Michael Fowler - Heart of the Demon

“That’s where our body must be,” announced Tony Bullars, moving to the back of the CID car to collect a forensics suit.

Whereas Tony was tall and slim, with a good head of gelled hair, Mike was in complete contrast; small and podgy, unruly dark hair, and a craggy face badly pockmarked from acne in his adolescence. What they did have in common though was a sharpness of mind and a keenness to detect crime, which had elevated them both from uniform into CID, relatively early in their careers. Both had joined the Major Investigation Team at its inception eighteen months ago.

Tony skipped across the rutted site whilst Mike trudged, whingeing and moaning almost with every step.

“Bloody hell ‘Bully’, just look at the frigging state of me. How come you’re not in the same state?” He grimaced, glancing at his mud splattered shoes.

Tony turned and laughed, “You’ve either got it Mike or you haven’t.” He turned and then strode away leaving Mike to his predicament amongst the deep ruts.

Both Tony and Mike were glad to see that Professor Lizzie McCormack was in attendance, her latex-gloved hands, already clearing soil around the mummified corpse, still partly entrenched amongst the dingy earth. The remains were curled up in the foetal position and in a bit of a mess. Portions of the body were devoid of flesh, and the skin, which did cover the thin-boned form, was shrivelled and hard as rock. The overall colour of the cadaver matched that of the earth around it.

Lizzie looked up, her glistening grey eyes, appearing over her designer spectacles. “Ha gentlemen so glad you could join us. Two bodies in less than a week, you are keeping me busy.” Her sharp eyes spotted Mike Sampson shudder and turn his sight sharply away from the rotted corpse. “I hope you will have the stomach to see this one out officer.”

Mike looked at Lizzie and blushed

“You see this is what sets us woman apart from you men,” she begun. “We spend months changing smelly nappies without thinking about it. But what you don’t realise is all those months of shovelling shit gives us a stronger stomach for the messier side of life.”

She gave the detective a wink and forged her mouth into a wry smile. Lizzie continued to move slowly and meticulously around the corpse. Picking at it here and there and removing fragments that were quickly bagged by her young female assistant. After three quarters of an hour she pushed herself up onto her haunches, snapped off a glove, removed her spectacles and shot a glance at the two detectives.

“Gents what we have here is the decomposed yet mummified body of a young female who has obviously been in the ground for some time. There are remains of clothing. What appears to be a shirt or blouse and a pair of jeans. I’m not sure if we are going to be able to get any fingerprints at this time. The body’s caked in mud so I’ll have to check if we can get into the ridges when the body’s back in the mortuary. The head also needs some cleaning up but it does have plenty of hair fragments to enable DNA analysis. There is evidence of massive trauma to the nose and lower jaw area, some teeth are missing, and there are incised wounds around the eye sockets.” She bent forward and looked into the dark holes where the eyes should have been, “I will be able to give firm confirmation of my thoughts after the post-mortem, but if I’m not too mistaken here there are some similarities between the injuries inflicted on this corpse and those inflicted on Rebecca Morris.”

DAY EIGHT: 13th July.

By the time Tony Bullars and Mike Sampson arrived at the mortuary the next morning the examination of the mummified corpse was already underway. The dark, shrivelled form lay naked on one of the metallic pathology slabs, having had its clothing cut away, and that now lay separately on another table undergoing photographing by an attendant Scenes of Crime Officer.

Professor McCormack was currently dragging a comb through the dead girl’s lank and matted hair, dropping several strands, along with soil fragments, into a clear plastic exhibit bag. She was talking rapidly in post mortem legalese into the overhead microphone. She studied the corpse in a methodical way, observing and touching in timely fashion. Pausing from time to time she pulled at the arms, carefully rotating them, cracking the dried fragile skin, and probed cuts and indentions with a scalpel, before stepping back to allow the SOCO officer to photograph them.

At times she looked carefully at patches of the shrivelled skin under a magnifying glass then instructed a technician, following in her wake, where she wanted incisions on the body, and which parts of the body she wanted chopped away. Finally the hand-held circular saw was switched on and the top of the skull was deftly cut and removed, to reveal a murky brown interior that contained the shrivelled remains of a brain.

“Thankfully because of the toxicity of the soil very few insects have attacked the body, and the internal organs, except one, although badly decomposed, are relatively intact.” The Professor stated as she looked up and glanced towards the two detectives.

She continued with the legalese, only halting her speech when she measured and weighed various organs. After the two-hour autopsy she stopped, threw her gloves, and mask into a bin, grabbed a paper towel and mopped her moist brow. Then wiping her spectacles and replacing then, only on to the bridge of her nose, so she could look over them and turned to Tony and Mike.

“Gentlemen, you have here a girl who is between her early to late teens. The structure of her pelvis and hips tell me she has not yet reached adulthood. She has collar length brown hair and is five feet five inches tall. She would have been very slender prior to her death. She has multiple stab and incised wounds to the head, neck, trunk and upper extremities. Three stab wounds in particular are very nasty indeed. The blade has penetrated the brain through the eyes sockets and part of her upper chest has been sliced open. What is unusual about this is that her heart has been cut out and removed.”

Tony and Mike exchanged startled looks.

“You heard me right gents. Her heart has been cut out.” She nudged her glasses back into place with her forearm. “And also as per Rebecca Morris’s examination I have also found similar markings incised into her abdomen.” She paused and studied the corpse’s stomach with a critical eye. “I say similar,” she continued looking back up. “In fact the first mark is slightly different. It looks more like a reversed letter L. The other marks are the same, an I, and V, and number 3. Could be a combination of Roman numerals; your guess is as good as mine at the moment. I’m going to have to get a scan done of these to confirm this, and I’m also going to re-examine Rebecca Morris just to check if I’ve missed anything.”

Professor McCormick began pulling at the plastic protective apron covering her scrubs. “She also has minor blunt injuries to the head, especially around the nose, left cheek area, and lower jaw. Many of the stab wounds to the head are very irregular, and are located mostly to the left hand side. Her left ear has almost been severed. The majority of the wounds to the trunk and upper extremities have penetrated the subcutaneous skin, and muscle layers, through to the bone. The stab to the sternum has passed into the chest and penetrated the left lung,” the Professor continued without catching breath.

“The upper extremities have multiple sharp-force injuries consistent with defensive injuries. Lastly the hyoid bone, the thyroid, and the cricoid cartilages are fractured. The marks on the neck tissue suggest a wide ligature; most probably a belt.” The Professor paused, as if to gather her thoughts. “This young lady has suffered a horrendous death. I do have moulds to make from the stab wounds, in order to determine both the type of weapon used and confirm they are a match, but I am confident when I say the weapon used has similar curves to that which was used on Rebecca Morris.”