Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Had No Fear

‘Find her, George. Find Letitia, dead or alive.’

‘Well, there’s water in his lungs,’ Marianne de Koninck said, carefully lifting the slippery-looking mass out of his chest cavity and onto the scales in the mortuary. ‘That much is obvious.’

At her side, Floris Engels’ milky eyes stared out from his bloated face. His scalp and legs, where Marianne’s pathologist’s blade had not yet got to work, were florid in places, yellowy-grey in others like bad tie-dye, the skin showing signs of wrinkling only at his extremities, as though it might shrug itself off his feet or hands. But the bloating made Van den Bergen twitch involuntarily. He hated floaters. They decomposed so bloody fast. He was glad of the clean, menthol smell of the VapoRub beneath his nostrils.

‘But I’ll need to test for the concentration of his serum electrolytes and examine his bones and viscera for diatoms,’ she said, observing the scales’ reading. ‘Our canal water is quite saline in certain parts of town because of the locks at Ijmuiden letting seawater in. So, there’ll be microscopic algae from the sea in his deep tissues if he’s just fallen in and met a watery end in the canal. Bones are always a good indicator.’ She took her scalpel and cut a sample of bone from the nub that protruded from his partially severed upper arm. Scraped the marrow into a test tube and sealed it. ‘It will take a couple of days in the lab. I’m due to get his bloods back any day, though.’ Pointing to his arm, she clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. Used her elbow to scratch at her belly beneath her scrubs. ‘That has been cut cleanly with the propeller of the barge, I’d say. Definitely done postmortem. My hypothesis is that our Floris here fell or was pushed in – point of entry by the barge. He sank, got trapped under the keel of the barge until our bargeman decided he needed a change of scenery.’

Van den Bergen wondered if Marianne’s muscular athlete’s arms would look so alien and ugly if she too had been underwater for a period of time. ‘So, he drowned, right?’ he asked.

The pathologist shone a light up the dead man’s nostrils and took swabs. Ever the professional, Van den Bergen wondered how she slept at night or ate after spending the working week with the dead. The last thing he needed a reminder of was his own mortality. Postmortems always left him feeling low for days.

‘He’s got froth in his air passages,’ she said. ‘Looking at his heart, I’d say it’s been subject to hypoxia and pulmonary oedema, causing ventricular tachycardia and haemodilution. There’s marked hyponatraemia. Everything’s pointing to drowning at this stage.’ Standing tall, she stretched out her back and yawned.

‘Late night?’ Van den Bergen asked.

‘You’d only be jealous if I told you.’ She winked at him. Turned her attention back to the cadaver on her stainless-steel slab.

Van den Bergen swallowed hard. Thought about the strange sexual chemistry that had historically been between them, fizzling to nothing when they had once actually found themselves in a clinch. Decided to ignore her prompt. ‘Pointing to drowning. You’re not sure?’

‘Listen,’ she said. ‘Drowning in adults is rare. You guys pull a handful out of the canals in a normal year. Right? The odd drunken tourist or some idiot who thinks it’s a good idea to go swimming. It’s rare. So, whenever someone gets pulled out of the canal, I do two things. I test the bloods for alcohol levels and narcotics – not so easy when the body has been under water for a while, as decomp and the invasion of water in the cells makes everything so bloody difficult.’ She tugged at Engels’ fingernails. ‘Luckily, our guy hasn’t been in the water for too long. He’s lost his body heat but his nails and skin haven’t started to come away yet.’

‘So, he can’t have been in there for more than twenty-four hours,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘Isn’t that right?’

‘I’d say this guy’s been in a little while longer. Thirty-six hours, maybe. Just shy of forty-eight at a push. Any longer, his nails would have started coming away.’ The pathologist loped round to the far side of the body, her Crocs squeaking on the tiled floor. She pointed to his armpit. Livid purple bruises by the shoulder joint. More tricky to see on the side with the severed arm, but there, nevertheless. ‘And in cases like this, I also look for bruising. Trauma signs, where somebody’s hit their head on the way in or where somebody’s been attacked before being pushed in. A true drowning will show hardly any signs of trauma externally. If you’ve had too much to drink or are stoned, you slide or roll in; you’re dead inside five to ten minutes. You’ve inhaled a good couple of litres of water in three. But no bruising necessarily, unless you bash yourself on the way in. But here, look!’

Van den Bergen studied the small round purple bruises. Four by each armpit in total. ‘He’s been grabbed or lifted by someone.’ Removed some photos from an A4 manila envelope that had been taken at the canal side. Sifted through them, until he found photographs of Engels’ personal effects. A photograph of his shoes. ‘These were expensive shoes,’ he said. ‘Russell & Bromley from England. Nice moccasins, but look! They’re scuffed as hell at the heel and the heels themselves have been worn down.’

Marianne nodded. ‘He’s been dragged down to the canal by someone strong and flung in. Until I get all these results through, I’d put my money on that.’ She snapped off her latex gloves and started to wash her hands at the steel sink. ‘And given the other canal drownings were badly decomposed when they were discovered, who’s to say similar hadn’t happened to them? I didn’t perform their autopsies, but Strietman said they’d all been partying too hard – drugs in the system. Who’s to say they hadn’t been forced into the water? He recorded an open verdict.’

‘Oh shit,’ Van den Bergen said. ‘You really think we’ve got a canal killer on our hands?’

The pathologist shrugged. ‘You’re the Chief Inspector. You tell me.’

‘When is he due back?’ George asked Marie in Dutch, wrinkling her nose at the foetid smell of the IT suite. Stale sweat, with an after-kick of onions. But mainly overcooked cabbage. Even the smell of the new carpet that Van den Bergen had got funding for could not mask that distinctive bouquet.

Marie narrowed her watery blue eyes. Opened the collar of her ribbed sweater and sniffed. Shrugged absently. ‘He’s at the morgue.’ She glanced at the clock on her computer monitor. ‘He’s already been gone an hour. I reckon you’ve got twenty minutes, tops, before he shows.’

George considered the white shards that covered the floor by Marie’s feet. Eyed suspiciously the empty bag of crisps next to her keyboard. Set her bag down on the desk, rather than the floor. Yawned so that her blocked ears popped with a deafening squeak.

‘Ow.’ She rubbed her ears. Sniffed her fingers and was pleased to discover they smelled of the Moroccan oil she had used to tame her hair. Better than Marie’s stink.

‘How was your flight?’ Marie asked.

‘Yeah, OK. So come on, then. Tell me about this Maastricht man.’ George folded her arms and studied the IT expert’s face for signs of sympathy, excitement or fear that would give her an inkling as to what the new lead meant for her mother. All she could see was a rash of embarrassment curling its way up Marie’s neck with red tendrils.

Marie clicked her mouse several times. Brought up a photo of a corpse on screen.