Стивен Бут - Blind to the Bones

Fry shivered at the tone of the other woman’s voice. Her own fragility was something she didn’t care to think about just now. She was already seeing the bones. She didn’t want to see what else lay beneath.

Mrs Van Doon looked at her, and smiled sadly. ‘I’m sorry. Memories, you know. Even pathologists aren’t entirely immune from personal feelings. We can’t all keep up a constant stream of jokes as we fillet a fresh cadaver.’

‘That’s OK,’ said Fry, though the apology and the reference to memories had made her feel even worse. If Mrs Van Doon was going to burst into tears, Fry would have to leave the room, or she’d be liable to join her.

DCI Kessen was standing with the Scientific Support Manager. He gazed at Fry over his mask, with that air of infinite patience that seemed so unnatural.

‘We have an open skull fracture,’ said the pathologist, returning to her usual brisk tone. ‘The scalp laceration is consistent with an impact on the stones found at the scene, which are rather rough and sharp. I think we’ll get an exact match. The dura mater membrane is broken, which resulted in considerable leakage of cerebrospinal fluid. And there’s a compression of the brain in the area adjacent to the site of the injury.’

‘It looks like his head hit the stone when he fell.’

‘Yes.’

‘The pattern of the blood spatters seems to tell the same story.’

‘And that was the injury that killed him,’ said the pathologist.

‘You’re sure? Could he have survived?’

‘Without rapid surgical closure of the membranes, infection would have set in very quickly.’

‘There was a lot of blood at the scene, too.’

‘Scalp injuries bleed a lot,’ said Mrs Van Doon, with a shrug.

‘What about the other head injury?’

‘There’s a contusion to the back of the head, caused by a hard, smooth object. This blow caused a diffuse brain injury, probably resulting in concussion from the impact of the brain against the inside of the skull.’

‘How serious?’

‘A short period of coma. And he would almost certainly have had a bad headache when he woke up, maybe nausea and dizziness.’

‘ If he had woken up.’

‘Of course. The blow to the back of the head would probably have rendered him unconscious and caused him to fall. But it wasn’t fatal. The impact with the stone was.’

DCI Kessen spoke then, and everyone turned towards him to listen.

‘You realize this is crucial? It might be the evidence that makes the difference between a charge of murder and manslaughter. The blow to the back of the head may have been intended only to stun, and the victim’s death wasn’t intentional.’

‘You’ll have the full opinion in my report, Chief Inspector,’ said Mrs Van Doon.

‘Thank you.’

The pathologist looked at him for a moment, expecting another question, which didn’t come.

‘Then we have the face...’ she said.

Cleaned up and with his eyelids closed, Neil Granger’s face looked almost normal. But it hadn’t been like that when the firefighters had found him.

‘The face was painted with some kind of water-based theatrical make-up. Black.’ The pathologist looked up at the police officers. ‘Do you know of any reason for that?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Just curious.’

‘And the eyes?’ said Fry. ‘The eyes were full of blood. Were they injured separately?’

‘Injured?’ said Mrs Van Doon. ‘They were removed.’

‘You’re kidding. Now you are cracking jokes.’

‘No. But don’t worry.’

‘Don’t worry? You say the victim had his eyes removed, and you’re telling us not to worry?’

‘It was done postmortem.’

‘Great. A killer who steals his victim’s eyes.’

‘And it wasn’t done by the killer, I’d say.’ The pathologist indicated a couple of evidence bags being sorted by the scenes of crime officers. They contained Neil Granger’s clothes and various traces scraped and swabbed from them. ‘You have a feather, black. And some bird droppings, white. The eyes have been torn out roughly, not cut. I’d say one or more members of the crow family did the damage.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘Yes. Also, the victim had blood on his hand. And not only blood, but cerebrospinal fluid.’

Fry screwed up her face in distaste. ‘From the skull fracture. He touched the injury. But didn’t you say...?’

‘The victim was already unconscious before his head hit the stones, yes. So it’s very unlikely that he touched the head wound himself. Impossible, I’d say.’

‘Just spell that out for us again,’ said Fry.

‘Well, I would suggest the blood and cerebrospinal fluid were transferred to his hand by means of some third party.’

‘Someone else. Someone touched his head wound, and then his hand. His killer? Or one of the firefighters who found the body?’

‘Possibly.’

‘Maybe even a police officer. Some of them can’t keep their hands to themselves at a crime scene.’

‘But there’s one other injury to consider,’ said Mrs Van Doon.

‘Really?’

Fry looked at the head, but could see only the lurid colour of the bruised and broken skin near Neil Granger’s right temple.

‘Somewhere else on the body, then?’

‘You can’t help sounding hopeful,’ said Mrs Van Doon, with a small smile. ‘You’d like evidence for a murder charge, after all. That’s usually what investigators want. A manslaughter conviction just isn’t satisfactory, is it?’

‘Maybe not,’ said Fry impatiently. ‘I hadn’t really thought about it.’

‘There’s an ulna fracture.’

‘Wait a minute — ulna? In the arm?’

‘Correct.’

‘He had a broken arm?’

The pathologist lifted a side of the plastic sheet. ‘See?’ she said.

Neil Granger’s left forearm was badly swollen and bruised. But something else looked wrong with it. Fry bent to look more closely, then pulled away suddenly. The skin below the forearm was broken or torn. Burst was the word that came to her mind. Granger’s skin hadn’t been broken by a blow from the outside, but ripped open from the inside. The end of a bone was poking through the hole, like an obscene creature emerging from its cocoon, a white grub seeking the light.

The idea of things emerging from the body made Fry feel sick and cold. It was the most horrible thing she could imagine. During her teens she had consistently refused to watch a video of the film Alien with her schoolmates, because she had heard about the scene in which a creature burst from the body of actor John Hurt, where it had been growing in his chest. She knew she would probably have fainted, and that would have ruined the tough-girl image she was cultivating at the time. Even now, she never wanted to see the film. Nor did she ever want to see internal organs spilling from a belly wound. She never wanted to see the bones under the skin. Neither real, nor imaginary.

Fry swallowed. ‘Was his arm broken in the fall?’

‘No,’ said Mrs Van Doon. ‘By another blow. Possibly from the same weapon that caused the head wound. We can make the comparisons for you here.’

‘Two blows. I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell which came first? That would be too much to expect, I’m sure.’

‘Actually, it isn’t.’

‘You can tell?’

‘Well, I’ll leave the deductions to you, as usual. But what I can say is that the blow to the head was probably struck while the victim was standing. If you find the weapon, we’ll have a good chance of establishing that more definitely.’

‘But?’

‘But the injury to the arm was inflicted when the victim was already lying down. There’s bruising on the other side of the arm, where it was impacted on the ground. Again, if we had a weapon, we could do some angle tests. A heavy wooden stick of some kind. That’s what you should be looking for. Unfortunately, the weapon doesn’t seem to have splintered, as it hasn’t left any splinters in the wound that I can see. So unless the lab can find some traces, there’s no way of telling what kind of wood.’