Peter Robinson - In A Dry Season

“There are a number of odds and ends my lads found while they were cleaning up,” Williams said. “They’re over there on the bench.”

Banks looked at the collection of filthy objects. It was hard to make out what they were: pieces of corroded metal, perhaps? A ring? Shreds of old clothing?

“Can you get them cleaned up and sent over to me?” he asked.

“No problem. Now let’s get down to work.”

Annie took out her notebook and crossed her legs.

“First of all,” Williams began, “let me confirm, just for the record, that we are dealing with human remains, most likely Caucasian. I’ll check a few things under the microscope tomorrow, do some more work on the skull dimensions, for the sake of scientific accuracy, but you can take my word on it at the moment.”

“What about DNA analysis?” Banks asked.

Williams grunted. “People seem to think DNA analysis is some sort of miracle answer. It’s not. Right now, I can tell you a hell of a lot more about what you want to know than any DNA could. Believe me, I’ve had plenty of experience in this field. May I continue?”

“Please do. But get a DNA analysis done, anyway. It might be useful for determining identity, or identifying any living descendants.”

Williams nodded. “Very well.”

“And what about radiocarbon dating?”

“Really, Chief Inspector, shouldn’t you leave the science to the scientists? There’s too big a margin for error in radiocarbon dating. It’s mostly useful for archaeological finds, and I think you’ll find our friend here is a little more recent than that. Now, if there’s nothing else…?” He turned back to the skeleton. “The height of the subject was easy enough to determine in this case by simple measurement once we got the bones arranged in their original positions. A meter and a half – between a hundred and fifty-four and a hundred and fifty-five centimeters.”

“What’s that in feet and inches?” Banks asked.

“Five foot two.” Dr. Williams looked over and smiled at DS Cabbot. “But I can’t be sure about the eyes of blue.”

Annie gave him a chilly smile. Banks noticed her roll her eyes and tug her skirt lower over her knees when Williams had turned away.

“Also,” Williams went on, “you are dealing with the remains of a young woman.” He paused for dramatic effect.

Annie shot him a quick glance, then looked down at her notebook again.

“Go on,” Banks said. “We’re listening.”

“In general,” Williams explained, “a male skeleton is larger, the bone surfaces rougher, but the main differences are in the skull and the pelvic area. The male skull is thicker.”

“Well, what do you know?” Annie muttered without looking up.

Williams laughed. “Anyway, in this case, the pelvis is intact, and that’s the easiest way for the trained eye to tell.” Williams reached over and put his hand between the skeleton’s legs. “The female pelvis is wider and lower than the male’s, to facilitate child-bearing.” Banks watched as Williams ran his hand over the bone. “This pubic curve is definitely female, and here, the sciatic notch.” He touched it with his forefinger. “Also unmistakably female. Much wider than a male’s.” He hooked his finger in the sciatic notch, then looked at DS Cabbot again as he caressed the skeleton’s pelvic area. Annie kept her head down.

Williams turned back to Banks. “The symphyseal area here, as you can see, is rectangular. In males it’s triangular. I could go on, but I think you get the point.”

“Definitely female,” Banks said.

“Yes. And there’s one more thing.” He picked up a small magnifying glass from the lab bench and handed it to Banks. “Look at this.” Williams pointed to where the two pelvic bones joined at the front of the body. Banks leaned over, holding the glass. On the bone surface he could just about make out a small groove, or pit, maybe about half an inch long.

“That’s the dorsal margin of the pubis’ articular surface,” Williams said, “and what you’re looking at is a parturition scar. It’s caused by the stresses that attached ligaments put on the bone.”

“So she’d given birth to at least one child?”

Williams smiled. “Ah, you’re familiar with the technical terms?”

“Some of them. Go on.”

Annie raised her eyebrows at Banks, then got back to her notes before Williams could nail her with his leering gaze.

“Well,” Williams went on, “there’s only a single pit on either side of the pubis, which would strongly suggest that she only gave birth once in her life. Usually, the more times a woman has given birth, the more apparent the parturition scars are.”

“How old was she when she died?”

“I’d have to do more comprehensive tests to be certain of that. With X rays of the ossification centers – the centers that basically produce the calcium and other minerals that make up bone – we can make a reasonably accurate determination. We can also do a spectrographic analysis of bone particles. But all that takes time, not to mention money. I imagine you’d like a rough estimate as quickly as possible?”

“Yes,” said Banks. “What do you have to go on at the moment?”

“Well, there’s epiphyseal union, for a start. Let me explain.” He looked over toward Annie like a professor beginning his lecture. She ignored him. He seemed unperturbed. Maybe this sort of ogling was just a habit with him, Banks guessed, and he didn’t even notice he was doing it. “Here,” Dr. Williams went on, “at the very ends of the long bones in both the arms and the legs, the epiphyses have all firmly united with the shafts, which doesn’t usually happen until the age of twenty or twenty-one. But look here.” He pointed toward the collarbone. “The epiphysis at the sternal end of the clavicle, which doesn’t unite until the late twenties, has not united yet.”

“So what age are we looking at? Roughly?”

Williams scratched his chin. “I’d say about twenty-two to twenty-eight. If you take in the skull sutures, too, you can see here that the sagittal suture shows some signs of endocranial closure, but the occipital and the lambdoid sutures are still wide open. That would also suggest somewhere in the twenties.”

“How accurate is this?”

“It wouldn’t be very far off. I mean, this is definitely not the skeleton of a forty-year-old or a fourteen-year-old. You can also take into account that she was in pretty good general physical shape. There is no indication of any old healed fractures, nor of any skeletal anomalies or deformities.”

Banks looked at the bones, trying to imagine the young woman who had once inhabited them, the living flesh surrounding them. He failed. “Any idea how long she’s been down there?”

“Oh dear. I was wondering when you’d get around to asking that,” Williams folded his arms and placed his forefinger over his lips. “It’s very difficult. Very difficult indeed to be at all accurate about something like that. To the untrained eye, a skeleton that has been buried for ten years might look indistinguishable from one that has been buried, say, a thousand years.”

“But you don’t think this one has been buried a thousand years?”

“Oh, no. I said to the untrained eye. No, there are certain indications that we’re dealing with recent remains here, as opposed to archaeological.”

“These being?”

“What do you notice most about the bones?”

“The color,” said Banks.

“Right. And what does that tell you?”

Banks wasn’t too sure about the usefulness of the Socratic method at a time like this, but he had found from experience that it is usually a good idea to humor scientists. “That they’re stained or decayed.”