Steven Dunne - Deity

Jake watched them leave, laughing, shouting and texting others about their triumph. Then he turned back to Kyle. From a pocket, Jake pulled a small hand flannel which he used to wipe sweat from his face when he jogged. He ran down to the nearby stream and dunked the flannel into the cold water then ran back to Kyle, who was trying to sit up. Jake nursed his lolling head on to his knee and dabbed the blood from his mouth. He then wiped Kyle’s brow, and the cold water revived him. ‘Are you all right?’

Kyle’s dark cow eyes opened and his long lashes fluttered as he focused. For a split second he made to smile then his face paled and he sat up. ‘Get off me,’ he muttered groggily.

‘Kyle, you’re-’

‘Get off me.’ Kyle squirmed unsteadily to his feet. ‘Don’t touch me.’ He righted himself and managed to stand then staggered away towards the darkness of the fields, pushing past Jake’s outstretched hands.

‘Kyle!’ shouted Jake after him.

Kyle lurched out of sight, sobbing. ‘Leave me alone, you bastard. I hate you.’

Friday, 20 May

Brook and Noble arrived at the shiny new mortuary in the Royal Derby Hospital complex at nine the next morning and headed straight for the Post Mortem Suite. When they arrived, Dr Habib was already finishing work on the dead man and was preparing to remove his gown and mask while an assistant took the final photographs.

Habib was a short chubby Asian man with soft brown eyes blinking behind thick round glasses. His face was wrinkle-free, despite advanced age, his hair, sticking out from under his surgical cap, was reddish-brown save for a few strands of grey that hadn’t seen sufficient henna.

After he stuffed mask and gown into a hazard bin, he muttered an instruction to his assistant who set down the camera and laid out the deceased’s hands, palm up, and ready to roll on the fingerprint ink. When Brook and Noble entered the lab, fiddling with surgical masks, they ventured no further than the freezers.

Habib grinned when he spotted them. ‘Inspector Brook. And Sergeant Noble also. Nice to see you. Just finishing up.’

‘You got an early start,’ said Brook.

‘It’s a lot quicker without clothes to bag and organs to remove,’ said Habib. ‘And we’ve got a backlog to work off.’

‘What have you got for us?’ interrupted Brook, fearing a lecture on excessive workload — Habib’s favourite topic of conversation.

Habib paused, wondering whether Brook should be made aware of how much he had on his plate, then decided against it. ‘More questions than answers at this stage, I fear. A tricky case — but very interesting.’ He smiled warmly at his assistant who walked over to them, camera in hand. ‘Gentlemen,’ Habib gushed towards the detectives. ‘Can I introduce Dr Ann Petty?’

‘Detectives,’ she said through her surgical mask. Brook caught a glimpse of her green eyes as she ran them briefly up and down, first Brook’s then Noble’s frame before returning to her work. The two detectives pretended not to notice. This wasn’t a come-on but a reflex they’d noticed in every pathologist, undertaker or mortician they’d ever had dealings with. Without being aware of it, the technicians of death always ran an experienced eye over new acquaintances, to estimate their weight and assess how their corpses might present on a cold steel trolley. ‘Slab happy’ was the phrase Noble had coined to describe it.

‘Does this mean you’re no longer short-staffed, Dr Habib?’ asked Noble. Brook darted a warning glance at him.

‘For the moment,’ replied Habib. ‘For now, Dr Petty is under my supervision and will be replacing me when I retire next year, at which point she will be short-staffed.’ Habib chortled at his joke and looked around the room for approval.

‘Interesting case, you say,’ said Noble.

Habib gestured them through to the office at the side of the lab and removed his gloves while Dr Petty continued with the fingerprinting. ‘And puzzling, though you’ll be pleased when I tell you that we’re reasonably sure the deceased wasn’t murdered.’

‘It was natural causes?’

‘No, Inspector. But also yes. He died of alcohol poisoning. That’s what I’ll be telling the Coroner.’

‘Is that a natural cause?’ asked Noble.

‘Not officially. But it is if you’re a chronic abuser of alcohol and drugs. For this gentleman, ingesting large amounts of very strong spirits would be routine, judging from the condition of his brain. Also, needle-marks on his arms indicate occasional drug abuse. Probably heroin — we’ll know for sure after more tests.’

‘But he drank himself to death.’

‘It looks like it. At first, Dr Petty and I thought alcohol levels were so high that maybe there might have been some element of coercion — nearly 500mg of alcohol per 100ml of blood. No normal person could be drinking at those levels without passing out. But there was no evidence of force in the usual places.’

‘Usual places?’

‘Specifically the arms and the mouth. If someone were wanting to force-feed alcohol to a person, normal practice would be to restrain their arms and head before forcing the bottle or glass into the mouth. It’s very difficult to do and would require multiple assailants.’

‘But-’

‘But that usually results in cuts and bruising around the gums and mouth, sometimes chipped teeth. Obviously his mouth is not in tip-top shape but there’s no sign of such trauma. Coercion would also present distinctive bruising on the arms and neck.’

‘But there’s none of that.’

‘The body has the extensive bruising common to chronic alcoholics; some marks are old, some new — but nothing to indicate restraint.’

‘Couldn’t the alcohol have been injected?’ asked Noble.

‘Fresh needle-marks often take longer to present,’ said Habib. ‘We’ll re-examine in a few days to be sure, but it’s extremely unlikely because it’s far too inefficient as a delivery system for that much alcohol.’

‘Do we know what he was drinking?’

‘Given the absence of the stomach, liver and kidneys it’s difficult to be precise until we do more tests. We will need to slice and dice what’s left of the brain for a more detailed analysis of toxins to be absolutely certain. The absence of blood. .’

‘Absence of blood,’ repeated Noble.

‘There’s no clean blood. There was a little in the heart valves but that was clotted, and it would be contaminated. We’ve got enough for a blood group. And tissue samples should tell us. .’

‘What do you mean there’s no clean blood?’ asked Brook.

‘Oh, forgive me, I thought you knew. This gentleman has undergone some form of post-mortem procedure and is in the first stages of being embalmed.’ He walked them back to the body on its stainless-steel table. ‘As well as removing all the organs, he was drained of blood. You see these two puncture wounds in the neck? They tapped into his major arteries. It’s a common enough procedure for funeral homes. It stops discolouration of the flesh.’

‘So we don’t have a vampire at large,’ quipped Noble.

Habib chortled. ‘I’m afraid not.’ The diminutive doctor placed a thumb and finger on either side of the cadaver’s neck. ‘These incisions have been made by a surgical instrument so tubes can be attached. Draining the body of blood would require time and patience and preferably a tank to store the blood.’

Brook nodded. ‘So whoever did this might have access to specialist equipment.’

‘Well, it’s not essential, Inspector. Those preserving bodies in the Ancient World didn’t have any. But these days, as well as a large tank to contain the blood, he might also use a pump to help the blood drain. Otherwise things could get a bit messy.’