’ll rephrase that: what have you learned today? Tell us that instead.’

  I clear my throat as the group of students huddled round me all gravitate away, as if aware that this will end in yet another verbal humiliation. ‘That the police were right. This is a suspicious death.’

  ‘Oh? Why do you say that?’ The pathologist sets the scalpel aside and folds his arms. Astrid also glances up from her notes and peers inquisitively at me in the crowd of students. ‘Why not a diving accident? A fall and then a drowning?’

  ‘The head injury indicates that he was standing still. That excludes a fall,’ I answer, clearing my throat so that I can breathe more easily as I speak. ‘And considering the circumstances and the fact that he is attached with cable ties to a woman’s arm—’

  ‘So you mean that we can exclude possibilities such as decompression sickness, acute pulmonary oedema, pneumothorax, and air embolism as cause of death, is that what you’re saying?’

  I nod, even though I don’t entirely grasp what all that means.

  The pathologist stands gazing at me for a long time without uttering a word, until in the end he says: ‘Peculiar reasoning from a medical student.’ He waggles his fingers in mid-air. ‘Well, Aske.’ The pathologist tilts his head towards one shoulder. ‘Then in fact we might as well just pack up here and send Astrid to arrest that poor suicide candidate up in the intensive care unit for murder – what do you think?’

  ‘I doubt that would help,’ I whisper before I am interrupted again.

  ‘It seems as if Aske here has watched too many episodes of CSI instead of reading the set texts. Like so many of the rest of you, he doesn’t appreciate that it is our job to chart and document the pathological evidence we’re faced with before we stitch up the bodies and wheel them back into the refrigerator. Job done. Pathologists who solve murder mysteries are something we see on TV when we go home and want to eat popcorn with the cat or our pet stick insect. This is a matter of routines and procedures. Flesh and blood. Cadavers to dissect. Death’s gift to life is knowledge, Aske. Knowledge, not vague guesses and half-baked insinuations.’

  Finally he stops playing with his fingers and pulls off his gloves, tossing them into the bin together with his face mask. ‘Right, I’m tired of all this talking. We’ll stop for lunch. Histology after the break.’ He leans across to Astrid, who is packing up her camera, and mutters under his breath: ‘For some reason I always get an incredible urge to eat a Toblerone after these sessions. What about you?’

  CHAPTER 48

  I stagger away from the autopsy suite, tearing off my coat and boots once I reach the changing room. I am already out of the door and in the corridor before the next student arrives. In the lift I take off the gloves, hairnet, trousers and face mask, rolling them into a ball that I hide in a soiled-linen cart beside the goods lift outside the ward in the renal unit.

  The old man at the window is gone, although his clothes are still here and the bed is not made. I turn and venture into the bathroom, where I stand in front of the mirror. My face is ashen, my eyes pale, almost lifeless. My hair looks like a ruined bird’s nest and the bristles on my chin stick out from my wan complexion like spines on a sea urchin.

  I try to smile, striving to force out one of the most fundamental expressions of emotion in a human being’s repertoire, but nothing comes. My facial muscles will not flex to perform the gesture. It strikes me that what I am looking at is a death mask: the cast of a face. A physical reminder of someone from the past, something I have to carry with me wherever I go.

  I pick up a disposable razor from the shelf beside the basin and start to shave, laboriously scraping away
the bristles from every furrow and scar on the damaged side first, and then the other. Once I’m finished, I strip off and step into the shower.

  The water is cold. I stand right under the spray, closing my eyes as I soap my body, face, and even my hair in an effort to wash away the oppressive, choking odour of the autopsy room.

  All the time I’m doing this, I can see Rasmus Moritzen in my mind’s eye. Not the shell devoid of brain and guts as I had just seen him on the metal table down in the autopsy suite, but a combination of the man in the picture belonging to Arne Villmyr and Anniken Moritzen, and the lifeless body on the floor beside me on board the rescue helicopter. Rasmus Moritzen was murdered. Rasmus Moritzen is tied, no, attached with cable ties, to the woman I found out at the lighthouse. Bjørkang and the sergeant are still missing, and the police believe that they came out to the lighthouse after all. It means that everyone who knew or has been in contact with the woman I found in the sea is either dead or disappeared.

  When I’m done, I cross over to the mirror again, where I use my index finger to draw a circle in the condensation. I give the circle eyes, nose and a line for a mouth, and lean in close to it.

  ‘Apart from me,’ I say to the face in the mirror that smiles vacantly back at me. Around the edges, tiny drops of steam are forming. ‘And you.’

  A perpetrator. Gunnar Ore and the crime-scene examiners were at least right about that. There is a perpetrator. Whoever emerged from the sea and took the body away is probably the person who killed Rasmus.

  I lean in closer. The droplets of water on the mirror are so large that they start to trickle down the glass and over the eyes, nose and mouth on the circle face, as if they were tears. ‘Was that why you took the woman without a face down into the disco, because you knew that I would never leave the place alive?’ I ask the face that is rapidly disappearing in front of me. ‘Is this a game? Information and manipulation? Is that what this is all about?’