Peter May - The Firemaker

Margaret reached up and switched off the microphone, turning towards Li. ‘Looks like our man might have been a junkie. The top of the foot is quite a common place to shoot up if you want to hide the needle tracks. We can confirm that by checking for narcotics residue in and around the capillaries of the lungs. Blood tests will tell us what he was shooting up. Probably heroin.’

‘Will you get sufficient blood and material for testing? I mean, won’t everything be cooked?’ Li’s distaste at his own question was palpable.

‘Superficially, yes. Normally we would draw off fluid from the eyes and blood from the femoral veins at the top of the legs, but that will be cooked and solid. Inside, though, should be pretty much protected and preserved. Beyond the accelerant used to set him on fire, there wasn’t much else to sustain the blaze, so he wouldn’t have burned for that long.’

The assistants turned the body over and Margaret switched on the microphone. ‘The posterior trunk shows a symmetrical external contour. The spine is clearly mid-line. There is charring of the skin of the back and multiple small areas of skin splitting over the latissimus dorsi bilaterally. There is no obvious blunt or sharp force trauma of the back.’

Having placed the body on its back again, the autopsy assistants placed a rubber block around six inches thick beneath the body, in the mid-chest area, to help expose the chest cavity when Margaret made the first Y-shaped incision, starting at each shoulder, meeting at the bottom of the breastbone, and continuing down past the belly button to the pubic bone. She peeled back the skin and musculature of the chest to reveal the cavity.

‘There is diffuse drying and fixation of the soft tissues of the thoracic and abdominal walls, with skin splitting. All organs are present and in their appropriate positions.’

Professor Xie cut through the ribcage with what looked like pruning shears. The snapping of the bones made a sickening sound that echoed back at them off the cold tiles. When he had finished, they removed the breastplate to reveal the heart. Margaret snipped open the pericardial sac so that the blood that poured into it out of the heart could be collected by the assistants for testing in toxicology. Professor Xie slipped his hands into the cavity and lifted up the heart, allowing Margaret to sever the major vessels and arteries so that he could remove it for weighing and later dissection.

They worked methodically down the body, removing the lungs, the stomach — looking like a slimy, fluid-filled purse, its foul-smelling contents drained for further examination — the liver, the spleen, the pancreas, the kidneys; weighing everything, removing blood, fluid and bile samples.

‘The stomach contains 125 grams of grey-brown, pasty, partially digested food material. No medication residue is grossly identified. No ethanol odour is noted.’

Working quickly now, with dexterous hands, Margaret cut the guts free and, starting at the duodenum end, began pulling the gut towards herself, an arm’s length at a time, using her scalpel to free its loops from the sheet of fat to which it was attached. When it was straight, she sliced down its length with a pair of scissors, holding them partially open and drawing the intestine along them, as if she were cutting a piece of Christmas wrapping paper. The stink was almost unbearable. Li and Lily moved instinctively away, mouths closed, breathing shallowly. ‘The small and large intestines are examined throughout their entire length and are grossly unremarkable.’ The intestine was discarded into a stainless-steel bucket lined with plastic.

Urine samples were drawn from the bladder for toxicology, and Margaret examined the prostate and testes, cutting sections from each for testing, before discarding the remains in the bucket.

She turned to the neck now, pulling the top flap of skin from the Y-shaped incision up over the face. ‘ The bony and cartilaginous structures of the neck are intact and without evidence of trauma. The musculature of the neck shows marked heat fixation, but there is no evidence of haemorrhage in the strap muscles or soft tissues of the neck.’

Attention turned, then, to the head, a head-block placed under the neck to raise it from the table. An incision was made at the back running from one ear to the other, and the skin peeled down over the face to reveal the skull. Using a circular saw, one of the assistants cut through the skullcap so that it could be removed, with a sucking and popping sound like feet being withdrawn from mud, to reveal the brain. Margaret had warned everyone to stand back as the saw cut through bone. ‘Try not to breathe this stuff,’ she said. ‘It smells kind of smoky-sweet, but latest thinking is that it might carry HIV and other viruses.’

She examined the skull. ‘Reflection of the scalp reveals a 2 by 3.2 centimetre area of subgaleal haemorrhage over the left parietal bone, with a possible contusion of approximately the same dimensions of the scalp — impossible to say for sure because of heat artifact. There is a small amount of subdural haemorrhage deep to the area of subgaleal haemorrhage. On removal of the dura, an irregular-shaped fracture, measuring 2.6 centimetres in length, is clearly visible. There is no charring or eversion of the fracture.’

She concentrated then on removing the brain from the skull, pulling it gently back towards her, examining its worm-like surface as she did. ‘The meninges are slightly dried, but thin and translucent. There is a small contusion of the left parietal lobe, with a trace of haemorrhage .’ She snipped it off at the stem and it plopped out into her hands for weighing. Lily put a hand over her mouth and fled from the room.

Margaret let out a deep breath as she relaxed her concentration. ‘Well, apart from breadloafing the organs, there’s not much else we can do just now. It’ll take some time to prepare permanent paraffin sections for microscopic examination…’

Professor Xie interrupted her. ‘If you wished, we could examine fresh frozen sections in about fifteen minutes.’

‘You’ve got a cryostat here?’ She was unable to hide her surprise.

He smiled. ‘This is a very modern facility, Doctor. We are not so far behind the Americans.’

The cryostat was about the size of a small washing machine with a crank handle on its right side and a window on top with a view into its icy interior, kept at a chilly minus 22 degrees Centigrade. Margaret was happy to let Professor Xie demonstrate his expertise, and watched as he prepared sections of lung tissue and skin from the left foot for freezing. He squeezed globs of a jelly-like support medium into metal chucks that would provide holding bases for the tissue. The tissue samples were then placed on the chucks which were, in turn, set on a rack in the cold working area in the cryostat. Working with practised ease, the professor pressed metal heat sinks against the face of the tissue samples, both to flatten and to freeze them.

Li had attended many autopsies over the years, but this was a procedure that was new to him. He watched, fascinated, as only a few minutes later the professor removed the frozen lung tissue from the freezer and transferred it, in its chuck, to the cutting area. Placing it hard against the blade, he turned the crank handle, drawing the sample across the cutting edge, for all the world like a ham slicer, cutting a wisp-thin section of tissue only microns thick, which was then touched to the surface of a room-temperature glass microscope slide. The sample instantly melted. The professor stained it with hematoxylin and eosin and handed it to Margaret for examination under the microscope.

‘Microscopic examination of multiple sections of the lungs shows granulomata and multinucleated giant cells containing polarisable material.’