Nine Elms (Kate Marshall #1)(15)

Kate’s mind went back to Caitlyn Murray’s school photo. She hadn’t looked happy like Jake. Kate got up to switch on her laptop and check if Caitlyn’s father had replied to her email, and her mobile phone rang. She went to her bag in the kitchen and saw it was Alan Hexham.

“Hello, working late?” she said. She liked Alan. He came and lectured to her students every term, and as well as being a brilliant forensic pathologist, he had become a friend.

“Kate, are you busy?” he asked, without preamble.

“No. Everything okay?”

“I want you to come down to the morgue . . . I need a second opinion.”

“A second opinion?” she asked. He was normally so upbeat, but tonight he sounded rattled. Almost scared.

“Yes. Please, Kate. I could really use your help and insight.”





5

The morgue was on the outskirts of Exmouth and only a few miles from Kate’s house. It was in the basement of a large Victorian-era hospital, and the car park was quiet and empty. A tall chimney rose from the back of the building, and thick black smoke was pouring out into the clear sky.

The morgue was accessed through a side door, and then Kate was in a damp tunnel, banking down into the basement. It smelled of mold and disinfectant, and dim yellow lights dotted at intervals flickered and fizzed.

The tunnel opened out into a bright reception area with a high ceiling and ornate Victorian plasterwork. The pattern made Kate think of tightly curled intestines or brain tissue. She signed in and was shown through to a lecture theatre. Raked wooden seats rose up around it and vanished into the shadows.

A large naked corpse lay in the center of the theatre on a stainless steel postmortem table. Alan worked with two assistants. They all wore blue scrubs with clear Perspex masks. The bloated, blackening corpse was slit open from just above the groin up to the sternum, where the cut diverged out across each shoulder to the neck. The rib cage was split down the middle and bent out, like open butterfly wings. The hole where her face should have been gaped obscenely, a row of bottom teeth poking up through the flesh, which was like a cluster of poisonous mushrooms. Kate hesitated in the entrance, taking in the stench mingled with the dusty wooden smell of the old auditorium.

“Lungs are good and healthy, though close to liquification,” Alan was saying, lifting them up in his bloodied hands. They hung wetly above the dismembered torso, reminding Kate of a dead octopus. “Quickly—they’ll disintegrate.”

He saw Kate and nodded in acknowledgment as one of his assistants rushed to him with a stainless steel organ dish. He placed the lungs carefully inside.

“Kate. Thank you for coming,” he said, his voice echoing off the high ceiling. “Fresh scrubs are on the back of the door, and do remember shoe covers.”

She quickly pulled on a set of scrubs and came back, stopping a few feet from the body. The room was so cold, and she folded her arms over her chest. She was close enough to see the remainder of the young girl’s organs, all packed neatly into the open torso. She wondered what the body of the young woman had to do with her. It had been so long since she had attended a postmortem, and she hoped her stomach was still up to it. Alan towered over his two assistants, and he brought Kate up to speed, explaining where and when they had found the body.

“Despite having no face to identify, her body yielded a wealth of samples: semen, saliva, three separate strands of hair, pubic hair in the vagina, an eyelash from one of the bites on the backs of her legs . . .”

“Bites?” said Kate.

“Yes. Six,” said Alan, looking up at her.

One of his assistants carefully lifted out the heart, and he carried it reverently in two hands, taking it over to a set of weighing scales.

“Liam. Bring the dish to the organ. Don’t go walking around the room with it! Samira . . .”

Liam froze in the middle of the room, holding the heart while Samira fetched a small steel bowl for him to place the organ in. Kate ignored this little double act and moved closer to the body, smelling decaying flesh. A surgical saw lay on the adjacent table, congealed with blood. A postmortem was always conducted with such an intense calm. She’d once heard it described as ripping apart someone with care.

“Was she asphyxiated?”

“Yes,” said Alan. “See the ligature marks on the neck and throat, small red pinpricks, like a rash.” He drew Kate’s attention to the area in question with his finger. “Indicates rapid loss of oxygen, then the blood being rapidly reoxygenated. She was deprived of oxygen to the point of death and then revived . . .”

“Was she posed? Lying on her side with one arm outstretched?”

“Yes.”

“Her body left in parkland?”

“Moorland. Dartmoor National Park, but yes, out in the elements.”

“Have you identified her?”

“Not yet. Looking at her remaining teeth, she’s only just out of her teenage years.” He went to a trolley and picked up an evidence bag containing the torn neck of the drawstring plastic bag and the rope with the knot. He handed it to Kate. “And this was found tied around her neck.”

For the second time that day, a piece of the past was suddenly thrust into her present. A chill ran through her body as she fingered the knot through the thick plastic, feeling the tight ridges on the small ball. She looked up at Alan.