Marnie Riches - The Girl Who Walked in the Shadows - A gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat

There was nothing Van den Bergen could do to stifle the low growl that escaped his lips. Marianne might as well have gouged at his tired heart with her scalpel.

‘Like that, is it?’

The pathologist walked around the dead man, recording her observations into a Dictaphone. She scrutinised the blemished skin of his face.

‘Aside from the sores around the deceased’s nose and mouth that would suggest drug misuse, I can see tiny lacerations on his face,’ she said. She prized open his mouth with her fingers to reveal blackened teeth. ‘Jesus. Our man was certainly not a regular at the dentist’s.’

‘Show me a junkie who is,’ Van den Bergen said.

‘His lips, gums and tongue show bruising,’ she continued. ‘I’ll check his nasal passages later by microscopy, but I’m guessing it’s the same there. I can see significant amounts of mucus and blood at the back of his gullet. Petechial haemorrhages in his skin. Oedema.’

‘In layman’s terms, please!’

‘All in good time, Chief Inspector. You just sit tight and let me do my job.’ She took samples from beneath the man’s fingernails. Bloods. Swabs. ‘Okay. Let’s see what’s inside,’ Marianne said.

Taking up her scalpel, she began to open up the cadaver, cutting from his chest, working her way down to his pubic area.

‘Oh, Jesus!’ Van den Bergen said. He steadied himself against the built in sink at the end of the stainless steel slab. Flashbacks to waking up on the floor of the Butcher’s panic room. Strapped to a chair. Awaiting his fate. Then, walking towards the light, thinking it was the end and that perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad, only to find the source of the brightness came from a doctor’s light pen, checking for the response of his pupils as he emerged finally from his coma in the Intensive Care Unit. Only later, when his wounds were redressed, realising that he had been zipped open from top to bottom.

Just like the body of the Bijlmer man, now.

Marianne set down her scalpel. Staring at him askance as though he was a lunatic. ‘Paul? Are you okay?’

Pull yourself together, you loser. ‘I’m fine. It’s my middle ear playing up.’ He pointed to his ear, as though that made his lie more convincing. She didn’t need to know he was so weak-minded. ‘Vertigo. You know. A lot of viruses going round in this infernal shitty weather.’

‘Have you and Georgina split up?’ She narrowed her sharp blue eyes at him.

He pulled up a typing chair close to the action. His height made it easy to observe as Marianne resumed her dissection. Pointedly said nothing in response.

‘Suit yourself, tight-lipped sod,’ she said.

After the bulk of the examination had been performed, internal organs weighed and measured and the dead man scrutinised for signs of foul play visible to the naked eye, the pathologist scowled.

‘Well?’ Van den Bergen asked, hoping she had not noticed he had been looking anywhere but at the body for most of the procedure. ‘We found a big bag of mephedrone on him. It was odd that his stash hadn’t been taken. Are we looking at a simple drug-related stabbing?’

Marianne tutted. Looked perplexed. ‘This is the weird thing,’ she said. Snapping off her gloves in silence. Scrubbing her arms to the elbows. Silent all the while. ‘He’s clearly lost a lot of blood because he was stabbed with something in the carotid artery. Whoever did it knew what they were doing. The wound is about two inches deep, as though it’s been done with those home-made weapons you get in prisons.’

‘A shiv.’

‘Exactly. The wound is conical, but there’s no evidence of a blade. At first I thought he’d been stabbed with a stake or maybe one of those conical stoppers you get for wine bottles.’

Van den Bergen crossed one long leg over the other, bouncing his fur-lined boot on his knee. Finally, he pulled his beanie hat off and ruffled his thick, prematurely white hair. ‘It’s possible. Don’t rule it out at this stage. We haven’t found a weapon anywhere near the crime scene.’

Marianne pulled up another chair and sat beside him. ‘No, but the thing is, there are traces of water in the wound. I don’t get it. And though he lost pints of blood, his actual cause of death was suffocation. That’s what I was alluding to when I said there were lacerations and bruising in and around his mouth and nose.’

‘What?’ Van den Bergen leaned closer to her. Scrutinising the fine lines around her eyes and the hollows beneath her cheekbones, where long-distance running had stripped the fat away.

‘Someone shoved snow up his nose and into his mouth. They stabbed him first and then made sure they finished the job by suffocation. When I examined him at the scene, I found slush in his nasal passages and mouth. Almost melted, but not quite.’ She touched the tip of her own nose thoughtfully. ‘Even with the victim’s body temperature being a steady 37 degrees, by the time he’d started to bleed out, and his temperature had begun to drop, with the stupid sub-zero conditions we’ve got at the moment, his extremities would have taken barely any time at all to cool to freezing point.’

‘Hence the slush.’

‘Yes. Stay outside for more than ten minutes in this weather in the wrong clothes … It’s not exactly taking a bath in liquid nitrogen, but not far off it!’

Van den Bergen chewed over the information. Rubbing his brow. He could feel the pinching pain of his scar tissue responding to the mortuary chill, now that his coat hung open. Taking a blister pack out of his anorak pocket, he slipped two ibuprofen onto his tongue. Swallowed with spit. ‘What do you think of opportunism? This John Doe had no wallet on him. Could he have been robbed because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time?’

The pathologist stood and stretched. Glanced over at the dead man, baring his innermost secrets beneath the mortuary lights. ‘Very public place, though. If I wanted to mug a man, I wouldn’t choose that spot. Would you? It’s overlooked by scores of apartments.’

Van den Bergen nodded. Wished he was sitting on his sofa at home, savouring a hot coffee, bouncing ideas back and forth with George instead. Watching the winter sunlight that streamed through the French windows of his apartment kiss the tips of her hair.

‘The bag of mephedrone on the dead man was worth a fair few Euros,’ he said. ‘Who the hell would kill a junkie, take his money, but leave the drugs?’

Marianne de Koninck started to print off labels for the samples she had taken, methodically categorising the bits of the dead man that would be sent to toxicology. ‘You’re the Chief Inspector, Paul. Not me. But I’d be asking what kind of psychopath would commit such a public, brutal but efficient murder if it was just about stealing a wallet?’

‘You’re late,’ Sally said, smiling, though her tone was acidic enough to strip the wax from the grand wooden mantel of the fireplace. She clutched what appeared to be a whisky, or brandy maybe, in a cut-crystal tumbler in her right hand.

George could smell the fumes from the strong alcohol. At 2pm, it felt like too early in the day for a drink. But then it was beyond freezing outside. ‘Can I have one of those?’ she asked.

‘No. I’m cross with you.’ Sally clacked on the side of her tumbler with the two chunky Perspex rings she wore on her gnarled fingers. Marking time. ‘I told you to make sure you got here in a punctual fashion.’

George pulled off her Puffa jacket and released herself from the strangling grip of her scarf. ‘Overslept,’ she said. ‘You wouldn’t believe—’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ the Senior Tutor said. Nicotine-stained gritted teeth. Total sense of humour failure. ‘You were notable by your absence, young lady. The Master asked where you were and I had to string him a line about emergency dental surgery. So no fucking drinky for you. If he asks, the anaesthetic still hasn’t worn off.’