Simon Beckett - The Chemistry of Death

'Forget it.'

We drove in silence for a while. I noticed Mackenzie scratching his neck.

'Have you had it looked at yet?' I asked.

'Had what looked at?'

'The mole. You were scratching it.'

He hurriedly lowered his hand. 'Just an itch.' He turned into a car park. 'Here we are.'

I followed him into the hospital. We took a lift from the ground floor to the basement. The mortuary was at the end of a long corridor. The smell of it hit me as soon as I went inside, a sweetly pungent chemical blanket that seemed to coat the lungs after a single breath. Inside was an essay in white, stainless steel and glass. A young Asian woman in a white lab coat stood up from behind a desk as we walked in.

'Afternoon, Marina,' Mackenzie said, easily. 'Dr Hunter, Marina Patel. She's going to be around to help you.'

She smiled as we shook hands. I was still trying to get my bearings, adjust to once again being back in a setting that was both so familiar and strange.

Mackenzie looked at his watch. 'Right, I'd better get to the station. Just ring me when you've finished and I'll get you a lift back.'

After he'd gone the young woman looked at me expectantly, waiting for instructions. 'So… are you the pathologist?' I asked, putting off the moment for a little longer.

She grinned. 'Not yet. Just a graduate student. But I have hopes.'

I nodded. Neither of us moved.

'Do you want to see the body?' she asked, eventually.

No. No, I didn't. 'Fine.'

She gave me a lab coat and led me through a pair of heavy swing doors. Behind them was a smaller room, like an operating theatre. It was cold inside. The body was laid out on a stainless-steel table, incongruous on the dulled metal surface. Marina switched on the bright lights fixed overhead, showing it in its pathetic entirety.

I looked down at what had been Sally Palmer. But there was nothing of her left here now. The relief I felt was fleeting, quickly replaced by a clinical detachment.

'OK. Let's get started,' I said.

The woman had seen better days. Her face was pockmarked and worn, her features beginning to lose any distinction they might once have held. With her bowed head, she seemed to bear the weight of the world on her shoulders. Yet there was something noble about her resignation, as though, unwelcome as it was, her lot was one she nevertheless accepted. The statue of the unknown saint drew my attention during the church service. I couldn't say what there was about it I liked. Mounted on its stone pillar, it was roughly hewn, and even to my unschooled eye the sculptor had a poor sense of proportion. Yet whether it was the softening effect of age or something less definable, there was something about it that appealed. It had endured for centuries, seen countless days of joy and tragedy played out beneath it. It would still be there, watchful and silent, long after everyone else had faded from memory. It was a reminder that, good or bad, everything passes.

Right now that was a comforting thought. The old church was cool and musty, even on a warm evening. Light fell through the stained-glass window in blues and mauves, the ancient glass warped and uneven in its leaded frames. The central aisle was flagged with uneven stone slabs now worn smooth, interspersed with ancient gravestones. The one nearest me was engraved with a skull, beneath which some medieval stonemason had inscribed a sombre message.

As you are now, so I once was

As I am now, so will you be

I moved my weight from side to side on the hard wooden pew as Scarsdale's insidious baritone echoed off the stone walls. What had supposedly set out to be a prayer service had predictably become an excuse for the reverend to inflict his own brand of piety on a captive audience.

'Even as we pray for the soul of Sally Palmer, and for the deliverance of Lyn Metcalf, there is undoubtedly a question all of us want answered. Why? Why should this have happened? Is it judgement that these two young women have been taken from us so brutally? But judgement for what? And on who?'

Gripping the aged wooden pulpit in both his hands, Scarsdale glowered down at his congregation.

'Judgement can fall upon any of us, at any time. It is not for us to question it. It is not for us to cry that it isn't fair. God is merciful, but we have no right to expect His mercy. And God's mercy is delivered in ways we may not understand. It does not fall to us to decry it, simply because of our ignorance.'

Flashbulbs popped silently as Scarsdale paused for breath. He'd allowed the press inside the church, which added to the unreality of the situation. Its normally meagre congregation had swollen to overflowing. By the time I'd arrived the pews were full, and I'd been forced to ease my way through to a small space at the back.

I'd forgotten about the service until I'd seen the glut of people in the churchyard. Mackenzie had arranged for me to be driven back to Manham by a taciturn plain-clothed police sergeant, who clearly resented being forced into taxi duties. The inspector's phone had been switched off when I'd called to tell him I'd finished for the day. But I'd left a voicemail message and he'd rung back almost immediately.

'How did it go?'

'I've sent off samples for gas chromatograph tests. When they're back I'll be able to give you a more accurate time-since-death,' I'd told him. 'Tomorrow I'll be able to start examining the skeleton. That might give us a better idea of what sort of weapon was used.'

'You've not got anything yet, then?' He'd sounded disappointed.

'Only that Marina told me the pathologist thinks the cause of death was probably the head injuries rather than the throat wound.'

'And you don't agree?'

'I'm not saying they wouldn't have been fatal. But she was still alive when her throat was cut.'

'Are you sure?'

'The body's prematurely desiccated. Even in the heat we've been having it wouldn't have dried out this quickly unless there was major blood loss. That doesn't happen after death, even with a cut throat.'

'The soil samples from where the body was found showed a low iron content,' Mackenzie had pointed out.

That meant not much blood had soaked into the ground where the body had been found. With the amount that would have gushed out of a severed jugular, the soil's iron content should have been sky high.

'Then she was killed somewhere else.'

'What about the head injuries?'

'Either they didn't kill her or they were caused post-mortem.'

He was silent for a while, but I could guess what he was thinking. Whatever Sally Palmer had gone through, the same was now facing Lyn Metcalf. And if she wasn't dead already, it was only a matter of time.

Barring miracles.

Scarsdale was beginning to wind down. 'Some of you may still be asking what those two poor women did to deserve this. What our community has done to deserve this.' He spread his hands. 'Perhaps nothing. Perhaps the modern consensus is right; perhaps there is no reason, no prevailing wisdom behind our universe.'

He paused, dramatically. I wondered if he were deliberately playing to the cameras.

'Or perhaps we have just allowed ourselves to be too dazzled by our own arrogance to see it,' he went on. 'Many of you here have not set foot in this church for years. Your lives are too busy to share with God. I cannot claim to have known either Sally Palmer or Lyn Metcalf. Their lives and this church did not often intersect. That they are tragic victims, however, I have no doubt. But victims of what?'

Now he leaned forward, thrusting his head at us.

'We should all of us, every one, look into our hearts. Christ said, "As ye sow, so shall ye reap." And today we are doing just that. Reaping the fruit not just of the spiritual blight of our society, but of turning a blind eye to it. Evil doesn't cease to exist just because we choose to ignore it. So where should we look to lay the blame?'