Питер Ловси - The Tooth Tattoo

Identity: unknown.

Cause of death: uncertain.

The pathologist — a man who didn’t like wasting time — was unwilling to speculate how this young woman had died. The obvious assumption would have been that she had drowned — difficult to prove in any case and impossible in this one. Drowning is one of the most problematic of all causes of death to diagnose. For one thing, the immersion in water, possibly for a considerable time, rots the body and vitiates the evidence. If the internal organs have deteriorated, as they do in quite a short time, they won’t provide confirmation that the victim was struggling to breathe.

In this case, the classic signs, the plumes of froth at the mouth and nostrils, must have dispersed long ago and any internal froth at the trachea and bronchi would have vanished. There were no obvious external marks of injury apart from minor lacerations probably caused by the body being moved with the current and striking submerged rocks and objects. Anyway, the state of putrefaction would have masked anything less than severe wounding. All the pathologist would say was that from the general deterioration she must have been immersed for a minimum of two weeks and probably longer.

He added that a diagnosis of drowning is invariably a best-guess situation and this would be a very inferior guess that he wasn’t willing to hazard.

He estimated her age at between twenty and thirty.

As for identification, her own family would not have recognised her. Under water the body assumes a face-down position, with the face, arms and legs dragging along the bottom.

It was only after the post-mortem, when the clothes were being put in a bag for storage, that a medical student assisting the pathologist happened to draw his attention to a faded label on the white cotton knickers.

‘Sir, have you noticed this?’

He had not, whatever it was, and he was not overjoyed to be told. ‘Noticed what?’

‘I believe this writing is Japanese.’

‘Why? Can you read it?’

The student reddened. ‘No, but I spent some of my gap year in Tokyo. I can tell the difference from Chinese.’

‘So?’

‘So if her knickers were made in Japan, isn’t there a chance she was Japanese?’

‘Unless, like you, she travelled to Japan in her gap year. Or unless Japanese knickers happen to be on sale at Marks and Spencer. Or Tesco. I’m a histopathologist. My expertise doesn’t stretch to ladies’ underwear.’

‘It was just something I noticed.’

‘Full marks.’ Said with no gratitude.

‘Isn’t there a way of telling?’

The pathologist gave a long-suffering look to the police witnesses, pulled up his face mask and asked the mortuary attendant to return the body to the table. ‘You thought we were through, ladies and gentlemen, and so did I. From the state of her, I wouldn’t know if she’s Japanese or from up the road, but there is a way of finding out a person’s racial origin from the teeth. There’s a difference between people of Caucasian origin and the Mongoloid group of Asia and it’s known as the shovel tooth — a concavity at the back of the upper incisors.’ He leaned over the skull and opened the jaws. ‘We don’t routinely go into this kind of detail. Can we get a better light on this?’ First, he ran his little finger along the back of the teeth. Then he used a dental mirror.

An uncomfortable silence followed.

‘Hey ho,’ the pathologist said without a glimmer of pleasure, ‘this may be significant. These appear to be shovel teeth.’

The student had the sense not to shout, ‘Told you so.’

The pathologist said, ‘I’d better get one of my colleagues from odontology to confirm this. Sorry, folks, but if you want to follow this autopsy all the way through to the land of the rising sun I must invite you to return next week.’

The following Monday, the remains were brought out again for the dental expert. She was expected to confirm the pathologist’s finding, but before starting she announced that she was not confident she could help. ‘I know what you’re talking about. Shovel teeth are typical of East Asians, but there are all sorts of exceptions and I wouldn’t say it’s reliable. Native Americans have them and I’ve seen many examples in Europeans.’

‘So you can’t tell us if she’s Japanese?’

‘Frankly, the knickers may be a better guide, but as I’m here, I might as well take a look. Oh dear, she is in a sorry state.’

The examination was painstaking, using a magnifier with a halogen light. The odontologist said at one point, ‘Plenty of dental work and of excellent quality.’ She straightened up and turned to the student. ‘Was it you who noticed the label?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

‘And you thought she might be Japanese? Well, you could be right. Have you heard of tooth tattoos?’

A frown said the student had not.

‘They’re the big thing in Japan, like nail art, but for teeth, and she seems to have the residue of one. Didn’t anyone spot this?’

Silence from the onlookers and a stony gaze from the pathologist.

‘They’re not really tattoos at all,’ the dental expert explained. ‘They’re attached. If you fancy yourself with a mouthful of bling you get them applied with a special glue using an LED light to fix them. They can be removed quite easily and there isn’t much left of this one, but take a look with my magnifier and tell me what you see.’

The student leaned over and looked through the lens at where the jaw was held apart. The tiny black symbol on one of the upper incisors was chipped in a couple of places, but clearly an embellishment. ‘I do see it. Is it a Japanese character? No, I don’t think it is.’

‘Agreed.’

‘It’s a music note, isn’t it? Looks to me like a quaver.’

‘I never even got to first grade, but I’m willing to take your word for it.’ The odontologist stood back. ‘This all proves nothing, but if you’re wanting to find out who she is, I would check for a missing Japanese woman with a possible interest in music.’

‘Not my job,’ the pathologist said.

At the request of the coroner, the job was passed to the police, but not yet to Diamond’s CID team. The Missing Persons Register was checked again. No obvious leads were found. The supposed Japanese connection yielded nothing. Of seventeen young women reported missing in Bath and Bristol since the start of the year, none were from Japan. Fourteen had already been eliminated from the enquiry because of their height and hair colour. The tooth tattoo was thought to be an unlikely decoration for the remaining three.

CID were brought in after a couple of days.

‘Any suggestion she was attacked?’ Diamond asked the uniformed inspector who had handed over the paperwork.

‘Impossible to say, but she did end up in the river Avon.’

‘No marks of violence?’

‘The body was too far gone to tell.’

‘Could be an accident, then, or suicide. Was she fully dressed?’

‘The shoes were missing.’

‘They could easily have come off in the water.’ He glanced through the post-mortem report. ‘I’ve heard of tattoos in weird parts of the anatomy, but a tooth?’

‘It’s the best clue we’ve got, apart from the Japanese knickers.’

‘Ah — the Japanese knickers.’ Diamond rolled his eyes.

‘We managed to confirm that the manufacturer doesn’t export them. Mind, someone from Britain could have travelled there and bought a few pairs.’

‘Someone from Britain or anywhere else on the globe.’

‘True. But the tooth tattooing is a Japanese thing. It’s popular there.’

‘And I’m supposed to work with that?’

‘Plus the music connection.’

‘One note.’