Jane Casey - The Cutting Place

None of us had forgotten where we were or what lay on the table beside us, but banter was one of the only ways to feel normal when your job involved looking closely at fragments of a human being. Not that I would have known what I was looking at, if I hadn’t been told. No piece was bigger than a shoebox. The skin was yellowed, bleached by the river, and the flesh underneath it was pale and ragged, bloodless. White bone gleamed under the bright lights that shone on the table.

‘So. What we’ve got are four pieces of what seems to be an adult female. She was probably IC1, probably light-haired and probably younger rather than older, but I’m not putting most of that in my initial report because it’s an educated guess at the moment – it’s purely for your benefit.’

‘Why do you say it was a woman?’ I asked.

‘I’m going on the size of the hand and the joints that we’ve recovered – they would be average for an adult female. The muscle development and fat ratio suggests a reasonably fit, relatively young woman. The body hair was removed from the legs at the root – waxed, epilated, something like that. She had very fine light brown body hair on her hand and shoulder. And the fingernails were painted at some stage because I can see tiny traces of dark polish around the cuticles. It is still possible that it was a man, but I think it more likely we’re looking at a woman. No tattoos, no scars, no distinguishing marks so far.’

‘Any idea when she died?’ Derwent asked.

‘I’d guess she’s been in the water for a couple of days. Do you want me to talk you through her piece by piece?’

‘No, but you probably should.’ Even with the mask obscuring most of his face, I could tell Derwent wasn’t enjoying himself.

Dr Early pointed. ‘This is an easy one. It’s a right hand.’

‘That’s what our mudlarker found.’ I leaned in to see it, trying to imagine how it might have looked on the shingle. ‘She didn’t know what it was at first.’

‘It’s out of context, isn’t it? We don’t expect to see something like that without the rest of the body to go with it.’

‘What other bits have we got?’ Derwent was peering at the three other pieces of flesh on the table. The way they were laid out reminded me of a butcher’s window.

‘We have one part of a thigh, one part of a lower leg and a left shoulder joint. We won’t get all of her but it would be very helpful if your lot could track down a few more pieces. Currently this doesn’t tell me very much at all. The rest of the torso would be a great help. And the head would be the best thing of all to find, if we’re going to identify her. Unless her DNA is in the database, of course. Then it’ll be straightforward. I’ve submitted a sample already so cross your fingers.’

‘Is there anything to suggest how she died?’ I asked.

‘Not so far. All I can tell you is that she was already dead when she was cut up.’

‘That’s something,’ I said, and the pathologist nodded.

‘They did a very thorough job on her, I have to say.’

‘Was she cut up deliberately? Could it have been an accident? A propeller, something like that?’ Derwent asked.

‘Definitely not a propeller.’ Dr Early turned one of the leg pieces so we could see the end of the bone. ‘When you cut into a bone like this, the marks you leave are called kerfs and they can tell us a huge amount of information about the instrument that made the cut. See this notch here, about a centimetre from the end? It’s a false-start kerf, where whoever dismembered her started cutting into the bone, stopped, and moved down to begin a new kerf. Second time, he managed to cut through the fibia. The first cut is precisely parallel to the second. He didn’t move between the two attempts and her body wasn’t moving as it would have been if the cuts had been made in water by something like a boat’s propeller. This was deliberate dismemberment, not an accident.’

‘Can you tell us anything about what they used to cut her up?’

Dr Early frowned, her forehead puckering. ‘I knew you’d ask that. I’m not an expert in this but I’ve been reading up on it. I’m going to get one of my colleagues to take a much closer look once we’ve cleaned the bones up, so again, this is preliminary information. I can’t give you a detailed description of a cutting tool that you can use to eliminate suspects. But if you look up close at this cut, you can see lines running horizontally across it. They’re called striae and they’re made by the teeth of a saw cutting back and forth. It tells me this wasn’t done with a knife or an axe. They use a chopping motion, not a sawing one.’

‘Could it have been a handsaw?’ I asked.

‘That’s what I think it was, but that would be a long, slow process, especially given the size of the pieces.’ She leaned forward again, beckoning us in for an even closer look. ‘Then this part here – the small step at the bottom? That’s called a breakaway spur, where the bone finally fractured and gave way. The saw didn’t cut cleanly through the entire bone because it didn’t need to – the weight of the bone itself snapped it. If you find the other side of the bone, there’ll be a matching notch in it where this bone came away. Think of breaking a green stick. You don’t get a clean edge – you take a bit of the other side of the break away with you. The size of the spur varies but, in general, the more powerful the saw, the larger the spur. These are small.’

‘Messy,’ I commented.

‘And slow. Cutting someone up isn’t the kind of job where you want to take your time. Bodies are cumbersome and it’s a horrible working environment. On the other hand, if you want to avoid attracting attention, a handsaw has the virtue of being quiet.’ She straightened up. ‘The kerfs will help us narrow down the kind of saw you’re looking for – the number of teeth per inch, the direction of cut, the set of the blade and so forth. We’ll be able to find out a lot more once this lot is under a microscope.’

‘Looking forward to it.’ I ran through my notes. ‘You said she’d been in the water for a couple of days. Any idea when she actually died?’

Dr Early shook her head. ‘Too many variables. We don’t know where the body was kept before or after it was dismembered. If it was refrigerated, for instance, that would have delayed decomp. I don’t have enough of her to tell you anything so useful.’

‘And we don’t have any trace evidence to speak of because of the water.’ Derwent’s shoulders slumped. ‘It’s almost as if they didn’t want us to work out who killed her.’

‘It’s not playing fair, is it? She’s going to be a bit of a mystery until we can find some more of her. Or unless you work out who she is, obviously. That would help.’

‘Wouldn’t it, though?’ I closed my notebook with a snap that made the pathologist’s assistant jump. ‘It shouldn’t take us long to look through the missing person reports for a woman—’

‘—or a man,’ Derwent chipped in helpfully.

‘Who disappeared at some time or other that wasn’t in the last two days, probably, and might be twenty-something and might have light brown hair—’

‘—but otherwise has no distinguishing marks—’

‘—on about ten per cent of his or her body,’ I finished.

‘At least you were paying attention. It sounds as if you’ve got quite a lot of work to do.’ Dr Early nodded at the door. ‘Better get on with it, hadn’t you?’

We were almost at the car when Derwent’s phone rang.

‘Boss.’

I waited, watching his face, trying to read what he was thinking as the boss – DCI Una Burt – talked on, and on, and on. Derwent wasn’t her biggest fan, and the feeling was entirely mutual. He started out looking irritated but that faded, replaced with grim resolve.