Peter Turnbull - Deliver Us from Evil

It was a joke that Hennessey had heard her make many times before but he chuckled anyway. It was, he believed, the diplomatic thing to do, the only response to make.

‘She has a reasonably good set of teeth. . some decay. . certainly western dental work but which looks a little different to British dentistry and so could be Canadian. She seemed to care for her teeth only adequately. She didn’t floss, there is a build-up of plaque. . she seems to have had a sort of “five out of ten, could do better” attitude towards her teeth. You know,’ Dr D’Acre straightened up, ‘I once conducted a PM on a young woman in her mid twenties. . tragically young to come here. . everybody comes here before their time but mid twenties, that really is being short-changed. She was a Russian girl and I kid you not she had a perfect set of teeth, caused by the bland, sugar-free eastern European diet she had lived on, you see. I do so worry when I see my son pour sugar into his tea. . but will he be advised?’

‘They won’t at his age.’

‘Sadly, and then it’s too late once your second teeth arrive and you have by then acquired a taste for sweet-tasting food and drink. Well, to continue,’ Dr D’Acre returned her attention to the corpse, ‘this lady lived in the west all her life and had a diet high in sugar content. Her teeth have been quite heavily filled. You don’t yet know her name do you?’

‘No, ma’am, not yet,’ Hennessey glanced up at the ceiling. The filament bulbs that illuminated the room were covered by opaque Perspex sheets which efficiently screened their potentially dangerous shimmer. ‘Not yet. . in point of fact there might even be a missing person’s file already open awaiting to be matched to the deceased. That is something for me to check.’

‘Yes, seems likely if she was local but the dentistry may well confirm her ID. Dentists have to retain their files for eleven years by legal requirement. Some retain them for longer. This lady has had dental work done within the last eleven years, though not necessarily in the United Kingdom. Once I have taken casts of the upper and lower teeth, I’ll remove one and cut it in half. That will provide the age of the deceased plus or minus one year, but I can say now that she is in her mid to late forties.’ She paused. ‘I don’t think I have to disturb the face; there is no sign of head injury, none at all.’ She felt gently and painstakingly round the circumference of the deceased woman’s head. ‘No, no injury at all.’ Dr D’Acre then ran her fingertips through the scalp hair. ‘No, none, don’t even have to arrange an X-ray. So. . fortunately I can leave this lady to be identified by any next of kin who might come forward. She has clear nasal passages. I’ll check all other body cavities for you in case she has left you other gifts. . such is not unknown. Now, let’s see what and when she ate last. The stomach and contents thereof is always another good and useful source of information.’ She patted the stomach as she reached for a scalpel from the instrument trolley. ‘There will be some gas but not a great deal. So, deep breath, gentlemen.’ Dr D’Acre also took a deep breath. She then turned her head to one side and punctured the stomach with the scalpel. The gas within the stomach escaped with a mercifully brief ‘hiss’. ‘Smelled worse,’ she said after exhaling and taking another breath, ‘dare say we all have. I still remember the bloated floater they found in the river, pulled him from the Ouse when he was about ready to burst of his own accord. It really was so very kind of the police to bring him here when he was in that state but I cleared the lab, put all the extractor fans on full, took an almighty breath and stabbed the stomach, then ran for the door, slamming it behind me, only then did I breathe. Remember, Eric?’

‘Like it was yesterday, ma’am,’ Eric Filey grinned. ‘Like it was yesterday.’

‘Even with the extractors on it was still a good half hour before we returned. We never found out who that old boy was.’ Again Dr D’Acre stood. ‘They gave him a name and buried him in a shared plot but he was someone’s son once in his life, someone must have known him. His liver was completely shot to hell, little was left of his kidneys but there was no indication either way to tell us if he was pushed or fell into the river and so that was it. Death by misadventure. He was named John Brown and buried in the paupers’ section of Fulford Cemetery. I think of him often for some reason. I and other pathologists take a few of our patients home with us, in our heads I mean, and in that manner that poor old boy occupies a part of my mind. So he’s in Fulford Cemetery now with the contents of two other coffins for company. I will lay flowers on his grave one day soon.’ Dr D’Acre turned again and examined the stomach cavity of the deceased. ‘Well, she was very hungry when she died, I can tell you that, very hungry, the stomach is quite empty. She had had no food for probably forty-eight hours. She is well nourished so she ate well but not for the last two days of life. In her last two days she knew hunger.’ She turned to Hennessey. ‘There will. . in fact there just must be a mis per report on this lady. There must be. She is not anorexic, she enjoyed food. . she ate. She cared for her teeth if only adequately so and she was held against her will for fully two days before being strangled. Someone must have noticed her missing by now and have reported it.’ Dr D’Acre turned to Eric Filey and said, ‘Can we turn her again, please, Eric? Something occurs to me.’ And once again, Hennessey watched as she and Eric Filey turned the deceased upon her stomach as if she was of no weight at all. Dr D’Acre then took the scalpel and made two large incisions to the lower back at either side of the spine. ‘Shrunk,’ she said quietly.

‘Shrunk?’ Hennessey echoed.

‘Yes. . shrunk. Her kidneys have shrunk, not by much, but still noticeably so, quite consistent with being deprived of fluid for forty-eight hours. Not a good end to a life which had probably run only about half of its expected span.’

‘But she was found out of doors,’ Hennessey mused aloud, ‘sitting upright.’

‘Yes, I think you need to talk to a forensic psychologist about that part, but I would think that the murderer or murderers probably posed her body, laying it out on the canal bank and scuttling home and waiting for it to be discovered, assuming that he, or she or they, had killed her, as I said earlier, but in fact, unknown to them, she was still alive. He or she or they simply hadn’t done the job they believed that they had done. They had not belted and braced it by, for example, pulling a plastic bag over her head for just five minutes to ensure that she was life extinct. In fact she was still alive. . unconscious, but still alive. She was then conveyed to the place where she was eventually found and laid there. Possibly the cold brought her back to consciousness, it can do that, it can give a body a wake-up call, but by then she was dangerously cold and entering hypothermia. . despite being in that state she sat up feeling light-headed and euphoric and looked at the lovely white landscape under the low cloud and might even have thought she was in heaven, hence the smile which you might note has now faded as the body has warmed. The smile was frozen on her face as hypothermia took her from us. So, no food or water, and thusly was less able to withstand the cold, but she evidently had full and unrestricted access to toilet facilities. . her clothing wasn’t soiled. I will trawl for poisons as a matter of course but I do not expect to find any. I’ll send a blood sample to toxicology anyway. So, my findings will be that she was held against her will for forty-eight hours, deprived of food and fluid in that time but had access to toileting facilities, though probably not a water flush otherwise she would have drunk something. She was then strangled, removed to the place where she was found and left for dead, but briefly regained consciousness before dying of hypothermia. Murder. Without a doubt. Murder.’