‘That’s your job, Lottie. All I can tell you is that she was aged between sixteen and twenty and was pregnant at the time of her death. Allowing for the intense heat we’ve been experiencing and the rate of decomposition, I’d estimate she was murdered two days ago, three max.’
Lottie thought of Petrovci’s statement. They’d initially dug the trench three days ago. Had this girl been buried after that and been lying under the street since then?
‘So she wasn’t killed where we found her?’
‘Lividity on the body suggests she was moved after death. The area where she was found would not allow the killer the freedom to undress her, shoot her, et cetera. She was definitely killed elsewhere. There’s something else too.’ Jane jumped down from her stool, steered Lottie to the autopsy table and pulled the sheet from the body. ‘See this scar?’ She pointed to an arc circling the victim’s left hip, from her abdomen around her back.
‘I see it,’ Lottie said, keeping her eyes away from the gaping vacuum where the pathologist had removed the foetus.
‘The suturing is very neat,’ Jane said.
‘What happened to her?’
‘She’d had a kidney surgically removed.’
‘Why?’
‘Perhaps she donated it to a family member? I don’t know.’
‘Was the surgery recent?’
‘I’ll have a better idea when I do more tests. At the moment, I’d estimate surgery was no more than a year ago. That’s all I can say until I go in again.’
‘And the pregnancy?’ Lottie asked. ‘How far along was she when she died? Can we get DNA from the foetus?’ She wondered if she was dealing with a reluctant father brandishing a gun, or a crime of misspent passion. Her gut told her it was something completely different. She trusted her gut. Most of the time.
Jane glided over to a second table. Lottie followed. Taking a deep breath, she braced herself. She wasn’t squeamish and didn’t mind looking at bodies. But an unborn baby? This was different.
‘Here’s her baby. It was about eighteen weeks’ gestation at time of death. A girl.’
Jane slowly drew back the sheet. Lottie gasped at the sight of the smallest baby she’d ever seen, curled on one side on the cold steel. She gulped back tears; composed herself. Glancing sideways, she noticed Jane hastily wiping her eyes. In the short time she had known Jane Dore, the pathologist had hardly ever registered any emotion.
‘I’ve carried out a lot of autopsies in my time, but this… this is monstrous…’ Jane’s voice trailed off in the raw Dead House air.
‘Sometimes I think there’s nothing left to surprise me,’ Lottie said, ‘but there’s always one more horror awaiting discovery.’ She turned away, picked up the reports and stuffed them in her bag.
‘Find whoever did this,’ Jane said, her voice soft and flat.
Lottie didn’t answer. But there was a new determination in her step as she left Jane in the Dead House and headed back to Ragmullin. As she drove, all she could see was the tiny baby with its miniature webbed thumb secured in its little mouth. She didn’t think she would ever be able to dislodge that image from her memory.
* * *
Dropping the pathologist’s preliminary report on Boyd’s desk, Lottie thought he looked as haggard as she felt.
‘We’ve canvassed the entire area, the pub, the apartments, everywhere. No one saw anything,’ he said.
‘Typical Ragmullin.’
She sat at her desk, recalling the case from late December that had crawled into January. A town where no one saw anything, very few said anything and those who did never told the whole truth.
‘So what’d Jane have to say?’ Boyd picked up the reports.
‘The victim was definitely shot.’
‘What? Shot? This is bad, Lottie.’
‘I know.’ Gun crime was low to non-existent in Ragmullin. Not like in the cities, she thought, where gangland crime was usually conducted at the end of a pistol. ‘She was definitely pregnant when she died.’
‘Bollocks!’
‘And – wait for this – at some stage she’d had a kidney surgically removed.’
‘God. I hope it was by consent.’
‘Hard to know at the moment. Jane has to complete the post-mortem yet.’
‘Pregnant, shot and a kidney gone. That girl has been through some horrors,’ Boyd said, scratching his head, looking lost. Lottie knew the feeling.
‘The victim was undressed before she was shot, then the wound was washed and she was re-dressed.’
‘Why would someone do that? It’s mad.’
‘Insane. Anyone fitting her description on the missing persons list?’ Lottie enquired, masking a yawn. Her first day had been much more hectic than she could have imagined.
‘Nothing to match our girl. But if she was over eighteen, I doubt she’d be on it yet anyway.’
‘She’s been dead two days, maybe three. Eighteen weeks pregnant. Someone, somewhere, is missing her. The father of her child, for instance.’
‘Maybe she told no one. The pregnancy could be the result of a one-night stand.’
‘Or she could be in a relationship with a married man and something went wrong and he shot her.’
‘We could release the post-mortem photograph.’
‘You saw her face. We can’t put decomposing flesh into the public domain.’ She grabbed the pathologist’s report from Boyd and scanned through it. ‘Not yet, anyway.’
‘It was just an idea,’ he said.
‘A stupid one.’
She knew he wanted to retort, but the seriousness of what they were discussing didn’t warrant it. She said, ‘Jane notes here that based on the girl’s bone structure, she could be Eastern European, possibly of Balkan origin.’
‘How could she make that call?’
‘She studied anthropology.’
‘So was the victim here illegally?’ Boyd said. ‘It’d make our job all the harder to identify her.’
‘She could be a refugee or asylum seeker,’ Lottie said. ‘They’re documented.’
She recalled a local outcry a few years ago when the Department of Justice leased out the defunct army barracks. It had been converted into a direct provision centre for asylum seekers. A storm in a teacup, her mother had said. It had all died down.
‘It’s worth checking,’ Boyd said.
‘Put it on tomorrow’s to-do list.’
‘Sure.’
‘And we need to interview Petrovci again. First, though, I’ve to conduct a team meeting before everyone escapes for the night.’
Ten
It was after eight o’clock when she eventually arrived home from work. Silence greeted her. Her mother, Rose Fitzpatrick, who’d been looking after the kids, was long gone. Lottie thought how they were all doing a good job of avoiding each other recently.
‘Anyone here?’ she shouted up the stairs.
No reply.
Entering the kitchen, she groaned. The sink was piled high with glasses and plates. Back to what was normal before her sabbatical from the force. But at least her family had been fed. At one time Rose would have left the house sparkling clean. Lottie wondered what she’d done to cause the change.
‘Does anyone know how to wash a mug in this house?’
No answer. Talking to herself. Again.
Everywhere was unusually quiet. In a fit of panic, she raced up the stairs and ploughed into her son’s room.
‘What’s up?’ Sean asked, removing headphones. He quickly tapped his computer and the screen faded to a photograph of a sunny beach.
‘I’m home,’ Lottie said, feeling relief flood her cheeks.