Bright Spark (10 page)

The cat died in the same
continuous, spastic movement. The nearly new Renault Scenic carrying a mother
and her three young children swerved to avoid it, breaking its back with one of
its wheels rather than hitting it squarely with the radiator. Harkness knew
precisely what kind of day he was having as the Renault smashed into the boot
of the Mondeo he’d borrowed with a crunch that deadened all other sound,
leaving both cars skewed across the narrow residential street. A slick of
glossy fluid formed beneath the Renault’s engine and at the mouth of the cat,
which thrashed madly on either side of a hot tyre-mark, body trying and failing
to obey a dying impulse to flee.  

Harkness backed into the
shadows to gnaw his knuckles and form a new plan as the chorus of childish
sobbing began. Not for the first time, he pondered the gulf that lay between
causing a thing and taking responsibility for it. Then a more practical thought
intervened: Where could he find a shovel?

CHAPTER FIVE

At the County Hospital
Mortuary, Harkness printed and signed his name for the fourth time that
morning, glowered at by Slowey.

The first time had been at the
insistence of the driver of the crumpled Renault Scenic. She’d been equally
unimpressed with having to accept a glimpse of his warrant card in lieu of
insurance details, and the fact that the scrap-yard Mondeo was still driveable.
He’d suppressed his amusement at life’s small ironies when a wailing child
confirmed that the late Mr Fuzzy was in fact the family cat. His offer of a
quiet coup de grace with a shovel had not been well received.

He was quite sure he’d catch
some static later for not reporting a ‘police vehicle accident’ – which
technically speaking this had been. Yet all departments would be minimally
staffed today to cut down on bank holiday overtime payments, and he was in no
mood to wait for one of the lucky few uniform duty sergeants to turn a simple
prang into a neighbourhood spectacle.

The second signature had
completed the statement covering his enquiries so far. Biddle had insisted on
it before he flew the coop again. “Without continuity of evidence,” he’d
loftily and pointedly opined, “we may as well walk into court with our trousers
around our ankles singing ‘I Should Be So Lucky’.”

“An enchanting image. Found the
parents yet?” Harkness had asked.

“To ID the bodies or surrender
the suspect?”

“Both. Either.”

“Prison Service put Dale’s
parents in Nottingham. Local nick is sending a van full of sensitive types to
the house any hour now to break the news and turn the place over.”

“And the other set?”

“I’m working on it. Neighbours
don’t seem to know who or where her parents are.”

The DI had been preoccupied
with setting up and staffing a new enquiry room and, visibly relieved to see
him clean-shaven and clear-headed, was receptive to the suggestion that he
handle the post mortem while Biddle filled in as office manager.

Printing out and signing a
statement he’d all but completed hours earlier hadn’t kept him glued to a seat
for as long as Biddle had envisaged.  As soon as Biddle sloped off for another
cigarette break, he’d left another spare jacket on the back of his chair and
taken his leave.  Happily, Harkness had dumped the Mondeo on double yellows out
of sight of the nick – confident that traffic wardens weren’t worth double-time
– the better to make a quick escape.

The third signature had saved a
grateful receptionist at A&E the trouble of arranging a lift home for
Slowey. Slowey, his wounds cleansed of crusted blood but his face still
inflamed and mottled, had almost looked pleased to see Harkness until he
noticed the change of clothes draped over one arm.

“I’ll give you a lift home,
Ken,” he’d said, steering the Mondeo onto Greetwell Road, past the red-brick
Victorian edifice of HMP Lincoln. “Eventually. I need your considerable
investigative acumen right now. If you’re too poorly, just say the word.”

“I’m fine, by the way. Nothing
broken, just cuts and swelling.” Slowey had replied. “Oh, and a concussion. I
might puke at any time and ruin this lovely upholstery.”

“That’s good to know. I didn’t
like to pry.”

Slowey had shrugged and
dry-swallowed a handful of pills as Harkness turned off Greetwell Road again to
park in a disabled bay outside the Mortuary. That department’s guests were
undoubtedly incapacitated, but they surely had little need for a parking space.

The Mortuary squatted in the
shadow of the Maternity Wing and appeared to sport a large chimney which
frequently belched black smoke. The fact that the chimney in fact belonged to
the site boiler house didn’t detract from the NHS’s apparent desire to
demonstrate a cradle to grave service.

“I’ve spent some hours at both
of these places,” Slowey had said, levering himself from the car in an
intricate sequence of cracks and gasps. “Hatching and dispatching. Plenty of
blood and guts either way, but I think I prefer the morgue. Less screaming and
the punters are a bit more biddable.”

“Whatever would Mrs Slowey
think?”

“I expect she’d agree. So, to
business. I guess I’ve suspended my sick leave to come and bag bits and bobs
and look after the evidence trail while you mull and ponder and gawp and so
forth. Am I right?”

“Attaboy. I’ll owe you one,
too. A big one, mind.”

“I am and will remain agape
with expectation.”

“Nice to see you again, Ken.
How are the wife and the kids?”

“I’m Rob, Rob Harkness,” he
said, clasping the pathologist’s hand without thinking too hard about where
that hand spent much of its time. “My marital prospects are receding by the
hour and if I’ve got any kids, I’d better make sure all my DNA samples and
payslips are accounted for.”

“Still quite the gadabout, eh,
Ken? Well, we’re keeping each other out of mischief today. And a better use for
a Bank Holiday than household toil. Ought to warn you though – when I tackle
those flat-pack jobbies, I always lose a few bits and pieces.”

Harkness allowed himself to
enjoy the studied vagueness of the Home Office Pathologist, Keith Ogilvy. The
paisley cravat, rumpled shirt, tweed suit and venerable brogues might have been
contrived by a gentleman’s outfitter to make the wearer appear expensively
dishevelled, able to afford the best without having to care about appearances.
The ensemble wouldn’t be complete without Ogilvy’s careful habit of forgetting
or fudging the names of those around him.

“As it happens, this actually
is Ken; Ken Slowey.”

Ogilvy inclined his head to
study Slowey through his bifocals. For a moment, the angular tension of his
long limbs and the intent gleam of his eyes reminded Harkness of the preying
mantis the man became in the witness box, poised, patient and ready to rip
apart junior barristers at the first disparaging insinuation.

“Ah, another Ken. Are you sure
he’s in the right place? He looks frightful. I usually insist on death before I
start cutting.”

Ogilvy moved into a side-room
and swapped his tweeds for scrubs, gloves, mask and a bandana emblazoned with a
grinning skull and crossbones as Harkness recounted the story so far. Ogilvy
periodically paused to mutter into a dictaphone. The mortuary assistant drifted
silently into the office and handed masks, overshoes, hairnets and threadbare
gowns, stiff and sharp with detergent, to Harkness and Slowey. Already clad in
scrubs and a glistening apron, he returned to his steaming mug, adding caffeine
to the tang of formaldehyde, ammonia and unpacked viscera. 

“So,” began Ogilvy, eyes still
sharp behind spectacles and thick protective safety glasses, “apparent death by
fire but we should rule nothing out. We may yet again discover a life history
of private and unutterable vileness. I may even have to forego my planned
sojourn to the links.”

Suzanne Murphy stared curiously
at the dazzling array of lights suspended from the walls and ceiling of the
chamber of pastel-green concrete and gleaming steel. The glint in her dead
eyes, the blush in her cold cheeks and the jut of her jaw seemed to anticipate
the final, insensate indignity to come. Harkness caught himself. It was too
easy to graft rage, regret, relief or horror onto the faces of the dead to give
the living the comfort of meaning.

Besides, this process was
necessary, a mutilation in a higher cause. The unwilling atheist in him knew
and mourned the fact that no part of this woman’s true self remained to know or
care about how and in what form her remains were disposed of. Everything she
had, or would ever have, had been taken, burned to ashes and cast into
nothingness. Her facial expression owed much to the block raising her head from
the examination table, with its moulded furrows and drainage holes.

“Look lively, Ken,” said
Ogilvy. “Not going to faint on me like a neophyte beat plod, are you?”

“Long night with too many
medicinal toxins and not enough sleep. I promise I won’t redecorate the place.”

“What you need is a nice hearty
breakfast,” chuckled Ogilvy. “Runny eggs, fatty bacon, sticky black pudding,
capers, gallons of brown sauce, all bobbing merrily around in liquefied animal
fat.”

“Your bedside manner is
unique,” said Harkness, cold sweat prickling his forehead.

“Why do you think I do this? My
slab-side manner attracts few complaints. The trolley if you will, Graham.”

The assistant wheeled in a
glistening assortment of blades and saws - some powered, some not – as well as
scissors, needles and clamps. Not for the first time, Harkness decided he would
die at an advanced age, of natural causes and in the presence of his own GP to
avoid the messy infractions of a post mortem.

This one hadn’t even begun and
he was already jittery. Blood and guts hadn’t troubled him in the past. An old
grief swelled in his chest with the realisation that the only post mortem that
truly troubled him was one he didn’t attend, couldn’t have attended, but should
have been made to endure.

Diligently laying out a logging
sheet, evidence bags and labels on a side table, Slowey turned to stare.

“Stop swaying,” he said.
“You’ll make a proper mess if you fall over.”

Harkness gestured vaguely,
scurried into the gents and braced himself face-down in a stall. Nothing came
but the smoker’s cough he thought he’d parted with. A minute of watching a
cigarette butt bobbing against the stained porcelain in time with his
lengthening breaths persuaded him that the clutching, burning presence in his
guts couldn’t be vomited away.

Having found the mortuary
assistant’s galley kitchen, he returned briskly to the chamber moments later
clutching sugary coffees for Slowey and himself. The assistant’s eyebrows
flexed in disapproval. Slowey nodded his appreciation as he bagged the latest
in a sequence of preliminary samples; hair and nail cuttings, nail scrapings
and DNA swabs.

“You haven’t missed much,” said
Ogilvy. “No worrying external injuries beyond the bruises you’ve already seen,
which could suggest domestic violence. I’ll mull that one over ‘til I’ve had a
good look inside. Some people genuinely do bruise easily. She doesn’t look it,
but she’s a bit underweight for her height and build. Want to take the
pictures? You can exhibit the files yourself for a change.”

“You sure you can manage this
menial task, oh captain my captain?” said Slowey, proffering the office digital
camera.

“I’ll do it this once, while
you’re under the weather,” he replied, inspecting the device. “Cheap bastards.
Only room on here for 60 shots. I didn’t know memory cards came that small.”

The body that had once framed a
thinking, feeling being lay inert and exposed beneath harsh lights and
professional eyes. A ruby birthmark deepening the clavicle notch, a thickening
of skin where a pierced navel had healed, the furrowed track of a caesarean
scar – intimate traces now matters of merely evidential interest.

Harkness set about
photographing the intact cadaver from every angle, taking close-ups of peeling
lips stained lilac, smuts staining the nose and split, bloody fingernails. He
motioned to the assistant to turn the body and captured the reddish pink tinge
of pooled blood and a series of bruises as angry as gathering thunderclouds on
the buttocks and outer thighs, from below the waistline to above a modest
hemline. Other petal-shaped bruises, perhaps matching the digits of a supposedly
loving hand, marked the back of the biceps.

“There’s a respectable degree
of haematoma there,” volunteered Ogilvy, “that has nothing to do with the
post-mortem hypostasis. I’d say this was repeated blunt trauma, preceding last
night’s events by a good few days. Plenty of fluid in those bruises. Must have
been a tad tender to sit on.”

“Reminds me of my tae-kwon-do
days,” mumbled the assistant, squinting through his safety glasses. “Used to
practice blocking without protection. To toughen up. My shins and forearms
looked like that for months.”

“Let’s keep this clinical
please, gents,” urged Ogilvy.

“Whoever knocked her about did
just that,” added Harkness. “None of this would be visible in a skirt and
blouse.” 

Then the dismantling began in
earnest. As Ogilvy muttered into his dictaphone, the assistant pierced the
woman’s shoulder with a scalpel, an impartial act of bloodless violence. He
carved the familiar ‘y’ shape, two bone-deep incisions from either shoulder to
the sternum, then one from the sternum to the pubis. Flaps of flesh, with their
strata of scarlet muscle and yellow fat, opened to reveal ribs and organs.

The assistant reached for
surgical shears bearing more than a passing resemblance to bolt croppers. He
paused at a signal from Ogilvy, who drew Harkness’s attention to the rib-cage.

“Interesting this, not a happy
tale at all.” Ogilvy’s index finger traced the crooked lines of malformed ribs.
“Some breaks and cracks here that have healed somewhat out of kilter. Either
this lady was a pugilist, or she fell down the proverbial stairs a few times.”

 More photographs were taken,
more threads plucked from the tapestry. The sternum was cracked and split in
half with shears to expose heart and lungs. One by one, every organ save the
lungs was removed, weighed and set aside, the time and salient details noted
faithfully by Slowey while Ogilvy murmured a commentary for his dictaphone. The
throat was opened next, the flesh of the neck and face peeled up and over the
head, the last pretence of identity gone, Suzanne Murphy now simply the sum of
her evidential parts.

“One doesn’t like to jump to
conclusions,” said Ogilvy, beckoning Harkness closer and pointing out the open
trachea, raw blistered and flecked with black. “But the cause of death is
looking pretty clear. As you saw for yourself, cyanosis was suggestive of
hypoxia. There were minor burns to the nose and mouth. Here we’re seeing
constriction and burns to the mucosal surfaces of the upper airway, with sooty
deposits to boot. I’ll open up the lungs later but there’s a fair chance I’ll
find all the signs of hypoxia with chemical injury.”