“You’ll cool down soon enough,” Ryan said, and entered the security code to buzz them through the doors.
Sure enough, there was an icy blast of cold air as they entered the main workspace of the mortuary. To their left, there was a line of lab coats hanging on pegs for visitor use and they selected a couple. They spent another minute signing into the log book and covering their heads in disposable hair caps.
“I feel like a dinner lady,” Phillips muttered, fiddling with the elastic at his head.
But there was no appetizing scent of rice pudding in the clinical space surrounding them. Rather, the air carried a noxious combination of chemicals that didn’t quite manage to disguise the insidious smell of death lingering beneath. Phillips cleared his throat loudly and wished he’d had a cigarette after all. It might have masked the pong.
At that moment, the chief pathologist spotted them and made his way across the room. Doctor Jeffrey Pinter was a tall man in his early-fifties whose gangly frame did nothing to improve the overall impression of a walking skeleton, which was an unfortunate comparator for someone in his line of work. His white lab coat covered just past his knees and they could see he wore a pair of conservative grey suit trousers beneath. There were deep shadows beneath his eyes, accentuating the overall pallor of his skin.
“You look like you need a holiday, mate,” Phillips said, taking the man’s outstretched hand.
“You’re telling me,” Pinter replied, transferring his hand to Ryan. “Good to see you both.”
“Thanks for getting around to this so quickly,” Ryan put in, eyeing the banks of metal drawers lining one wall of the chilly room.
“To tell you the truth, I’m intrigued. Two deaths in a matter of days could be a terrible coincidence but it looks fishy, doesn’t it?”
Ryan gave him a small smile.
For all that Pinter could be pompous and socially awkward, he couldn’t be faulted for his meticulous eye for detail and nose for the business.
“Precisely what we’re thinking, Jeff.”
“Well, I think I can shed some light on that,” he said, with the air of someone who knew something they didn’t.
Which, of course, he did.
Ryan and Phillips followed him past a row of central gurneys, one of which was presently occupied by the partially-shrouded figure of a recently deceased old man. A mortuary technician looked up as they passed and raised his scalpel in greeting.
With a sharp double take, they realised the cadaver was Victor Swann. His body was hardly recognisable as it went through the stages of putrefaction, causing his skin to turn a marbled greenish-black as the organs of his body self-digested.
Catching the direction of their gaze, Pinter paused.
“We’re just getting around to him now,” he explained. “Sorry, it’s been a bit hectic in here the last few days.”
“No problem,” Ryan said, wincing at the sight of all that rubbery skin. “Let’s focus on the girl, for now.”
“That’s what I thought.” Pinter carried on past a large immersion tank toward another set of doors leading to the smaller examination rooms.
“She’s in here,” Pinter said, pausing beside a door marked ‘EXAMINATION ROOM A’.
Pinter flicked on the overhead lighting to illuminate another shrouded figure resting atop the single metal slab in the centre of the room. A variety of Medieval-style implements rested beneath a pale blue covering on a trolley nearby.
Phillips had no time to steel his stomach before the shroud was peeled back to reveal the sad remains of Alice Chapman and he felt his insides somersault. He trained his eyes toward the ceiling, counting to twenty until the sensation passed.
Ryan told himself to remain detached, to look upon the mass of assorted flesh and bone with an impersonal eye.
But, God, it was hard.
The mortuary staff had cleaned her up as best they could but, for the first time they could remember, Pinter had chosen not to reveal the girl’s face so that only her long dark hair was visible beneath the paper covering.
Ryan raised sad grey eyes to the pathologist, who gave him an apologetic shrug.
“I…thought it best.”
Phillips wrestled his system back under control and found himself more than happy to take Pinter at his word.
“What can you tell us?”
Pinter blew out a stream of air and produced a retractable pointer from one of the deep pockets of his lab coat.
“The overall picture isn’t pretty, as you can plainly see,” he began, as if he were delivering a lecture. “I’d say she’d been dead somewhere between twelve and fifteen hours, by the time she was discovered.”
“Which puts her death roughly between the hours of four and seven p.m., yesterday,” Ryan deduced.
“I’d say so. The remains are quite consistent with the type of injuries I would expect to see from a fall of that height onto jagged rocks and decomposition is well underway, probably helped along by some interference from local scavengers.”
Ryan nodded gravely, forcing himself to look at the body. It would be easier to read the pathologist’s report from the comfort of his armchair at home but that was no substitute in terms of impact. From now on, he would remember this image of Alice and think of it when he hunted for her killer.
For there had been a killer.
He was sure of it.
As it turned out, Pinter was of the same opinion. He flipped open his pointer and drew their attention to Alice’s hands, which were encased in plastic bags that had inflated like small balloons as her body divested itself of natural gases.
“We’ve spent a lot of time looking at her hands and beneath her nails,” he said. “It’s unfortunate that some of the flesh is missing but, from what’s still there, we were able to extract several useful samples.”
Ryan’s eyes swept upward.
“And?”
“I can tell you we found traces of leather fibres beneath her nails and very small traces of human skin cells,” Pinter said, puffing his chest out a bit. “The samples are with Faulkner’s team now. They’ll compare the DNA with the samples being taken from the people up at Cragside. I understand that’s happening this morning?”
“Aye, MacKenzie’s overseeing it now,” Phillips put in. “They’ll get the swabs down to the lab as soon as possible.”
“I’ve authorised an expedited service,” Ryan said. “If we have somebody operating up there, they’re not afraid to move quickly. Even with a murder detective on site,” he added.
“I remember when the crims used to have a healthy respect for the law,” Phillips ruminated. “Those were the good old days.”
Ryan and Pinter mumbled their agreement, then the pathologist moved onto the next point of interest.
“If you look down here at the left ankle, you’ll see there’s quite an obvious swelling.” Pinter pointed at the decaying flesh.