Even before O’Connor entered the mortuary section of the hospital, he had imagined Caroline’s grey statuette form lying waste on the steel trolley, the squeak of metal wheels against the shiny, spotless floors, Morrison carrying out his task with the precision of a master, everyone suited up in their surgical gowns. The girl’s body held answers, and he hoped the state pathologist would find them. If the autopsy was still in progress, experience told O’Connor that he needed to prepare for what he was about to see.
As he walked through the corridors, he took in all the sounds around him: the shuffle of slippered feet, machines bleeping, steel metal bins being flipped open, lift doors opening and closing shut. O’Connor only looked far enough ahead to follow the signs, despite it being a well-worn path. The farther he walked, the more the human traffic around him reduced, till the only person he could see was the uniformed guard stationed outside the double doors. O’Connor engaged the young guard in conversation and introduced himself, then asked the young man his name and where he was based. They talked for no more than a minute, but it was enough to cement the feeling that they were in this together.
When he saw Morrison walking towards him, he knew the autopsy was over. O’Connor was relieved that the last memory he would have of the girl would be the one from the grave, and not on a stainless steel slab.
‘Good evening, O’Connor.’ Morrison had already changed out of his autopsy garb.
‘So what do you have?’
Morrison eyed him the way you might an impatient schoolboy, assessing whether or not he was worthy of being given a speedy response. Morrison chose to be accommodating.
‘Well, Detective Inspector, what we have is an adolescent female, probably less than a year into pubertal period. There is very little fat tissue on the body, practically skeletal in certain areas, could be part of accelerated growth or an aggressive diet regime.’
‘Meaning?’ O’Connor looked up from writing in his notebook.
‘Meaning exactly what I just said.’
‘Fine. Go on. Sorry.’
‘The plaiting of the hair happened after the blows to the head, heavy matting within the hair follicles, broken in parts to achieve the tying of the plaits, along with cotton fibre interspersed, perhaps a cloth used to clear away some of the blood, of which there would have been plenty. No fresh blood on the outer layers. I believe some time had passed from the blows being given to the hair being plaited.’
O’Connor continued to write in his notebook. He knew he would get a full report from Morrison in time, but at such an early stage in the investigation everything moved fast, and it was good to have certain things close at hand.
‘Also, Detective, there were bite marks inside the victim’s mouth. Judging by the size of the teeth marks, most likely belonged to the victim herself. The blows to the head came from behind, a narrow steel implement; the first blow did the most damage, after that it was just repeated force.’
‘But the blows didn’t kill her?’
‘No, asphyxiation is still the most likely cause.’
‘And how the body was placed?’
‘That’s the interesting part. As you know, a body will automatically curl into the foetal position, but we are dealing with something very different here. When the girl’s body was placed underground, rigor mortis was in the latter stages, so a considerable number of hours had passed since her death.’
‘How many?’
‘Well, Detective, I normally avoid giving in-depth science lessons, but when the victim’s body was exhumed, a relaxed body state had already occurred. Therefore, in my opinion, the girl was killed shortly after she went missing.’
‘What makes you so sure?’
‘Rigor sets in within a couple of hours after death – you say the girl went missing around 4 p.m. on Wednesday? If the girl was killed a couple of hours later, rigor mortis could have begun to take hold by 8 p.m. The entire contracting process is completed within eight to twelve hours. So, using ten hours as an acceptable mid-ground, that means that the entire rigor would have been completed ten hours after death, or around 6 a.m. Thursday morning. The body then remains fixed for another eighteen hours in a state known as the rigid stage, which would bring us up to around midnight, and that’s important.’
‘Why exactly?’
‘After that point, the reversal of rigor occurs, but at some juncture after rigor began, the rigor was forced.’
‘Forced?’
‘He broke her bones, Inspector, at the knee joints, elbow joints, fingers … do I need to go on?’
‘No, I get your drift.’
‘Which is why the positioning is important. As I said, the way the body lay could be construed as a fairly natural position for a corpse, but this time nature had a helping hand.’
‘So what happens after the rigor reverses?’
‘To fully relax takes a further twelve hours. The body was exhumed around midday on the Friday, and at that point the body was practically in a fully relaxed state. Mind you, rigor can be variable based on conditions, but considering the girl went missing at 4 p.m. on Wednesday and the relaxed body state had already occurred when she was found, she had to have been killed within a few hours of going missing.’
‘Is that the end of the science lesson?’
‘Not quite. Do you want to hear this or not?’