Simon Beckett - The Scent of Death

‘Sorry, sorry,’ she sighed, dumping her shoulder bag on the table before taking her seat.

She looked frazzled and tired, her swollen stomach more obvious in the charcoal jacket and grey dress-skirt than when she’d been wearing coveralls. The briefing itself was routine, essentially just making sure the pathologist and SIO were on the same wavelength before the post-mortem started. The police were still no closer to establishing the dead woman’s identity. She hadn’t been carrying a driver’s licence or any other form of ID, and her clothing and shoes were cheap, mass-produced brands that told us nothing. No useable fingerprints had survived on the torn and rat-gnawed skin of her hands, and while the victim’s pregnancy might help when it came to sifting through the missing-persons database, we would need a better idea of how old she was to refine the search criteria. Her pregnancy narrowed it down a little, but not enough. Child-bearing age could mean anything from a juvenile to someone in her forties.

That meant the main hope for identification now lay with dental records and whatever Parekh or myself could turn up. While Ward, Whelan and other members of the Murder Investigation Team filed into the observation booth, the two of us changed into scrubs and went into the examination room.

Mortuaries are the same the world over. Some may be more modern and better equipped than others, but the basic design doesn’t vary. And the chilled air and smell of disinfectant that overlies the other, more biological odours remains constant.

The door shut behind us, enveloping us in a cool quiet. The woman’s body lay on an examination table. Her knees were drawn up and bent off to one side, while arms the colour and texture of pemmican were folded in the traditional funeral pose across her lower chest. The decay was even more obvious against the table’s stainless-steel surface. Her clothing had been removed, sent off to the lab along with tissue samples for analysis and testing, and the remains had been rinsed down. Most of the loosened hair had washed away to be collected separately, leaving a few lank strands lying forlornly on the scalp. Waiting nearby were the surviving bones of the foetus.

‘What a sad job we do sometimes,’ Parekh murmured, looking down at the two sets of remains. Mother’s and child’s. Then, with a shake of her head, she set to work.

The post-mortem itself was her domain, so apart from assisting I stayed in the background. It didn’t take very long. With the remains in such poor condition there wasn’t much a forensic pathologist could do. There was no obvious trauma, such as a fractured skull or broken hyoid, which would have pointed to a probable cause of death. Like me, Parekh thought it was possible that the young woman’s waters had broken, which in those conditions could eventually have proved fatal, especially if she’d sustained some other injury as well. But with her body so badly degraded, that was only speculation.

The mummification also ruled out any chance of establishing how long ago the woman had died. I saw nothing to make me change my original estimate, that her body had been in the loft for at least one full summer and probably longer. Like so much else about this, however, that was little more than an educated guess.

Even so, one or two things did emerge.

‘I don’t think her hands and arms were arranged like that,’ Parekh said, studying the remains over her mask.

‘I don’t think so either,’ I agreed. ‘Not at the same time as the body was moved, anyway.’

It was possible that someone had arranged them soon after she’d died, either just before or just after rigor mortis when the body was still pliant. Except that didn’t fit with the theory that the young woman had been shut in the loft and left to die.

One thing I could say with certainty was that her arms hadn’t been posed when her remains had been wrapped in the plastic sheet and moved. Her body would have already mummified by then, the dried-out skin and soft tissues locked in the posture in which she’d died. As brittle as they were, any attempt to reposition them would have caused obvious damage.

There was none I could see, which meant the apparently deliberate arrangement of her arms had another explanation.

‘She was hugging herself,’ Parekh said. ‘The way her knees are drawn up and twisted to one side, it’s almost a foetal position.’

I’d reached the same conclusion. Exhausted after God alone knew how long in the dark loft, the young woman had curled up, covered her pregnant stomach with her arms and waited to die. And as her body had dried out the whipcord tendons had contracted, drawing her arms higher up her chest.

The pose wasn’t one of respect. Just a happenstance of nature.

The only discernible trauma was to the right shoulder. I’d noticed in the crime-scene photographs that its position didn’t look normal, and when I examined the post-mortem X-rays I saw why. It had been dislocated.

‘Perimortem, do you think?’ Parekh mused, looking at the ghostly black-and-white image. ‘It could have been caused by a fall or during a struggle. Perhaps as she tried to escape, assuming that’s what happened.’

I nodded. Although we were into the realms of speculation now, I knew from painful experience how agonizing a dislocated shoulder was. It wasn’t something that anyone would endure without treatment, at least not willingly. But there was nothing to suggest the woman had been restrained, such as the abrasions we’d found on the other two victims. And a post-mortem injury when the body was moved would have damaged the mummified tissues around the joint, possibly even caused the limb to completely detach.

That made a perimortem injury — at or close to the time of death — most likely. It also added weight to the theory that she’d gone into the loft to hide. A pregnant woman with a dislocated shoulder wouldn’t have been able to run very far, or very fast. If she’d been trying to escape from someone, the loft might have been her only option.

As well as her last.

Parekh moved aside to let me take a look at the dead woman’s teeth. A forensic dentist would be able to give a more exhaustive analysis, but I could provide an initial assessment. Carefully shining a pencil light in, I peered into the gaping mouth. The tongue and lips had gone and only shrivelled scraps of gums remained.

‘Two of her wisdom teeth have erupted, but the upper two haven’t fully broken through,’ I said. ‘So she’s late teens at least, but probably not much older than her mid-twenties.’

Wisdom teeth usually emerge between the ages of seventeen and twenty-five, so while the woman — the young woman, I could now say — had been old enough for the process to start, the fact it was still ongoing put an upper limit on her age range. That was supported by the relative lack of wear shown by her teeth, which suggested a younger person. But their condition was revealing for another reason as well.

‘She doesn’t have many fillings, but there’s a lot of discolouration and a few visible patches of caries,’ I told Ward, when we were back in the briefing room after the post-mortem. ‘She hasn’t visited a dentist recently.’

‘Consistent with drug use?’ she asked.

‘I’d say so, yes.’

Whelan had been listening while he was on the phone. He put it away now as he joined the conversation. ‘If she was buying or selling drugs that’d explain what she was doing at St Jude’s. We know some dealing went on there, and dental hygiene isn’t high on an addict’s list of priorities.’

‘Perhaps not, but her teeth used to be well looked after,’ I said. ‘I think the decay and staining are relatively recent. None of her fillings looks particularly new, so if she’s only in her twenties they were probably done when she was a child or in her early teens. And two of her back molars have white fillings rather than silver amalgam. The NHS only pays for those on front teeth.’