Erin Hart - The Book of Killowen

Standing at the foot of a stainless-steel slab in the morgue, Nora gazed upon the bog man, released from his swaddling and roughly articulated upon the table, following the anatomist’s urge to understand everything in its proper place. She tried to take in the whole man, as she had taught her students to do in gross anatomy lab, the whole impression of the person laid out before them on the table. There was a lot more to be gleaned from a cadaver’s life and death than a collection of parts, and it was important for future physicians to understand as much about what went right for people as what went wrong. The fact that the patient had died probably ten centuries earlier was neither here nor there. For Nora, every encounter with a cadaver was an occasion, a chance to increase human knowledge and understanding.

The head, upper torso, and arms were still attached, but they had been separated from the legs just above the pelvis. The weakest parts tended to fall asunder first—which usually meant the unsupported spine in the lower back. The man’s head was only slightly misshapen from the weight of the peat, the features still readable. Eyes and mouth open, perhaps an expression of surprise at his grisly fate.

Wet bog-brown cloth clung to the torso and limbs, following their contours, apparently torn by the same rough force that had dismembered the fragile body. Because this man had not been found in his original place, a lot of information about how he had ended up there had been lost. Had he gone into the bog standing up, facedown, supine? All these details could speak about the circumstances. Had he gone in whole, or already in pieces? The answer to that was likely the former, judging from how the clothing was torn and the fact that he was obviously much later than naked Iron Age bog men who appeared to have suffered perimortem dismemberment as part of their ritual sacrifice. The other detail that stood out was the stretching and pulling of the muscle fibers, which suggested that the body had been intact until unearthed by someone or something with enough force to pull it apart.

Nora paused to check the spray bottle of deionized water she’d brought with her from Dublin. There could be no dillydallying; she’d have to take her photos and measurements and get Killowen Man’s remains back into the container as quickly as possible, to keep him from being exposed to the mold- and bacteria-laden air.

The morgue at the regional hospital was much more used to preparing the remains of elderly patients for removal by undertakers, not so much used to the state pathologist or the National Museum descending upon them en masse. She could see hospital staff occasionally peering through the small window in the autopsy room door.

Nora knew the full team back at the Barracks could probably determine lots of things: when and how his hair had been cut, how much work he’d done with his hands, perhaps even the menu of his last earthly meal, and with it, the time of year in which he’d died. It was a major break that he was wearing clothing; it could be analyzed by experts in fiber analysis, garment and footwear construction, and other arcana of the archaeological profession.

Her job today was to examine the body, take measurements, note her observations while the corpse was still fresh, so to speak. Try to hazard a few conjectures about which types of damage were perimortem and postmortem.

She began to take photographs, starting at the head and working her way down to the corpse’s pointed toes. Even after several years in Ireland, working on remains recovered from the peat, she remained in awe of a bog’s protective power. This man was clearly at least hundreds of years old, and yet a section of his limbs would show nerves, blood vessels, bone and marrow, the same as a person only recently dead.

Although it was digital, her camera shutter clicked and whirred just like the real thing. The thickened sole of the unshod foot again pulled at her imagination, as it had out on the bog. Part of his story was written there, she was certain. Calluses and fallen metatarsal arches spoke to a lifetime of wandering. The ankle showed signs of gout, suggesting a rich diet, and yet his cheeks were slightly sunken, a sign of deprivation. Was he an outcast or an exile?

She worked her way around to the other side of the body, snapping photographs of the right hand, whose thumb and first two fingers seemed stained darker brown along the distal interphalangeal joints. An anomaly of coloration from the bog, or something else? She circled again to examine the left hand, but it was clenched tight. Setting aside the camera, she began to probe at the clothing that twisted around the man’s torso, her eye drawn to the edge of a hole in his cloak. She gently moved aside the wet wool that shrouded his rib cage. There was not just one, as it turned out, but several holes of similar size, and definitely cut rather than torn through the cloth.

The door at the head of the table swung open, and Catherine Friel’s face brightened when she saw Nora. “Thought you’d have him back at the Barracks by now. Isn’t that the usual protocol?”

“Detective Cusack asked us to hold up here for a while, since evidence from her case could be intermixed with the older remains.”

“Wise choice,” Dr. Friel agreed. “I’m here for the PM on the other gentleman. Maybe you’d give me a hand? I’d be happy to reciprocate.”

After she had Killowen Man safely stowed in the cooler, Nora stood at the other mortuary table, taking in the details on the recent murder victim. In contrast to the ancient bog man, Benedict Kavanagh’s corpse was not only intact but surprisingly unmarked. Of course they were still waiting for final confirmation that this really was Kavanagh, but everything pointed that way. Nora couldn’t help thinking about what Cormac had said last night, that Benedict Kavanagh and Niall Dawson had been best friends at university. Why would he keep silent?

The mortuary technician had already cut the clothes off and removed the personal effects. Because Benedict Kavanagh’s body had just come out of the bog, the limbs were still quite pliable. The corpse now looked like a slightly shrunken effigy laid out on the slab.

A line from a Seamus Heaney poem, the reference to “a saint’s kept body,” circled through Nora’s brain. But by all accounts, this dead man was not a saint, and his face was not the calm visage usually associated with a holy man’s death mask; the eyelids were open, and the somewhat shriveled eyeballs still seemed to bulge slightly from the sockets. His jaw gaped open, the muscles of his cheeks stretched tight. As Dr. Friel turned to mark the autopsy diagram, Nora said, “There’s something inside his mouth.”

“Yes, I saw that,” Dr. Friel said, setting down her clipboard. “First priority, I think.” She worked two gloved fingers between the dead man’s teeth and eventually removed a slightly misshapen black object about the size and shape of a large marble.

“What is it?” Nora asked.

“Not sure, but there’s more than one.” Catherine Friel’s fingers were still wedged between the dead man’s teeth. “At least two more.” She tightened her grip on the corpse’s chin and leaned down to get better leverage.

“Do you think it’s possible that he choked on them?” Nora asked.

“Well, they’d be about the right size to block the airway. We can put obstructive asphyxia on the list of possible causes.”

Nora pulled the magnifier down to examine each small black orb in turn as Dr. Friel removed it. “Looks like a puncture in this first one,” she said, moving on to the others. “A couple of the others, too. No, not a puncture. It’s more like a tiny drilled hole.” She had a nagging feeling that she’d seen something like this before, but she couldn’t say where.