Kwei Quartey - Wife of the Gods

Arranging a tray of instruments nearby was a man in a heavy-duty apron and thick, knee-high rubber boots.

Dr. Biney introduced him. “Obodai is my most trusted assistant, and without him, this place could not run.”

Obodai laughed bashfully and offered a feeble denial, but Dawson had no doubt that Dr. Biney’s declaration was true.

“Are we ready to go?” Biney said.

“We are ready, sir,” Obodai said.

Dr. Biney turned to the body, standing to its right side as a doctor always does. Obodai stood at the head, near the sink, and Dawson took his position on the left. He looked down at the body. A courier had delivered the police file last night, complete with photographs of the body at the crime scene, but the Gladys Mensah now in front of him looked waxy and strangely unreal. He could tell she had been lovely alive, and he was trying to imagine her speaking, moving, animated.

Dawson lightly touched Gladys’s arm. “So cold,” he murmured. “Once she was warm and breathing.”

It was what he could never quite get his mind around-not just how complex life was, but why it was so easy for life to leave a person once so complex.

“Only twenty-two years old,” Biney said gently “It seems a shame, doesn’t it, Detective Inspector Dawson?”

“It does.”

Biney took a deep breath and let out a sigh as if to say, Be that as it may, we have work to do . He first brought his face closer to Gladys and examined her slowly from head to toe. He did not touch her yet.

“In medical school we were always taught to listen, look, and then feel a patient,” he said. “It’s no different dealing with a dead person.”

Dawson watched him, trying at the same time to spot anything on Gladys’s body that might be significant. She was lean, with perfectly smooth skin that had likely been the color of milk chocolate before death had darkened her.

“Anything catch your eye, Mr. Dawson?”

“Not yet.”

“Measurements, Obodai?” Biney said.

“She weighs fifty-two kilos, and measures one hundred and seventy-three centimeters long, sir.”

“Mm-hm. Thank you. No stab or puncture wounds that I can see so far. Nor contusions, or ecchymoses. No evidence for fractures of the skull or long bones…” He checked her fingers. “She kept her nails short-they look clean, but get clippings later, Obodai, would you?”

“Very good, sir.”

“Roll her up?”

Obodai smoothly and expertly turned Gladys’s body on its side so Biney could look at her back.

“Ah, Inspector Dawson, take a look. Here we see blanching at the shoulders and buttocks, indicating that she was lying on her back for some time postmortem. The weight of her body compresses the blood vessels in the areas in contact with the ground, preventing accumulation of blood there. I still see no wounds of any kind. The posterior scalp’s clear of contusions or hematomas. Interesting.”

“Let her back down, Doctor?” Obodai said.

“Yes, please. And we’ll put her on the head block now and open the skull.”

Obodai lifted the body at the shoulders and slid the wooden block underneath it. As he did that and Gladys’s neck became slightly more exposed, Biney seemed to notice something. He went closer and peered at her chin.

Dawson followed his lead. “What do you see, Dr. Biney?”

“It looks like an abrasion,” he said, with a tinge of excitement in his voice. “I’ve seen it before, in another case. The victim is being strangled, she lowers her chin to protect her neck and gets a bruise from the assailant’s hands. Strangling someone is not as easy as people think.”

“Strangling,” Dawson echoed.

“Indeed. Change of plan, Obodai.”

“Dissect the neck, sir?”

“Yes, let’s postpone the skull for the moment.”

“Very good. Your scalpel, sir.”

Dr. Biney began at Gladys’s chin and made a long, clean incision straight down the middle to the sternal notch. There was very little subcutaneous fat, and the muscle layer popped into view after minimal dissection.

“Do I see subtle hemorrhages in the soft tissues around the right sternomastoid,” Biney said, “or do my eyes deceive? I don’t want to be premature, but I think we may have something here.”

He continued carefully with short, precise incisions with the scalpel, peeling away the layers covering the larynx.

“Ah.”

“What is it, Dr. Biney?”

“Fractured thyroid cartilage. Gracious. Do you see it, Inspector Dawson? Let me show you. This is the thyroid cartilage. It looks like a roof we’re viewing from above. This is one side of the roof sloping up, this is the other, and where they meet is the prominence everyone knows as the Adam’s apple. We can’t see them, but the vocal cords are behind the cartilage-underneath the roof, so to speak. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Look at the left side of the cartilage here. It looks smooth. When I poke it, it moves in one piece. Now look at the right. I depress it firmly, and what happens?”

“It bends in the middle.”

“Yes. Why?”

“Because it’s cracked.”

“Ten points. There you have it. Fracture of the thyroid cartilage.”

“Besides strangulation, is there any other possible cause of a thyroid cartilage fracture?”

“There are-such as falling against something and striking the front of the neck,” Biney said. “The armrest of a chair, for instance. Another would be a karate chop to the neck. But fractures of the larynx in circumstances like this mostly result from strangulation, and my finding of perilaryngeal focal hemorrhage-in other words, bruising-is consistent with this. I wonder if the hyoid bone was damaged as well.”

He returned to Gladys’s neck and moved upward from the thyroid cartilage to the apex of the throat.

“Dissecting around the hyoid bone now,” he said. “It’s a much harder structure to fracture because it’s protected behind the lower jaw.”

A few minutes later, Dr. Biney said, “It’s intact. No fracture. But , there’s swelling and hemorrhage around it. Again, consistent with considerable force applied to the neck over some sustained period.”

Dawson gazed at Dr. Biney, and their eyes met. It was, quite frankly, breathtaking.

“What you’re saying is-”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, Mr. Dawson. In the case of Gladys Mensah, the cause of death is asphyxiation by strangulation. Manner of death is homicide.”

V ICTORIA TYPED UP THEofficial autopsy report in no time at all and gave Dawson a copy.

“Would you like to meet my wife and have some lunch before you set off to Ho?” Dr. Biney suggested as he saw Dawson out. “We have a place on the water and a floating gazebo on the river, and my wife makes an exquisite grilled tilapia.”

It was certainly tempting, but Dawson declined with thanks. “I should get to Ho without delay,” he explained.

“Very well-perhaps another time. You are always welcome.”

They exchanged calling cards as they continued on to Dawson’s car.

Just as he was about to open the door, Dawson thought of something. “You know a lot of people, Dr. Biney. Would you mind taking a look at this?”

He dug into his pocket and fished out the gold watch he had confiscated from Daramani. “Stolen item, seems it belongs to a doctor. Do you know this name?”

Biney looked at the engraving on the back plate. “Good gracious,” he said in surprise. “I most certainly do know this fellow. He and I were classmates in med school and we’re still in touch.”

“Any idea where he lives or works?”

“In Accra. As a matter of fact, I have to be in Accra in two weeks and I can see to it personally that he gets it back-if that’s okay with you, that is.”