The Moor (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #11)(31)

“Ah, do you have a minute to go over that old report we spoke about on the phone?” Ryan asked, nose wrinkling as he passed by the tank.

“Of course. Why don’t you come into my office?”

They followed him through the main mortuary workspace and along a short corridor leading to a number of private examination rooms, as well as Pinter’s personal office.

Inside, a single, uninspiring strip light perfectly complemented the overall ambiance of the room.

“Couldn’t you get an artificial plant, or something?” Phillips asked. “I know it’s a mortuary, but you could still spruce the place up a bit!”

Pinter looked around the stark, white-washed space and saw a clean, orderly environment.

“Well, it’s not as though the punters complain,” he said, and the other men winced.

“Point made,” Ryan said. “How about that report?”

“Ah, yes,” Pinter said, and spun around in his desk chair to bring up the report on his desktop computer. “I’m afraid I couldn’t remember the details, off-hand. I see quite a few like this one, unfortunately.”

“I read through the main report in the cold case file,” Ryan said. “It seems the woman was found in July of 2011?”

“That’s right,” Pinter nodded. “She’d been dead for around a month, by that point. A hiker found her in a shallow grave, up at Bolam Lake.”

“You’re sure it was around a month?”

It mattered, Ryan thought, because it could mean the difference between Esme O’Neill having died around the time Samantha said she did, or sometime later.

“We’re as sure as we can be,” Pinter replied. “In addition to my own clinical assessment of the skeleton, soil samples were taken from the scene and were found to contain high levels of lipid phosphorus. When a body is buried in the undergrowth like that, there’s a fairly well documented biochemical cycle that affects the soil around it. We call it the ‘decomposition island’,” he added.

“Sounds lovely,” Phillips remarked.

“How about cause of death?” Ryan pressed on. “I read in your report that you hypothesized death by ligature strangulation. Why not manual?”

“It’s a judgment call,” Pinter acknowledged. “When you no longer have much in the way of soft tissue to examine, it comes down to looking at what remains and drawing conclusions. In my opinion, the damage to the trachea was significant, and the force was suggestive of either extreme manual force or, most likely, a ligature aid of some kind.”

“Weren’t the bones all…you know, broken up, by the time the body was found?” Phillips found himself asking.

“The skin was black and hardened around the bones in the neck,” Pinter explained. “It was still holding the skeleton together, although if she’d been in the ground much longer it would have been a question of referring the bones to a specialist.”

Ryan nodded.

“Any other interesting markers?”

“Well, as I say, it’s hard to draw meaningful conclusions as to the lady’s lifestyle or occupation, except that the size, shape and analysis of the bones suggested a woman in the age range of eighteen to thirty. She’d enjoyed a reasonably healthy diet and had probably carried a baby, at some point.”

“You can tell that, from a skeleton?”

Pinter nodded.

“You’d be amazed what a body can tell you.”

“It’s a silent witness,” Ryan murmured, and looked over at the images taken of Esme O’Neill’s remains. By now, he’d seen a picture of how she’d looked in life, and the contrast was stark.

“She was found clothed, but with no other personal effects aside from the jewellery she’d been wearing when she died.”

“Wedding ring?” Ryan asked, but Pinter shook his head.

“No rings—but a twenty-four carat, yellow-gold charm bracelet was recovered,” he said.

“Interesting that there was no wedding ring,” Ryan said. “Anything else?”

“The clothes had been subject to fire damage—”

“Burned?” Ryan enquired.

Pinter nodded.

“Once again, judging from portions of charred bone, I would hypothesize that the victim was partially incinerated in situ. Often, killers find that fire does a disappointing job of removing all traces—so they layered the soil on top.

“They wanted her wiped out,” Phillips said. “Most people would leave it at one or the other, unless it was a professional job.”

Pinter nodded.

“To transport the body, drag it through the wooded area to a secluded spot, presumably at night, would take a certain level of strength,” he said. “Or, perhaps, more than one person, to help.”

Food for thought.

“Alright,” Ryan said. “If you have no objections, I’d like to refer all the samples back to Faulkner for re-testing. He has a lot more science at his disposal now than he did eight years ago, so it might throw something up.”

“I certainly have no objection,” Pinter said. “I heard that it was the daughter who came to you with the new information?”

Ryan nodded.

“Terrible business,” the pathologist said. “Anything I can do, just let me know.”