Lying Ways, page 8
‘The entomology department is working on the specimens from the warehouse; we should get a definitive answer soon. In my experience, given the conditions, and that he hadn’t been in water, or moved, I’d say twelve to twenty-four hours. Rigor mortis was established in the same position as he was found in and it’s now subsided – I’ve had a look and the muscles have begun to relax.’
‘So we’re talking yesterday up to the early hours of this morning. It’s a small window and is supported by Tania Carter’s statement,’ Kelly said.
‘Who is she?’ Ted asked. Kelly knew that he was keen to follow investigations closely when the victims ended up on his slab. He had a sharp mind and a natural investigative brain, plus the added benefit of understanding what the human body went through during the transition from life to death. He also had an impressive grasp of psychology, having nearly gone into psychiatry mid-career. She happily shared details with him and welcomed his theories. He was usually right.
‘A witness on the estate next to where the body was found. She said she saw two men clearly persuading a third to go into the warehouse on Sunday night. The view from her bedroom window is excellent, with a street lamp close by. She identified our John Doe as well.’
‘Good stuff,’ Ted said. Then he turned to Emma. ‘So, you want to see an autopsy? Is there something wrong with you?’ He asked her. He joked easily and caused no offence. It always amazed Kelly that a man who was so gentle and kind had his hands on bits of dead tissue all day. But then she hoped people didn’t meet her and think murder detective straight away.
‘I do, yes. I suppose it’s the part that puts everything together for me. I work with the photos all the time, and we watched recorded versions in college, but I thought I’d ask. The actual body of the victim is important, and I think it’ll make me more connected to the case,’ Emma said.
‘I think you’re a very smart young detective. That’s exactly what it does. It also makes you want to catch the bastards that did it,’ he said. ‘Right, let’s get started.’
Ted called his mortuary technicians via an intercom and they came into the room and greeted the detectives. Kelly knew them both and introduced Emma, and they got to work. Ted ran the show and it was his orders and instructions that the technicians followed. Kelly and Emma were mere observers, and Kelly showed Emma to a metal stool out of the way, where they perched and watched. Emma wore one of Kelly’s sweaters and she noticed her hugging it a little as the process began. Ted spoke calmly into his mic and placed his goggles over his face. The squelch of his rubber boots, the clicking of the camera as the technician checked his equipment, and the suction of the sluice were the only noises, until the metal gurney was wheeled in, on top of which sat a large black mortuary bag.
‘He’s still attached to the chair,’ Kelly whispered to Emma, who looked puzzled by the size and shape of the body bag. The technicians transferred the bag to the large metal mortuary slab, which was connected to a metal sink and the sluice. There were holes all across the slab where fluids could drain into the sluice, and Kelly peered at the painting again, pondering what hellish nightmare surgery in the eighteenth century must have been.
The sound of the zip caught their attention. Kelly reckoned Emma was holding her breath. Once the body, and the chair, was fully exposed, it was photographed while still inside the bag and examined by Ted. Clear plastic bags covered the victim’s head and hands. Vital evidence from the crime scene could lurk inside the bag and they wanted to be sure they had samples of everything. Emma glanced sideways at Kelly, who asked if she was holding up. Despite being experienced police officers, the sight of brutality was never easy to stomach. After all, that’s what made them human: the need to empathise with somebody who’d been through unspeakable trauma. If they couldn’t, they’d be as bad as the killer. Emma whispered that she was okay.
‘It’s different to the pictures,’ she said. Kelly thought about it and realised that Emma was right. It was a privilege to witness a person in death, as it was their last chance at communication with the living. They watched Ted walk around the examination table. He went close in and then stood back and instructed photographs to be taken. From their vantage point, Kelly and Emma saw the man’s whole body now as well as the chair he was strapped to. They watched Ted take a cigarette butt out of the bag with tweezers, and place it into a plastic bag. Ted examined the binding holding the man to the chair carefully, and Kelly watched and waited. It was black and looked as though it was made from some kind of hard-wearing nylon.
‘It’s robust. The shape is inconsistent with a standard car seatbelt. It’s too thick. It’s not a type of bungee, or like any industrial winch strap, and it doesn’t look like a climber’s winch. This is designed to be attached to something, like a hoist,’ he said.
Kelly leant over to Emma and explained Ted’s theory, filling in what Ted had shared with her back in the warehouse.
‘So it came from a hospital?’ Emma asked.
‘Or a care home. Hoists are used to bathe the elderly,’ Kelly said.
Ted cut away the bindings and handed them to an assistant, and then he lifted off the chair, which still had dusting residue all over it where forensic officers had hoped to lift prints. Next he carefully removed the clear plastic coverings. The man’s hands were black, from taking prints, and his skin was flaccid. Kelly was used to the familiar thud and squelch of dead limbs being picked up and dropped back down, even when done gently. She sensed Emma relax and was pleased she’d come.
It was time to get the man out of the bag, and the technicians performed a well-practised manoeuvre to do so. The guy looked hefty but they expertly got him lying on his back. That was when they noticed the tattoo. It was a large spider’s web around his left elbow.
‘Interesting,’ Kelly said. Ted looked up at her and stopped talking.
‘Tattoos of spider’s webs are associated with incarceration. I wonder if he’s an ex-convict. That would sure make our lives easier,’ she said.
‘I’ll request an emergency DNA profile for you,’ Ted said, and carried on working.
‘I’ll chase his prints too,’ Kelly said.
‘Have his eyes been taken?’ Emma asked Kelly.
‘Yeah, I was going to share the finer details with the team later on. It could be significant, or it could just be another form of torture. Of course, it can be associated with knowing your killer, but also with not wanting to be watched while you’re hurting somebody.’
‘Or trophies,’ Emma added.
‘Yup.’
‘God, he suffered, didn’t he?’ Emma said.
‘Yeah, he did. Whoever did this enjoyed it and has a lot invested in the process,’ Kelly said.
‘We’ve got old wounds here that have dried up, as well as fresh. I’d say he was held for a period of time,’ Ted said. ‘Can I see the exhibit of the small metal hook please?’ Ted requested. A technician brought a photograph up on the computer screen of the small object found by forensics and bagged and tagged to be sent to the lab. Ted did some measurements and searched a couple of puncture wounds on the victim’s torso.
‘I reckon you’ve got something like wounds from a cat o’ nine tails here, Kelly,’ Ted said. ‘Little hooks have been used to tear the flesh and rip bits out. It also indicates that some clearing up was done at the scene, because we didn’t find bits of matter, did we?’
‘No. Tania Carter said she saw him enter the warehouse on Sunday, so whoever killed him could have had him for two days,’ Kelly said. The thought made her shudder. ‘It’s an unusual choice of torture device. I wonder if it has a religious connotation,’ she said.
‘Because Jesus was whipped with one?’ Emma asked. Kelly nodded.
‘There could be something significant about the Catholic practice of self-flagellation,’ she added.
‘Here,’ Ted said. The technician had got up a photograph of a cat o’ nine tails from the internet. It looked like a short whip with strands of leather or plastic coming from it, on the ends of which were attached small metal balls with hooks to flail human skin. It was a barbaric form of brutality and it indicated to Kelly that their torturer was fascinated by pain. They heard Ted log his notation of the cigarette butt that they’d spotted at the crime scene, underneath the body. The smoker’s DNA might still be on it. However, again caution was required, because it could have been lying on the warehouse floor for months.
One of the technicians wheeled a metal table over to Ted. On it were the implements of his work: saws, scalpels, scissors, probes, small hammers, dissection pans, a biopsy punch and a rubber block. Kelly knew that evisceration would begin soon. Ted collected samples of the victim’s hair and cut his finger and toenails, putting all of the samples into small containers and placing them carefully on another metal table to his side. As he did so, one of the technicians peeled labels off and attached them, one by one, to each receptacle.
‘Every toe is broken,’ Ted said. He used sticky tape to remove suspected foreign particles from the victim’s skin and noted other trauma. The man had pincer marks on his chest, burns from what looked like a handheld lamp that one might use to look inside a car engine, as well as a broken nose. Ted bent over to look behind the man’s genitals. Kelly stiffened. She didn’t know why, she’d seen it a thousand times before. Rape was something that coroners always looked for with any murder victim. Sexual violence was often a part of an attack, and Ted had already mentioned the possibility of a sex game. Ted stood up and looked at Kelly, shaking his head.
Thank God, thought Kelly. The man had endured enough. The room suddenly felt airless and silent as the grave. However, the lack of evidence of actual assault didn’t mean that there was no sexual motive. The awful injuries to his genitals were enough to indicate a sexual interest. Sometimes deranged killers can find fantastical satisfaction in the acts of dominance over another without having sex with them. Nothing could be ruled out at this stage.
Next it was time to weigh and measure him, and then clean his skin ready for the Y incision. Ted counted the wounds: there were forty-seven.
‘I haven’t seen this kind of torture since my days in Northern Ireland. It’s paramilitary in its viciousness and style,’ Ted said. He looked over at Kelly. ‘Another possible lead for you when we get his identity?’
‘You think it was an interrogation?’ Kelly asked. Kelly knew that Ted had worked in Northern Ireland, in Belfast, in the 1970s, before moving to Carlisle after becoming increasingly burnt out by the autopsies he witnessed during his training. It was the closest he’d been to an actual war zone.
‘Or whoever did it is ex-army, or worked as some kind of mercenary. Those lads who saw stuff like this were pretty messed up,’ Ted added.
The odds were stacking up for this crime being personal.
‘Is his tongue intact?’ Kelly asked. ‘Sorry, Ted, I shouldn’t interrupt you, I know you’ll get to it,’ she added.
‘Just going in now,’ Ted said, probing the man’s mouth and lifting his tongue up to look under it, down his throat. ‘It’s here, and intact. He’s got good teeth. There are contusions around his mouth – as I expected, he was gagged at some point. Nothing around his throat, so he wasn’t strangled. Ah, here we go,’ Ted said, lifting up the head.
‘Here,’ he added. Kelly and Emma went over to take a look. ‘Well, I didn’t expect that,’ Ted said. They looked to where he pointed and realised that as Ted held the man’s head up, there was a single trauma wound to the base of his skull. The hole was about an inch across and covered by his hair. The body had been so bloody that they’d missed it in the warehouse.
‘That’s a puncture wound, not blunt force. Something has been forced in there, maybe with a hammer, and then removed. It’d be quick, I’ll grant you that. Maybe they got what they needed, or maybe the poor man was unconscious and of no more use. In the absence of a gun, it’s a completely efficient way to bump someone off,’ Ted said. Photographs were taken.
‘I wager this is our cause of death. You can’t torture with this wound, the victim wouldn’t survive. It’s a mortal wound.’
He took the rubber block and placed it under the cadaver’s back, causing the chest to protrude upwards and its arms to splay out, improving access to the chest. He took his scalpel and made an incision from the pubis up to the sternum, then up to each shoulder, creating a Y shape. Then he peeled back the skin, the soft tissue and the muscles, a bit like filleting a fish, exposing the ribcage and neck muscles. He removed the larynx, oesophagus, main arteries and ligaments and separated the spinal cord, rectum and bladder from the main organs. The flesh and sinew sat in a pile in a metal dissection tray.
‘He looks to be a healthy chap to me. His liver is of normal size, as is his heart muscle. Kidneys look good, spleen good colour, pancreas nice and soft… Let’s see what’s lurking inside, shall we? Both lungs have collapsed, and that is likely down to the beatings he received.’ There was a bit of tugging and jerking, but Ted managed to get the whole organ sac out in one go. Kelly peeked at Emma, who returned her look. Her eyes were wide and she mouthed, ‘This is amazing.’ It was obvious to Kelly that the woman had a strong stomach. There were plenty of times that Kelly wanted to vomit while watching the operation being performed. She started to notice the smell and reached into her bag for more Vicks and offered it to Emma, who said she was all right without it.
The long and heavy collection of organs was placed on the waiting dissection tray and Ted had a look inside the cavity. ‘Apart from heavy bruising, I can see no other internal wounding. I’m afraid to say that I think they got what they wanted and executed him, plain and simple. But it took a lot of time and pain to get there. It’s a horrible crime,’ Ted said. He turned back to the organs and began separating them and weighing them. The rest of his afternoon would be taken up by slicing thin slivers off and examining them under a microscope before sending samples to the pathology lab.
‘I’m pretty much done, ladies, if you need to head off. There are no surprises really, from what we discussed at the warehouse, Kelly. You’re looking for a very cruel and emotionless group of people, I’d say.’
‘He must have wronged them in some way,’ Kelly said.
Kelly gathered her things and Emma did the same. ‘Call me later when you’re done,’ Kelly said to Ted. They left the room and went back through cold storage into the small changing room, where they removed their protective equipment.
‘That was incredible,’ Emma said.
‘Do you feel a bit closer to our victim?’ Kelly asked.
‘Yes,’ Emma said. ‘It’s weird. I saw every one of those injuries being inflicted, and I’m imagining what type of person could possibly go through with it all.’
‘A coward,’ Kelly said. ‘It takes no balls to torture someone who is tied up and can’t fight back. My guess is whoever did this is damaged themselves and feels no empathy for others at all. They’ve had to survive using violence and it’s all they know. Whoever it is, they’re a mean motherfucker.’
Chapter 13
‘Two developments, guv,’ said Kate Umshaw as Kelly returned to Eden House.
Emma had asked questions about what she’d seen all the way back to the office, and Kelly longed for some peace and quiet. She’d always worked well in a group, but she also valued quiet time, when she could just think and process.
‘I’m listening,’ she said to Kate as her second in command followed her into her office.
‘First, a man has been reported missing today from Workington. Released from HMP Highton on Friday, and matches the description of our John Doe. His name is Jack Bell.’ Kate paused and allowed Kelly to absorb what she’d just said. She was in the middle of taking off her jacket and she stopped.
‘Second?’ she asked, finishing what she was doing and fully alert.
‘The guy who went missing on Seascale beach – the one from Barrow, Dean Kirby – has turned up. Dead.’
Kelly had her hands on her hips and she now folded her arms across her chest and perched on the edge of her desk. Kate waited.
‘And that has what to do with us?’ Kelly asked. ‘Isn’t Barrow dealing with it?’
‘That’s the thing. They called us because it’s a similar MO to our John Doe. He was tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse. Barrow also told me that Dean Kirby had done time in Highton prison.’
‘You have my full attention now,’ Kelly said. Her mind whirred. If somebody was going round killing off ex-cons, why was it so public and brutal?
‘I thought I would,’ Kate said.
Kelly looked at her watch; it was gone five p.m. The chances of the lab in Carlisle having a DNA profile from the corpse yet was slim. However, they had the missing person report.
‘Let’s pay a visit to the person who reported the convict missing. Who is it? Are they reliable?’
‘Jeanie Clark. She was his prison officer at Highton. They were meeting up to check in, but he never showed,’ Kate said.
‘Meeting up to check in? Isn’t that the job of his parole officer?’
Kate shrugged.
Kelly pondered the scenario. The female officer obviously had good cause to meet an ex-con after his release from prison, but Kelly wanted to know what that reason was.
‘Give me five minutes to check in at home, and are you all right to come with me?’ Kelly knew that Kate’s girls were pretty self-sufficient now, but she still checked. It was getting late, and if the officer was on shift and they had to drive over to HMP Highton, they wouldn’t be back until later tonight.
‘All three have got tutors or clubs on a Wednesday, and it’s orange night,’ Kate said.
‘Orange night?’ Kelly asked.
‘The night they can have anything coated in an orange crumb that goes in the oven with chips,’ Kate winked and walked out.
Kelly took a deep breath and called Johnny, who was exhilarated from his walk with Lizzie and his friend.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Good to hear your voice. Lizzie was amazing – I think she appreciated the scenery despite being asleep for most of the time.’ Kelly laughed. She felt a twinge of guilt but quickly pushed it away.
