The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 7 Part 48

"Now where was I?" The body has been slit open to reveal the bright yellow subcutaneous fat, the salmon-coloured muscle. "Now I need my bone cutters . . ." I turn to the trolley. My hand falls on an instrument. I pick it up. A pair of forceps. d.a.m.n.

"Some pathologists prefer scissors to cut the ribs," I tell them, to cover my undignified scramble amongst the steel blades. "But I favour a good pair of bone cutters." I hold them aloft in triumph.

There is a satisfying crack as the first rib snaps. Without glancing up from my work I say, "I've known students to faint at this point. I think it's the noise." I let a few heavy seconds pa.s.s. But there is no telltale thud as a body hits the floor. "Splendid," I say, though in truth, I'm rather disappointed.

"Now I can remove the chest plate and expose the internal organs . . . And there they are. Packed in like a box of chocolates, the a.s.sorted kind, all shapes and sizes. The arrangement never fails to amaze me, such an excellent use of s.p.a.ce." I wipe my forehead again. "Talking of chocolate, a word to the wise. I prefer dark chocolate. If funds allow, go for the best, with a minimum of seventy per cent cocoa b.u.t.ter. But no end of term presents of that hideous milky stuff, or, G.o.d help us, white chocolate."

I'm breathing faster than normal. It's surprisingly hard work, dealing with a dead body. "My wife was very fond of white chocolate." There's a buzzing in my brain as if that d.a.m.ned fly has got inside. I shake my head violently to dislodge the infernal noise. "So plain chocolate every time. Understood?"

Fortunately I've given up expecting a response.

"Let's get on. What am I holding now?"

"Lungs?" The serious-looking female, the one with the unflattering gla.s.ses.

"Good heavens, someone spoke. And a correct answer to boot. The lungs indeed. Think of them as a couple of flabby balloons inflated by the heart. Tireless workers, the lungs. The heart gets all the headlines, but where would it be without these backroom boys?"

Just as I'm chalking the weight of the lungs on the board I hear the thud I've been waiting for. Who is it? I turn round. The girl in the skimpy skirt? No. She's shivering with cold, but upright. Blondie? No, he's still standing too. The girl with the gla.s.ses? That attention-seeking baldie? No, both present and correct.

Ah, now I see. It's Spotty. His colleagues cl.u.s.ter round him, unb.u.t.toning his shirt, placing a rolled-up white coat under his head.

"Leave him alone! Let him lie there until he wakes up. He won't come to any harm, not unless someone steps on him."

They stare at me with what seems like one unified malevolent eye.

Feeling almost jolly I continue the post-mortem. I even start to hum. I'm on a roll now.

"The lungs are a little distended, but there's no sign of disease. She obviously wasn't a smoker."

"And the pinhead haemorrhages?" Woolly Hat doesn't even bother to raise his hand this time.

"Did I ask for a comment? Moving on to the heart." Although I'm sweating profusely I begin to shiver with cold. My fingers feel stiff and clumsy as they wield the knife to slice through the connecting blood vessels. But finally I lift out the heart and hold it in the palm of one hand.

"Notice that the Valentine cards get it all wrong. It's basically nothing more than a bicycle pump. It's the colour of uncooked liver and shaped like a builder's backside. And as you can see, it's a heavy, floppy blood-congested lump of flesh that might well ache angina is the usual culprit but can never be described as broken."

Angina . . . perhaps that's what's wrong with me. That heaviness in my chest like someone standing on it, the tiredness, the shortness of breath, the restless nights.

"Nothing sentimental about it. Can't bear sentimentality. My wife took me to the ballet on my birthday a fortnight ago. Never again. Sickly saccharine stuff. She gave me a rather splendid present though a large bottle of what they used to call Kensington Gore, the artificial blood they use in the theatre, now known rather more prosaically as Pro Blood. A leaving present, she said. After all those years together . . . Out, out, brief candle . . ."

Someone coughs.

Where am I? Of course the mortuary, the cadaver on the dissecting table, the woman with dyed red hair. Straight hair. Julia's had a natural and untameable kink, sprouting tendrils of copper wire when the light was behind her.

"Time's getting on. Who can tell me what this is? You the boy with the blonde spikes."

"The oesophagus?" he asks sullenly.

I sigh deeply. "Where were you during basic anatomy? No doubt doing unspeakable things with your girlfriend in some grubby squat?"

He doesn't deny it.

"No, it is not the oesophagus. It is the trachea. This is the oesophagus. Now for the abdominal organs."

As each body part is removed I check it for disease, weigh it, record the weight. First the liver, then the stomach and the kidneys. And the pesky little thing known as the gall bladder, which can cause no end of trouble.

"Now we come to the uterus. The womb. From whence we all came. This remarkable organ resists putrefaction longer than any other. Women, it would appear, are more durable than men." I tip the surprisingly small pear-shaped organ into the bucket under the table with all the rest. I doubt this woman had any children. Nor did Julia. And now she never will.

My gla.s.ses are misty with sweat. "So, cause of death. I'm tending towards sudden unexplained heart failure. Any other theories?"

True to form, Woolly Hat's arm snakes up like a cobra rising from its basket.

"Could the ligature mark around her neck have anything to do with it?"

Ligature mark?

I squint at the corpse, barely able to see through the smeared lenses. Surely it's a strand of red hair? I touch it. A groove in the flesh. d.a.m.n him.

"I was wondering when someone would notice that. What does it suggest?"

"Death by hanging?" offers Miss Flip-Flop.

"Suicide," says the studious girl.

I nod approvingly. Suicide, of course. No signs of disease or trauma elsewhere. An excellent theory.

"Or murder made to look like suicide," says Woolly Hat.

I take up the challenge. "Let's examine the hyoid bone, shall we?" I point to a spot under the chin. "It's so fragile it breaks during strangulation, but not when the body has been hanged. Take a close look."

The bald one comes round to my side of the table. He leans over the corpse and prods the bone.

"Is it broken?"

"No," he admits. "But look at the ligature mark. No sign of inflammation."

"Therefore?"

"She was dead before the rope was put around her neck."

"Now you're being melodramatic."

"Why won't you admit what's staring you in the face?" he shouts.

"Staring . . .?" I glance down at the body but the eyes are closed, thank G.o.d.

"The woman's face is blue."

"It's cold in here," I insist.

"And there are tiny haemorrhages in her brain and her lungs."

"Exactly. Consistent with lack of oxygen, caused by self-inflicted hanging."

"So where's the inflammation round the neck?"

"We've been through this. The hyoid bone is unbroken. So it cannot be murder."

That shuts him up.

Suddenly his features change. It's like watching Toshiro Mifune in that particularly savage j.a.panese version of Macbeth. His face becomes taut, his eyes narrow to slits. He thrusts out his hands, one in front of the other, the sharp edges facing me like blades. He springs at me like someone demented. One hand stops dead at the side of my neck. If he'd gone just a millimetre further . . .

"Pressure on the vagus nerve stops the heart," he says quietly. "Look in the police file. I bet her partner was ex-army, SAS probably, or some sort of survival freak." He reels his hands backwards. "Or a karate expert. Like Jackie Chan."

I remove my half-moon spectacles and place them in the top pocket of my coat. "You could have killed me. What's your name? Who's your personal tutor? I intend to report you!"

He just laughs. "You're the one who should be reported. Have you thought about early retirement?"

An almighty hubbub breaks out. Before I can quell the riot a deep groan emanates from the floor and does the job for me.

A couple of students haul Spotty to his feet. He's pale and groggy with dark smudges for eye sockets. Supported by his friends like a drunk, he glares at me.

I wag my finger at him. "Are you sure you're cut out for forensic medicine, young man? It takes a certain type of character, you know. The ability to detach is essential. You failed to detach."

"That's it, I've had enough," says Woolly Hat. "I'm off." He shoves his headgear back on and strides out, followed by his pathetic cohort.

For a few minutes I can hardly breathe. I feel as if I've been punched in the stomach. Then I rub my aching eyes, put my gla.s.ses back on.

The room looks like a butcher's shop. The cadaver is a hollow gourd, its innards scooped out and discarded. There are b.l.o.o.d.y organs spilling out of the bucket, the floor is slippery with body fluids. The stench of death is overwhelming. Vagal inhibition. I wish I'd thought of that. Far less messy. But that night, after the ballet, sheer force of professional habit made me reach for a knife . . .

"I have supped full with horrors," I murmur.

Taking a deep breath I peel off my scarlet-stained gloves and pick up the manila folder. Threatened to leave abusive partner . . . found hanging . . . partner served in Gulf War . . . extensive collection of martial arts films . . . is death suspicious? Report needed asap.

I fish my dictaphone from my pocket. I outline the findings of the post-mortem and state my interpretation of the evidence. "I conclude that lack of inflammation at site of rope marks indicates deliberate compression of neck leading to inhibition of the vagus nerve, stopping the heart and causing death within seconds."

It takes some time to tidy up and finish my paperwork. When everything is done I stroll out to the car park.

It's cold outside, colder than the mortuary, and already growing dark. A flock of rooks circle high over the grounds and land in perfect sequence on the branches of the tall tree they have made their home. Their cawing cries sound like the cackling of witches on a misty heath.

Or the sc.r.a.pe of knife on bone.

Shaking my head I muse on the events of the afternoon. Young people, these days. Quite frankly, I could cheerfully murder the lot of them.

STAR'S JAR.

Kate Horsley.

CONRAD MULONDO SLOUCHED into Kisendi one hot Wednesday when the red dust stuck to the sweat of knees and napes and the blue turaco called raucously from the thorn tree. His wife, Star, hadn't seen him in weeks. She blinked at the shine of his black shoes in the sunlight, the glare of his white dress shirt.

Conrad always wore nice clothes when he came back to her. They hugged and Star felt ashamed of her scruffy pink gomesi and cropped hair. Conrad let go of her and sat on the sofa, his hand smoothing the doilies Star's mother had given them for their kwanjula. He cast an eye over the cement walls he'd been promising to paint, the wheelbarrow full of baked-mud bricks.

"Been moving round trying to make a shilling so you can fix this place."

"Kulikayo, Conrad. Thought you were lost," said Star and walked to the cupboard of a kitchen.

She'd been calling Conrad all the names G.o.d didn't like her using, but as she emptied the sachet of powder into a jug, she hummed under her breath. There was a mirror sticker on the side of the clapped-out fridge. She peeked round and saw the blue-black sheen of her cheeks, her straight white teeth.

"Still pretty."

Over the scent of hot earth and burnt gra.s.s, Star could smell roasting maize. She kicked the back door open, waved to the bicycle vendor blaring speeded-up Uganda gospel down the potholed main road. Her boys kicked a saggy football across the scrub-gra.s.s yard and the baby wailed in a washtub.

"Joyce, rinse the soap from her eyes!" shouted Star to her eldest girl.

Star would take a jerry can bath then spend the afternoon making love to Conrad. That's what hot days were for. She stirred the orange soda with a spoon and pulled two Daffy Duck gla.s.ses from the washing tub. With a gla.s.s in each hand and her big toe curled round the edge of the living-room door, Star stopped like lizard caught in torchlight.

"I need to change for tonight," said a woman's voice.

"Well, keep your b.u.m there and gossip with her while I get the money."

Star bit her lip and walked into the living room. Conrad started up when he saw her then sat back slightly away from the girl Star recognized as Mukasa Olive. She pushed one gla.s.s into Conrad's hand, pushed the other at Olive who looked down in disgust at a fly creeping round the rim.

"h.e.l.lo, Mrs Mulondo," said Olive. Her smooth, brown face was framed with crisp curls of fake hair, silver-beaded at the scalp. Conrad saw Star looking Olive up and down and smirked.

"She's beautiful out of her school uniform," he said.

Star held her back very straight as if she might get taller by doing so. Conrad set his drink down on the table next to him.

"Can I wash my hands, Star?"

A baby c.o.c.kroach slurped at the sweat balling off Conrad's gla.s.s.

"If you can find the tub."

Conrad usually fought with Star, but she'd seen him be polite to dupes. She wilted on to the edge of the armchair and Olive started in.

"We're taking that place across from you so Conrad can be near . . ."

"I'd better find him some soap," snapped Star.

He wasn't in the bathroom, but belly down on the dirt floor of the messy bedroom. The lid of their money tin clunked and he wriggled from under the bed. Star sat down on the bed and began to cry.

"I can't even afford matoke, Conrad."