Simon Beckett - The Restless Dead

‘On the girl? Finished it before lunch.’ The pathologist seemed in a better humour today. ‘You can probably guess most of it. Bruising on the throat, crushed windpipe and broken hyoid, all consistent with strangulation. The other injuries were in keeping with a car accident. Cracked ribs, abrasions, bruising. There was a hairline fracture to the skull but no internal bleeding. She’d have had a nasty concussion but it wouldn’t have proved fatal.’

‘Would she have been conscious?’

‘Hard to say. I doubt she’d have been in any condition to get herself out of the car. But if you mean was she conscious when she was strangled, that’s anyone’s guess. No signs of a struggle, though, which suggests not.’ He took a pair of surgical gloves from a box and began pulling them on. ‘In fact that was the only odd thing about it. Rather surprising given her state of undress, but there was no evidence of sexual assault. Nothing suggestive of rape or even recent sexual activity. It seems our boy looked but didn’t touch.’

That was something, although it would be cold comfort to Stacey Coker’s family. I thought about the pathetic wretch huddled in the back of the Land Rover the night before, the terrified way he’d skittered away from us in the road. How Rachel had soothed him, like a child or frightened animal. Don’t worry, he’s harmless .

Frears snapped the tight nitrile gloves into place and went over to where the cranium sat in a metal tray. ‘So, how are you getting on with our friend from the barbed wire? Been taking casts of the propeller wounds, I see?’

‘They weren’t made by a propeller.’

That got his attention. ‘Really?’

‘They were made by something spinning very fast, but they’re more like grooves than cuts,’ I told him. Wounds from a boat propeller are made by each of the individual blades repeatedly striking the bone. That wasn’t what I’d seen here. ‘It looks like they were caused by some sort of solid disc.’

‘Curiouser and curiouser. How long till the casts are set?’

‘They should be ready now.’

I went to the skull and gently tapped the silicon putty. It was solid, so I carefully eased out the rubbery impressions. In cross-section the kerf was square, the sides meeting the flat bottom at right angles. The inside surfaces of the wounds were rough, showing clear signs of abrasion.

I took a pair of calipers to measure the width of one cast while Frears examined another. He gave a grunt of surprise. ‘I see what you mean. I’d expect the kerf from a propeller to be smooth, but this is rough as a bear’s arse. Almost like it’s been sandpapered. Some sort of power tool, do you think? Circular saw, perhaps.’

‘I was thinking more of an angle grinder,’ I said, putting down the calipers. ‘The cutting discs are abrasive and flat-edged, and seven millimetres is a standard width. That’s the same as these wounds.’

‘Being doing your homework, I see.’ Frears nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that’d do the trick. The wounds would superficially resemble those caused by a boat prop, so if the body was found it wouldn’t automatically be flagged as suspicious. Although that begs the question of how our man came by his broken bones. And if we’re ruling out a boat accident, we have to consider the possibility that he might have been alive when someone took an angle grinder to his face. Now there’s a cheery thought.’

It had occurred to me as well. Post-mortem bone is dry and brittle, and reacts differently to trauma compared to bone that’s still living. The fractures and cuts here looked to have been inflicted when the bone still had some elasticity, which meant the trauma was peri-mortem, or from around the time of death.

Unfortunately, it could be difficult to determine if that meant just before the victim died, or just after. I’d no illusions about the cruelty some people are capable of, and grim as the possibility raised by Frears might be, I’d seen worse. But I didn’t think that was the case here.

‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I’ve not had a chance to examine them properly yet, but the breaks to the tibia and fibula don’t look like they were caused by him being struck with anything. I’d say they were the result of a shearing force. Something kept the lower leg immobile while the rest of it was wrenched sideways, hard enough to dislocate the hip as well as snap the bones. Then there’s the broken neck. Two of the vertebrae are fractured, but the skull isn’t. How could he have been hit hard enough to break his neck without trauma to the cranium?’

The pathologist picked up the skull. ‘You’re thinking it was a fall?’

‘I can’t see what else it could be. Coming off a motorbike at speed or being hit by a car might cause similar injuries, but there was no sign of any abrasions to the body or clothing,’ I said. ‘A fall’s more likely, and if the lower leg hit something or got caught on the way down the momentum would have snapped it. The rest of the fractures are all consistent with an impact. My guess is his skull was cushioned by an arm or shoulder when he landed, but the sudden whiplash snapped his neck.’

Frears was nodding. ‘And then someone took an angle grinder to his face to try to conceal his identity and make it look like he was hit by a boat.’

‘I think there might be more to it than that.’ I picked up the fragile, leaf-shaped piece of bone. ‘What do you make of this?’

Frowning, Frears took it from me. ‘It’s part of the vomer. What of it?’

‘It was pushed up into the cranium.’

‘I don’t... Oh.’ Still holding the bone, he hurried to where the X-rays were clipped to the light board. He stared at it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Well, bugger me. That’s something you don’t see every day.’

The vomer is a thin, vertical blade of bone that sits at the rear of the nose and divides the nasal opening in half. On the X-rays it had been obscured by the more obvious facial trauma, hidden behind the jumbled mosaic of damaged bones. But it could just be made out, a ghostly white shape with its tip still embedded in the frontal lobe of the decomposed brain.

‘When I first saw it I assumed it must have been forced up by a spinning blade or disc,’ I told him. ‘But that would have sliced straight through the vomer as well, not pushed it inwards. And certainly not at an upward angle like that.’

‘Quite.’ Frears sounded annoyed with himself. ‘Can’t see it happening in a fall, either.’

Neither could I. The body would have to have landed face-first, which would have caused extensive trauma in itself. I’d seen no sign of that. And it would have taken a powerful blow at exactly the right angle to drive the vomer up into the frontal lobe like this. Which made this either a freakish accident...

Or an execution.

‘Palm strike.’

Lundy paused to blow his nose. It was late afternoon, the sun breaking out fitfully from behind dark clouds. The DI sat in the passenger seat of my car, still looking a little drowsy from his endoscopy. I’d called him to brief him on the day’s findings, forgetting he’d told me he was due to have it today. I’d begun outlining what I’d found when he’d apologetically told me he was still at the hospital and couldn’t talk freely. He’d been given a sedative for the procedure and told not to drive for the rest of the day, he said. His wife, who was supposed to be picking him up, had been delayed collecting their granddaughter from an after-school class.

The hospital was close to the mortuary, and I’d done as much as I was going to for the day. The cleaned bones of the barbed wire victim had been rinsed and left to dry. I’d taken a preliminary look at the most significant of them, especially those with fractures or damage, but I’d decided against carrying on with the reassembly until the morning. Lack of sleep and the events of the previous night were beginning to catch up with me. It was better to leave it until I was rested than miss anything through a lapse of concentration.