Body Harvest (8 page)

Lexi had not wasted the night. Between bouts of meditation, she had assembled a spreadsheet that summarized their case. She pointed at the first entry and said, ‘A spot of research told me L4G#1’s full name is Jerome Sebastian Eleven. He went off-grid two years ago. Killed and harvested for body parts last Friday but, because of the modern invention of cryonics, he could have been snatched weeks ago. Used The Solitude Network website.’

Troy sat and watched her, admiring her crisp and unemotional assessments.

‘A simple overnight DNA check using skin and hair from Olga Wylie’s house proves she’s L4G#2. No big shock there. Probably died around Tuesday 25th March. Body not harvested. She received a transplant instead. A huge gaffe gave her an outer’s heart and a quick death. Also used The Solitude Network website. Someone in size twelve shoes broke into her house and trod the ground near the place she was buried.

‘L4G#3 is Dmitri Backhouse. Died about 25th February. Possible assisted suicide arranged online via a suicide chat room. A thoroughly harvested body. Just about every usable bit taken.’ Lexi paused and added, ‘Note the online connection between all three.’ Then she sighed. ‘L4G#4’s a mystery. All we’ve got is an outer heart. It must have been available on 25th March or thereabouts because, in a way, it became the weapon that killed Olga Wylie.’ Gazing at Troy, she asked, ‘Am I boring you?’

‘No. I know it all, but a review’s really helpful. What about the clues that’re floating in mid-air?’

Lexi pointed to the right-hand side of the screen. ‘That’ll be the unknown cart tracks, the size twelve shoeprints and the list of people with a fishing licence for Langhorn Reservoir – no one on it related to the case yet.’

‘And the evidence we’d love to find – Dmitri’s and Olga’s computers.’

‘True. Now, suspects. Not a lot to say. Not a lot of them. Huw, the displaced wood-carver. Under arrest in Foreditch. Connected to Jerome Eleven through Foreditch Homeless Centre. Connected to all victims by living in the wood and his shoeprints near their graves. Not size twelve, though. And …’ She turned to face Troy. ‘Neither of us thinks he did it, do we?’

‘No. He doesn’t care enough about money to make more of it by harvesting bodies.’

Lexi nodded. ‘There’s just a niggling doubt he knows more than he’s saying, or he helped the bad guy in some way.’ Focusing on the screen again, she continued, ‘The Rural Retreat Transplant Clinic. Its location – and its business – makes the whole organization an obvious suspect. But no evidence whatsoever, despite camera surveillance.’ She shrugged. ‘And we’ve got vague online suspects. Samaritan 999 trawls The Solitude Network and Charon Angel’s active in the suicide chat room. Perhaps picking on the vulnerable. But Charon Angel posts stuff that could be perfectly innocent and lives in Switzerland. Which isn’t very convenient for committing murders in Shepford. So,’ she said, ‘what do you conclude, oh perceptive one?’

Troy smiled. ‘I conclude we need more information, oh methodical one. But …’

‘What?’

‘It’s still the internet trawlers I’m most interested in.’

‘You’re confusing gut instinct with logic and common sense. You can’t kill people here if you’re in Switzerland.’

‘True. But that begs a question.’

‘Does it?’

Troy nodded. ‘How do we know for sure Charon Angel’s in Switzerland?’

‘Terabyte found out online.’

‘Do you believe everything it says online? I don’t think so.’

‘The site administrator – Sergio Treize – said so as well.’

‘Do you always believe witnesses – and the data they’ve been given by a suspect?’

‘No, but it’s a good bet the size twelves don’t fit her,’ Lexi replied.

‘That begs another question.’

‘Oh?’

‘How do we know Charon Angel’s female?’

‘Because Terabyte found out her real name’s Sharon.’

‘More online information,’ Troy observed. ‘Not exactly proof.’

‘So, where do you go from here?’

Troy sighed. ‘I’m thinking about it.’

Distracted by her life-logger, Lexi read the latest messages with a broad grin on her face. ‘You know you wanted more information? Well …’

‘What have you got?’

‘The results on Olga Wylie,’ Lexi replied. ‘Something and nothing. First, the nothing. There’s no record of travel before she disappeared. Maybe she turned up and bought a train ticket with cash. Or the underground clinic is within walking distance.’

‘Or the clinic sent a car for her.’

‘Here’s the something,’ said Lexi. She transmitted a photograph to the screen so Troy could see the rich blue gemstone. ‘Found at Olga Wylie’s place. It’s a sapphire and the team found nothing that matched it among Olga’s jewellery, so it could have come from the intruder. It was hidden in the carpet pile near her desk.’

The round sapphire had been photographed alongside a ruler, showing that it was barely two millimetres in diameter.

‘It was clean,’ Lexi told him. ‘No DNA. The sort of stone that fits into a brooch or a ring. Part of a decoration.’

‘Well,’ Troy said. ‘You’re right. It’s something. Can your wizard forensics give it some welly?’

‘Pardon?’

‘Can you do any fancy analysis on it?’

‘Oh, yes. There’s always something. Microspectrometry in this case, I should think. Different gems absorb and reflect light at different wavelengths. That’s why the colour varies. It’s all down to charged iron particles in each bit of sapphire.’

‘So, you can tell if this stone matches another one in the same piece of jewellery?’

‘I can map the colours – in the visible and ultraviolet parts of the spectrum – and find out if they’re much the same. If they are, hey presto, they’ll have the same source.’

‘All we need is an item of jewellery with a hole instead of one of its sapphires, then.’

‘Yeah. And the person who’s wearing it.’ For the benefit of her life-logger, she said, ‘I’ll get the lab to do the spectrometry.’

‘Would it be expensive, this sapphire? It’s tiny but I don’t know anything about jewellery.’

‘Sapphire’s pricey, but one that size … Not cheap, but it wouldn’t ruin you.’

‘Any other finds?’ Troy asked.

‘No, but Kofi Seven wants to see us in Pathology.’

Kofi stood back from the female body on the plinth and gave the small electric saw to his assistant. ‘You do it. Standard access to her brain, please. I need to talk to these two. It won’t take long.’

Shivering at the whine of the rotating blade and then the dreadful grinding noise, Troy didn’t look back to watch the deputy’s work. He left the room with Lexi and the lanky pathologist.

In the corridor, Kofi ran a hand over his hairless head. ‘I got a specialist to run more extensive tests on the DNA from the outer’s heart. L4G#4. As you’ll
know, it’s usually about matching one DNA profile with another in a database. Does profile A match B? If so, A is B – or at least an identical twin. But with time and care, these days you can build up a picture from DNA. You can deduce gender, hair and eye colour and estimate height and weight. It’s never perfect but it’s better than nothing at all.’

‘What can you tell us about L4G#4?’ Lexi asked eagerly.

‘Gender, female. Almost certain. Brown eyes, ninety-four per cent sure. Blonde hair, but not so sure. Sixty-seven per cent likely, I’m told. Height somewhere between you and me. Average weight for an outer. Quite slender.’

‘Odds on the height and weight?’ Lexi prompted.

‘Slightly better than guesswork. Now,’ Kofi said, ‘if you don’t mind, I’ve got a brain to remove, slice and examine.’

‘Thanks,’ Troy said.

Lexi nodded her appreciation. Once Kofi had gone back into the cold laboratory, she said to her partner, ‘You did ask for more information. That god of yours is smiling on you today.’

Troy and Lexi had agreed to share the workload. Troy tried to find out if a woman matching the description of L4G#4 had died recently in dubious circumstances. Lexi trawled through databases of missing persons.

‘How’s it going?’ Troy asked her.

‘Not easy. She could have been abducted ages ago and kept on ice. But I’ve got one candidate. I’m sending a crime scene officer to get a sample of her DNA from where she used to live. I’ll see if it matches L4G#4’s heart.’ She swallowed a crispy-fried beetle and washed it down with white wine. ‘How about you?’

‘Waiting. I’ve put out a request to hospitals for a female outer – brown eyes, blonde hair, average build and a healthy heart – who suffered a suspicious death in the last week of March. And I put in a bit about anything weird happening after death. Like a scar appearing on her chest. I sent it to all mortuaries, undertakers and crematoria, just in case.’

Lexi grinned mischievously. ‘Not to temples, though.’

Troy knew his partner was baiting him. ‘Somehow, I don’t think an outer would opt for a temple burial. But God made all creatures great and small. That includes outers, even if you won’t admit it.’

‘Hey. Don’t inflict your god on us,’ Lexi said. ‘There’s no need to conjure up the supernatural to explain life. That’s what science does. It explains everything – including the evolution of both human races.’

‘Science is the brick wall you build against belief in God. Scientific explanations have got nothing to do with it.’ He took a drink of blueberry juice.

‘All right,’ Lexi said, as if she were accepting a challenge. ‘If your god made his presence felt right now in this room – officially and undeniably recorded on life-logger – you wouldn’t be happy, would you? Proof that God exists does away with your need for faith.’

‘I wouldn’t be as unhappy as you,’ Troy replied with a smirk.

Lexi laughed. ‘True. It’d be a bit embarrassing from my point of view. I’ll give you that. But, let’s face it, it’s not going to happen. We can both carry on being happy. I say there’s no such thing as an invisible overlord and you keep the faith.’ Plainly, she couldn’t resist a final dig because she added, ‘Even though it’s irrational.’

‘Maybe it is a bit crazy but, with all the bad stuff we see in this job, it’s helpful. It reassures me.’ Checking his life-logger, Troy frowned. ‘What do you make of this? It’s … um … a hall of rest, they call it. A place to keep coffins – of majors or outers – before burial or cremation. Usually just overnight.’

‘A posh mortuary, then?’

‘I guess. It’s never locked up in case families want to spend time with … Anyway, they’ve had a few hints that someone’s been up to no good now and again. Scratched coffins and the like. Not serious vandalism.’

‘Are these coffins closed? Are the lids fixed down?’

Troy read the details from his life-logger. ‘As a general rule, majors’ coffins are left open for families and friends who want to say their goodbyes. Outers’ are usually sealed, ready for cremation.’

‘So,’ Lexi said, suddenly interested, ‘if I was after body parts, it’d be simple to take stuff from majors, but it’s almost certainly going to be noticed. If I wanted parts from an outer, I’d just need a lever to force open a coffin, take what I want, reseal, and, hey presto, no one would know a thing about it.’

‘Exactly. You might leave a scratch or two on the coffin. Nothing more.’

Lexi threw the last fried beetle into her mouth, crunched it up, and finished the wine. ‘Let’s get going. Where is this place anyway?’

‘Hurlstone. We’re off to the seaside.’

They stood together on top of the cliff and, as the sun dipped towards the horizon, watched the sea. The hall of rest behind them, the scene was suitably peaceful. The breeze coming off the sea was light and cool. Miniature waves caressed the rocky beach below, hardly making a noise, barely jostling the stones and pebbles.

‘Crumbly cliffs,’ Lexi said. ‘Hurlstone’s well known for fossils. Somewhere down there – in a cave – archaeologists found evidence of our common ancestor,
Homo erectus
. Before we split into two
species six hundred thousand years ago. They even managed to get some DNA out of the bones.’

‘Makes me wonder,’ Troy replied. ‘If we find out who owned the outer heart – and she’s been cremated – how do we prove it? Where do we get her DNA from?’

‘That’s my job,’ Lexi said. ‘I’ll think of something. If archaeologists can get it out of a dried-up bone that’s thousands of years old, I’ll get some for L4G#4.’ She turned her back on the cliff top and said, ‘Let’s go and see.’

The hall of rest was serene, not macabre and analytical like the pathology laboratory. Speaking in a hush, the supervisor had a similar air of calm about him. ‘I know everyone respects what we do here,’ he said. ‘I’d never expect any … trouble. It’s unthinkable really. I can’t imagine why anyone would …’ He ran out of words.

‘Sadly, we can,’ said Troy. ‘Someone might want to break in because there’s an illegal trade in body parts.’

Spike Pennyworth stared at him. ‘Do you mean …?’

Troy nodded. ‘A good heart’s valuable, especially to a transplant patient who doesn’t want to wait in the normal hospital queue.’

‘But that’s …’ Spike seemed to have difficulty in
finishing many of his sentences. Even so, his quiet outrage was plain.

‘We’re trying to find out if one of your disturbed coffins belonged to a female outer.’ Troy was about to give his vague description of L4G#4 when Lexi stepped in.

‘She’d be a bit like me. Taller perhaps, but the same brown eyes and blonde hair – probably.’

‘Same age?’

‘We don’t know about age,’ Troy told him. ‘But her heart would have been in good condition when she died.’

‘When was this?’ he asked.

‘Tuesday 25th March, or maybe the day before,’ Lexi said. ‘Once someone’s dead, there’s only a few hours to use the heart. It’d have to be removed, put in preserving fluid and chilled quite quickly.’ Clearly, she had done some extra research.

‘Spare me the details,’ Spike said with a grimace. ‘Let me check my diary.’

His records were entirely on paper. He flicked backwards through the large pages until he came to a halt on one particular entry. It described a client who had arrived on the evening of 24th March and rested overnight before cremation on the 25th. He tapped the page and the photographs. ‘Tiffany Clara
One, according to some ID in her pocket. She was a bit of a mystery but she matches your description. She wasn’t visited by anyone. She was cremated – with her possessions – the next day.’

Judging by the photograph of her deathly pale face, Tiffany One was in her twenties. While Lexi scanned the page into her life-logger, Troy asked, ‘Cause of death?’

The supervisor sighed. ‘A fall. Down the cliff.’

‘She fell over the cliff? An accident?’

‘It could have been an accident, but …’

‘What?’

‘It wasn’t. There’s a fence up to stop … You haven’t heard Hurlstone’s claim to fame, have you?’

Troy frowned. ‘Fossils?’

‘I wish that was all it was,’ Spike replied. ‘No. A few people who decide to end it all come here and …’

‘They jump off the cliff?’

He nodded, apparently unable to confirm it in words.

‘Does it happen a lot?’

‘Mercifully, no.’

‘How often?’

‘There’s usually one or two each year. Still enough to get us a reputation.’

‘Where exactly does this happen?’ Lexi asked.

‘It’s about a kilometre – to the south.’ Spike waved in the general direction. ‘There’s a big overhang. Quite dangerous. They’ve put up a fence to try to stop people, make them think again, but …’

Lexi examined the photograph of Tiffany One’s meagre possessions and then said, ‘Let’s go and take a look, before we lose daylight altogether.’

‘Okay,’ Troy agreed. ‘But we’ll be back,’ he said to Spike. ‘If Hurlstone’s got a reputation, this place would appeal to someone after body parts for the black market. I want Lexi to put a camera in here.’

‘I don’t like the idea of spying on grieving …’

‘We won’t. We’ll monitor the cameras, spying on intruders, not people who’ve lost a friend or family member.’

‘Do I have a choice?’

‘Not really,’ Troy answered. ‘But you should be pleased. You’ll want to get this sorted out as much as we do. A tiny camera no one will notice is the quickest way. Then you’ll be back to normal.’

‘The sun’s going down,’ Lexi reminded her partner.

‘Back soon,’ he said to the troubled supervisor.