Twenty-One Days (Daniel Pitt #1)(69)

‘X-ray,’ she said proudly. ‘Father gave me that for Christmas and birthday combined.’ Her face lit with pleasure and suddenly it was easy to imagine her opening an enormous parcel with a bow on the top on Christmas morning, and discovering this strange monstrosity.

She was already explaining to him, with pride, what it could do and he had not been listening

‘Daniel!

‘I’m sorry . . .’

‘It can see through flesh and make pictures of the bones beneath. Or it can find anything solid, or metal we may have eaten, and trace it anywhere through our digestive system. It can find bullets, or broken-off pieces of a knife, for example.’

‘Is that what it’s used for?’ He was surprised. How often could they need such a thing?

‘Not in the hospitals,’ she dismissed the idea. ‘But we may find something useful in her bones. For example, an old break, or an abnormality.’

He did not reply, but watched her as she put one part of the body, and then another, in front of the machine. It was rather like a camera, but fastened to the table with clamps from which two metal rods of about an inch in diameter held it at a height of two feet above the table’s surface. The table itself was long enough for an adult man to lie upon.

The machine itself consisted of several distinct parts. The first was an eye piece, like a funnel, through which the operator looked. It was attached to a complicated box with projecting lenses and dials. In front of that was another, larger box made of something transparent. Inside it was more machinery, smaller and circular; attached to it was a large frame, as if to hold another part. It was all focused downward, less than a foot away from the body Miriam was examining.

Then suddenly she stiffened, and stopped completely. ‘Look!’ she ordered him. ‘Look at this!’ She stepped back for him to see through the focus.

He moved closer to her and looked down at the fuzzy black-and-white image. It was little shadows, blotches. It took a moment or two for him to realise what it was. ‘It’s a foot!’ he exclaimed in amazement at the complexity of it. He turned to her. ‘Are all those separate bones?’

She smiled. ‘Yes! Marvellous, isn’t it? You can see a skeleton, and it’s hard to realise it is mere fragments of a person. And of course, we hardly ever know who. At first, in medical school, we were given the names, but they’re not real. It’s . . . better now to think of them being what’s left of someone.’

He looked at it again. ‘How do you know if you’re seeing something normal, or not? What’s that – that smudge there? It’s blurred.’ He peered closer.

‘That is what I was looking at. It’s a lot whiter than the rest of the bone, and a bit wider. See?’

‘Yes. What is it?’

‘It’s an old break, well healed. There are more of them.’

‘She has lots of broken bones? An accident?’ He winced at the thought of bones snapped, jagged. He had only broken a bone once, playing football, but it had hurt appallingly. His arm had healed in about six weeks, but it still ached now and then.

‘I don’t know,’ she said gravely. ‘A different bone and I would say probably an accident, a certain fracture of the wrist. You can put your hand out to save yourself when you’re falling. But some bones, fingers, forearm, toes . . .’

‘You mean deliberate? You think he hit her? Hard enough to break bones?’ A hatred boiled up inside him towards Graves. If he had been there, he would have lashed out and hit him back. Is that what Graves had done when he couldn’t control Ebony? Then he remembered what Mrs Warlaby had told him and knew it was the truth.

‘Probably. But the interesting thing is this . . .’ Miriam pointed out the whitest part of the bone.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What does it mean?’

‘That’s where it healed.’

‘Why is it interesting?’

‘Look at it through the magnifying glass.’ She passed it to him and Daniel peered at the pictures. Enlarged, it was still not clear to him. ‘The thickness of it, the density. And the other bones as well,’ she prompted.

‘They don’t look so dense. At least, they don’t to me. What am I missing?’ He turned to her. Her eyes were shining, and there was a faint flush in her cheeks.

‘You’re looking at a bone that was broken a long time ago,’ she said quietly, but there was a tension in her voice. ‘Probably over twenty years, at least. And the bones in general are losing mass. They are more brittle than when they were broken, not as dense.’

‘An illness? Is that why they broke? Then the illness was cured!’ he exclaimed.

Her face was bleak for just an instant, and then it cleared again. ‘No, there is no cure for it . . . better diet, perhaps. More exercise. It delays it, but doesn’t cure it.’ A shadow of humour crossed her eyes. ‘The bones were broken more than twenty years ago, at least. More like twenty-five. The less density is because she is older. People’s bones do become less dense as they grow older. That is why when old people fall, they so often break bones, where younger people don’t. Children’s bones are far less fragile. Sometimes they bend instead of breaking. Women tend to lose bone strength more than men. This woman is a lot older than Ebony claimed to be. About ten years, I’d say.’