Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

‘Frears is still in the house, ma’am,’ Lundy said, resorting to formality.

She gave him the barest nod, but it was clear I was the main focus of her attention. The frizzy ginger hair threatened to escape from the plain black band that held it back as she glared at me, tight-mouthed.

‘Just so I’m clear, Dr Hunter, can you explain to me why you went in the house without calling us first?’

‘I knew there might be an injured girl who needed help.’

‘And you thought you were the best person to give it? Rather than, oh, say, the emergency services?’

‘The emergency services weren’t here. I was.’

‘So because of that you decided to contaminate a crime scene.’

My own patience was wearing thin. I was tired as well, and I’d spent the past hour replaying what I’d done, wondering if I could have prevented any of this from happening.

‘I didn’t know it was a crime scene when I went in. I was careful where I walked, I didn’t touch anything, and I came out as soon as I realized. So yes, I’m very sorry. But not as sorry as I’d be if I’d let someone die while I stood out here twiddling my thumbs.’

I realized I’d raised my voice. Lundy fidgeted uncomfortably as Clarke stared, the pale-lashed eyes cold under the ginger hair. Here it comes, I thought.

There was a noise from the house. A stretcher was being carried out, the black body bag on it dully reflecting the flashing blue lights as it was taken to the black mortuary van. Clarke watched it for a moment, then sighed.

‘I need to speak to Frears.’

Lundy gave me a look that could have been either warning or reproach before he went with her. As they disappeared towards the floodlit house there was the sound of the black van’s door being slammed. I looked around to see a medic closing the other door as well, shutting the interior and its cargo from view.

I was driven back to the boathouse, but it was still after three before I got to bed. Even then I couldn’t sleep. It might have been my imagination, but I thought I could still smell the unwashed animal odour of Edgar Holloway. And whenever I closed my eyes I could see Stacey Coker’s swollen face, the terrible stillness of the blood-red eyes. I lay awake through first the boisterous barking of the seals, then the gulls’ dawn clamour. The sky was already lightening by the time I finally drifted into an uneasy sleep.

When my alarm woke me it seemed as though I hadn’t slept at all. After a long shower and a rushed breakfast I felt a little more human. Rachel didn’t pick up when I tried calling her, but she’d had a late night as well. I’d no idea what time she would have got back, and she’d have an unenviable morning breaking the news to Jamie.

Leaving a message to say I hoped she was OK, I drove to the mortuary. No one had told me not to, so until I heard otherwise I was going to carry on with my job. There was no sign of Frears, but he’d either worked through the night on Stacey Coker’s post-mortem, or would be preparing to carry it out that morning.

I didn’t envy him.

It meant I could work without interruption on my own, which suited me. Lan offered to help, but I assured her I could manage. Changing into scrubs and a rubber apron, I went into the cool and ordered quiet of the examination room and shut the door behind me with something like relief.

The overnight simmering had finished the process months of submersion in the creek had started. What soft tissue there had been left had now fallen from the joints and bones of the body from the barbed wire. I systematically removed them from the foul stew the detergent solution had become, then rinsed them off and set them aside to dry. It gave me the chance to examine the sternal rib ends, auricular surface and pubic symphysis, all bones that would help reveal how old this individual had been when he died. While I worked, I tried not to speculate too much about Emma Derby’s motorbike-owning former boyfriend. This could still be someone else, and the biker jacket and boots might be a coincidence after all.

If it wasn’t we’d know soon enough.

As I removed the cleaned bones, I was tempted to spend longer examining the multiple fractures the skeleton had sustained, especially to the right leg. But they could wait. If what I’d seen in the X-rays was borne out, there was no question of what I needed to pay attention to first.

The real story lay in the cranium.

Useful as X-rays are, they’re only two-dimensional. Where there’s extensive trauma, damage caused by one injury can overlie another on the film, making it difficult to get a clear picture of what has happened. That was the case here. The day before, I’d removed the already loose and badly damaged mandible before putting the skull in to soak. Even before the jawbone had been properly cleaned, I could see the deep bifurcation in its centre that in life would have given the owner a well-dimpled chin. Setting it aside, I’d cut between the second and third vertebrae with a fine-bladed scalpel to sever the vertebral column. Then I’d put the cranium to macerate in a pan by itself. I didn’t want any small bone fragments that detached from it to become mixed up with those from anywhere else.

Now, rinsing it off, I noted that the CSI hadn’t been far off the mark when he’d said the injuries were caused by a boat propeller. Some kind of fast-moving rotary blade had gone through the delicate facial bones like balsa. Fast moving because the kerf — the cut to the bone left by the blade — was clean-edged, with very little splintering. And rotary because of the shape of the cuts: shallower at either end but deepening in the middle, suggestive of a circular motion.

The wounds ran parallel to each other, more or less horizontally across the face. One several inches long had sliced across the upper arch of the eye orbits and what’s known as the nasion, the recessed section of the nasal bridge that sits between them. Another cut ran just below it, bisecting the zygomatic bones of both cheeks. Below this the cuts ran much closer together, in places merging so it was hard to distinguish individual wounds. Most of the lower nasal area had broken into several pieces, while the maxilla — the upper jawbone that would have housed the front teeth — had fragmented completely below the nose. Looking at pieces of this now, I could see the bone had an unusual porosity about it, giving it almost the appearance of pumice.

It would take painstaking reconstruction to determine what had happened. A lot of bone was missing, loose shards falling away or picked off by aquatic scavengers. Very few teeth remained in their sockets, and none that did were intact, sheared through by the spinning blade’s passage.

But it was the cuts themselves I wanted to examine. I mixed up a batch of silicon putty and carefully spread it into the two most distinct cuts. Once it had dried, each cast would show the kerf in detail, revealing what sort of pattern the blade had left on the bone. Leaving the putty to set, I turned my attention to an object that had sunk to the bottom of the vat. This was what I’d first noticed on the X-rays, almost hidden among the black-and-white jumble of overlying injuries. It was a thin, leaf-like bone, one edge rough where it had been snapped off from the skull.

I was still studying it when the door opened and Frears breezed in.

‘Afternoon, Hunter. Wasn’t sure if you’d be here today.’

I set the wafer of bone down, wondering if Clarke had said something about taking me off the case. ‘Why not?’

‘Don’t look so serious! I meant after all the drama last night. You’re a glutton for punishment, I’ll give you that.’

I relaxed, telling myself not to be so jumpy. ‘Have you done the post-mortem?’