by LJ Ross
“I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been here,” he said. “It should be a depressing place, when you consider all the things we’ve seen, but somehow I find it uplifting.”
She gave him a questioning look.
“For every person they can’t save, there’s another five they do,” he told her. “That’s something to be cheerful about.”
His sister hadn’t been one of them, Ryan thought, but there was nothing any of the world’s finest nurses, doctors or surgeons could have done for Natalie. Her time had been snatched from her, too, and there was no bringing her back. Thinking of his sister, as he often did, brought with it bittersweet memories of the past, but it also re-affirmed his resolve. Her death had been the catalyst driving him to work harder and faster to bring the very worst kind of criminals to justice and, he supposed, being able to bring some small comfort to the families of their victims was the best way he could think of to honour her memory.
“Penny for them,” Denise said.
Ryan shook his head.
“Ghosts,” he murmured.
“Benign, or malicious?” she asked.
“Oh, definitely the Casper variety,” he grinned, and, after keying in the access code, held open the door for her to precede him.
It was a small, chivalrous action, and, unlike with some other men, MacKenzie understood that it came with no sexist undertone; no implied belief that she was in any way incapable of opening her own doorways. It was an act of kindness he would have done for anyone, and that was all there was to it.
“Thanks,” she said, and stepped inside.
Outside, wind from the Arctic had made its way across the North Sea and further inland, touching even the hardiest of people with its icy fingers. However, as they descended to the basement, the temperature became noticeably warmer thanks to the mortuary’s industrial cooling system which pumped cold air in, and expelled hot air into the surrounding corridors through a series of ancient-looking vents.
They shed their overcoats as they made their way through the warren of corridors until they came to a set of wide metal security doors.
“I think the passcode changed, recently,” Ryan said, and tried to remember what it was.
“It’ll be something pretentious,” MacKenzie said. “Pinter loves meaningful codes.”
It was true: the last few codes he’d chosen had signified the year of death of a famous historical figure.
“I’m trying to remember which king or queen he’s chosen, this time,” Ryan said, and was struck by inspiration.
He typed in 1991, and the doors buzzed.
“Freddie Mercury,” he explained, and MacKenzie smiled.
“Much better than your average monarch.”
Stepping through the double doors, they were treated to a blast of cold air, which immediately precipitated a wave of goosebumps that seemed only fitting for the occasion. They paused to sign themselves into the logbook beside the door, reached for a couple of guest lab coats to protect their clothes, and then sought out the master of the mortuary domain.
Doctor Jeffrey Pinter was alone that morning, his technicians being either at home for the weekend like normal people, or enjoying a well-earned cigarette break around the back of the hospital. They didn’t spot him immediately, for he was partially obscured by the side of a large immersion tank on the far side of the wide, open-plan room.
“Morning!” he trilled out.
They didn’t bother to enquire what was occupying his attention; ignorance was sometimes bliss, in an environment such as this.
“Well,” he said, appearing after a minute or two. “Ryan, Denise, good to see you both.”
Pinter was an outstanding clinician and, for all his foibles, a decent man, but he was not possessed of the kind of easy social graces that might have endeared him to strangers. Paired with a tall, lanky frame, sunken, shadowed eyes, and a wispy, salt-and-pepper head of hair, he bore an unfortunate resemblance to the Grim Reaper which, in his line of work, cut a little too close to the bone.
All the same, he wore the cheerful expression of a man whom life was treating kindly.
“What’s her name?” Ryan asked, and wriggled his eyebrows. “You’ve got that look in your eye, Jeff.”
Pinter made no attempt to be coy. His last relationship with a fellow pathologist hadn’t lasted—it turned out that talking shop after hours was not the most conducive to a fulfilling love life—and he’d gone through a long dry spell before meeting the current object of his affections, who he was only too happy to shout about.
“Her name’s Rae,” he said. “She’s a science teacher. We met over at the Centre for Life—I was giving a talk to some of her sixth formers about a career in pathology.”
“Used to be nursing or secretarial work, in my day,” MacKenzie joked. “The Careers Service is branching out.”
He nodded.
“I don’t know how keen the kids were, but Rae and I seemed to hit it off.”
Ryan was happy for him.
“In that case, we’re even more grateful to you for coming in on a Sunday.”
“Don’t mention it,” Pinter said, with none of his usual belly-aching about overtime. “We’ve all got to pull together.”
When he turned to lead them towards one of the private examination rooms, Ryan and MacKenzie exchanged an expressive glance. If this was the effect of romance on the mind of a gnarly old pathologist, maybe the government should consider dishing out free memberships to some online dating sites as a matter of public health policy.
“I’ve put her in here,” Pinter said, as they came to one of the smaller rooms off a side corridor. “I hope you’re feeling strong of constitution, this morning, because this one’s especially difficult to look at.”
It was good of him to warn them, but no amount of warnings could have prepared their systems for the sight which awaited them beneath that white paper shroud.
The woman’s body was enormously bloated, its skin stained a jaundiced yellow thanks to a liberal application of a strong disinfectant, which left a strong stench of iodine hanging on the stale air circulating around their heads. Her body bore countless small and larger lesions and lacerations, the product of having been battered against the edge of the wreck, following which she’d been left to the mercy of the fish and the birds.
The three were silent for long seconds, allowing their bodies and minds time to adjust to the sight of violent death, as well as paying a small mark of respect to the dead. All the while, Ryan’s eyes roamed over the gurney, noting every minor detail, every nick and cut.
“How old do you think she was, Jeff?”
Pinter might have expected him to ask about the cause of death, first, but he understood and sympathised with the line of thought.
“No more than twenty,” he said, with quiet authority. “Looking at the bone mass, the teeth…I’d say that was an accurate gauge.”
Ryan nodded.
“How did she die?”
Pinter sucked in a long breath and let it whistle back out again through his teeth, which was a habit he’d been wont to do for time immemorial, and had irritated them for just as long.
“Fatal asphyxia by drowning, owing to aspiration of fluid into the lungs,” he said. “However, as you’ll see from the top of the cranium here—”
He unclicked a small, retractable pointer and directed it to the top of her head, where they could see a gash of around three or four inches in length.
“—there’s a large cerebral contusion, following a split in her skull. It’s difficult to say whether this was sustained post-mortem, or ante-mortem, but there’s every possibility the tide struck her against either the side of the boat or a nearby rock, causing her to lose consciousness and drown thereafter.”
Ryan nodded.
“As you can see from the remaining injuries, many of these are superficial and were undoubtedly inflicted post-mortem as a consequence of the local wildlife.”
MacKenzie looked u
pon the woman’s body with sad green eyes.
“What about the marks on her wrists?”
Pinter nodded, and moved down to look at one of the woman’s hands, which had been bagged in plastic casing that was beginning to balloon as natural gases seeped from her skin.
“Just as you’d expect,” he said. “Faulkner sent across one of the cuffs his team recovered from the wreckage, and I’ve compared the shape and size with the line of her injuries. I’d say it was highly probable this woman was tightly restrained, and for a number of hours. Her skin still retained a number of embedded iron particles.”
Ryan thought of all the other cuffs they’d recovered from the trawler, and was enraged.
“What about post-mortem interval?” he said, very softly. “How long had she been dead, when we found her?”
Pinter made a thrumming sound with his lips, pretending to think about it.
“Somewhere between three and five hours would be my best estimate,” he said. “How does that compare with your timings?”
“It fits,” MacKenzie replied, thinking of the tides and of the time Jill Price had first reported it to their Control Room. “The tide began to move out at around four a.m. yesterday morning, which would have enabled anyone coming off the boat to access a small amount of shoreline sometime thereafter. That also corresponds with the location of gathered footprints we found near the cliffs.”
“Our witness called it in just before eight, which gives around a four-hour window between the time the boat was likely to have collided with Marsden Rock, and the time first responders arrived at the scene,” Ryan added.
“Was there anything in her system?” MacKenzie asked. “Has the toxicology report come back?”
Pinter nodded, and moved across to a metal desk which held a computer, where he brought up the results of the report on the monitor.
“Aside from the abnormal quantity of fluid found in her mastoid cells, as you would expect, the report indicates nil in the way of alcohol, but high levels of diacetylmorphine—more commonly known as heroin.”
Pinter rattled through the other items in the report, concluding that she probably hadn’t eaten for at least twelve hours prior to her death.
“There are some very minor track marks on her left ankle,” he said, rising to indicate the pinpricks, which were so tiny in comparison with her other, more obvious traumas, they would have been easy to miss.
“You must have eyes like a hawk,” Ryan said, leaning down to look at the tiny abrasions.
“There are multiple puncture marks, when you look at it under the magnifier,” Pinter explained. “Given that heroin has a very short half-life, to maintain the high, a user has to inject themselves every few hours. I’ve examined every inch of this woman, and this is the only concentration of markings consistent with intravenous drug use.”
“You’re saying, there aren’t any other signs of drug use on her body?”
“None,” Pinter agreed. “As for this area around the ankle, there are thirty-two puncture marks that I’ve counted which would tally with the diameter of a needle, and the beginnings of cellulitis surrounding those marks which would corroborate that.”
Ryan digested that information, then nodded his thanks.
“If we assume this woman received, let’s say, four or five doses of heroin per day to maintain the high and develop a dependency, that would mean the injections began anywhere between six and eight days prior to her death.”
MacKenzie smiled, following his line of thought.
“Which will help us to build a timeline of events, once we hear from colleagues in Europe and beyond.”
“Exactly,” Ryan said. “Jeff, this was very helpful, and we’re grateful to you. Is there anything you can tell us that might give us a steer on her identity?”
Pinter looked down at the woman with compassion.
“In terms of fingerprint analysis, there’s no match to the databases we keep, and likewise as far as DNA is concerned, there’s no match on any accessible database,” he said. “Now, when it comes to this lady’s genealogy, we can make assumptions as to her ethnic background by the colour of her skin, but, as we all know, that is by no means determinative of her country of origin or much else, for that matter. I’ve sent a sample of her DNA for more detailed testing, which I’m hoping to have back in the next couple of days, and that will compare the frequency of each of her autosomal DNA markers with various population groups, which should provide some indication of her geographic heritage.”
MacKenzie cleared her throat.
“Do you still have the clothes she was found in?”
Pinter’s eyebrows raised, but he nodded.
“Yes, they’re being stored in the usual way—”
“I was only going to suggest that, perhaps, the tags on her clothing might prove informative.”
Pinter opened his mouth to speak, then snapped it shut again.
“Yes,” he said, grudgingly. “I suppose that might help.”
Five minutes later, Ryan and MacKenzie held the woman’s soggy clothing in their gloved hands, examining it for tags.
“Here,” he said, holding out the small white label. “Made in Thailand—”
“She could have bought that in Primark,” MacKenzie was bound to say. “Anything else?”
“All the washing instructions appear to be written in some language other than English—not Chinese, or Japanese, I know that much. Could very well be Thai.”
He held it out for MacKenzie to see for herself.
“Yes,” she agreed. “Looks like it.”
“It’s not determinative,” Ryan said, conscious of Pinter’s crestfallen face looming over his right shoulder. “We’ll certainly wait for the results of Jeff’s clinical enquiries, before we draw any firm conclusions.”
Pinter perked up at that, just as Ryan had hoped.
“Oh, definitely,” MacKenzie said, picking up his cue, whilst privately thinking that she would tell Lowerson and Yates to focus the thrust of their enquiries on known trafficking routes out of Thailand.
“I’ll get those results across to you as soon as they come through,” Pinter said, somewhat mollified. “There was one other thing…”
“Oh, yes?” MacKenzie said, as she slipped the clothing back into their evidence bags.
“This,” he said, reaching for another evidence bag containing a water-damaged photograph. “When she came in, she was still wearing lace-up trainers. We found this plastered to the sole of her foot.”
The paper was so badly damaged it was hard to make out the figures in the photograph, but it seemed to show three people: a man, a woman, and a child, standing beneath a flowering tree with the sun at their backs.
“Perhaps she was the child in this image,” MacKenzie whispered, and was embarrassed to find tears prick the back of her eyes.
“Whoever she was, we know there were people who cared for her,” Ryan said, casting his searing blue gaze back over to the silent witness in the room. “That means we’re no longer just doing this for her. We’re doing it for them, too.”
CHAPTER 20
Ryan and MacKenzie weren’t the only ones looking for answers.
Phillips kept a beady eye on the Person of Interest sitting on a table in the window, and an especially beady eye on their hands.
“Keep those on the table, where I can see ’em,” he muttered, before scooping up a giant spoonful of rum and raisin ice cream.
Dibley’s was a local treasure to the residents of Tynemouth and far beyond, who flocked to the little ice cream parlour not only to satisfy a craving for sugar, but to enjoy a slice of childhood nostalgia. A stone’s throw from the sea, it was patronised by people of all ages, all of whom pressed their noses to the glass of the long counter with its colourful display of flavoured cream.
“It’s cute, isn’t it?”
Phillips had almost forgotten he was not alone.
The mother of the boy Samantha was currently giggling with—a bit to
o enthusiastically, for his liking—smiled at him from across the table with a look in her eye that suggested she understood exactly how he felt, and could sympathise. She’d introduced herself as, ‘Annie’ and, he was forced to admit, looked perfectly normal.
Cute? Phillips wondered, stealing another glance at the twelve-year-old couple swapping sundaes. She, with her long red hair intricately French braided by his own fair hands and tied with a pink butterfly bobble—not that Phillips was about to admit that particular skill to all and sundry—and he, with his experimentally-gelled hair and t-shirt which read, ‘SURF LIFE’.
“Aye,” he said, at length. “I s’pose.”
Annie smiled to herself, and took a sip of coffee.
“Sam tells me you and Denise are both with the police?” she said, trying again to make conversation.
“Aye—I mean, yes, yes we are. Murder Squad,” he added, without thinking.
She stared at him.
“That’s…interesting.”
He took another slurp of ice cream, and wondered if she looked nervous because she had something to hide.
“It has its advantages,” he said, with another meaningful glance towards the window table. “What did you say your last name was?”
She swallowed her ice cream with difficulty, feeling like an interrogation suspect.
“Er, Priest.”
Priest, he thought, and flipped through his mental files for any recollection of a troublesome family by that name.
“We, er, we run a bike shop down in Ouseburn,” she added. “That’s where Ben is now.”
He made a note to check its filing status with Companies House.
“It’s hard for me, too, you know,” she said suddenly.
Phillips was caught off guard.
“Er, what’s hard?”
She gave him a knowing smile.
“This,” she said, waving the spoon towards their children. “Having to come to terms with the fact that they’re not so little, anymore. I’d look forward to spending our free time together as a family, but he wants to go to the skate park with his friends…and now, he’s having ice cream with girls. It’s an adjustment.”