Where the Devil Can’t Go

Kershaw nodded. ‘I’m not squeamish, though,’ she added, before realising she’d spoken with unnecessary forcefulness.

Goth girl ignored the comment. ‘If you do start feeling a bit funny, just let us know before you keel over, okay?’ She waited while Kershaw pulled on blue plastic overshoes, then led the way through a tiled corridor and into the post mortem room.

Kershaw had seen the scene reconstructed a dozen times in TV cop dramas – the low-ceilinged tiled room, the naked bodies laid out on steel gurneys, some still whole, others already dissected. But it was all a bit different when you knew you weren’t looking at an artful arrangement of wax models and fake blood. And television couldn’t prepare you for the smell – a terrible cocktail of chopped liver, body fluids, and bleach.

The Goth girl paused at the first gurney. ‘DB16,’ she said. Spread-eagled on the shallow stainless steel tray, under the unsparing fluorescent lights, lay the girl with the Titian hair – or what was left of her.

‘I’ll tell Doctor Waterhouse you’re here,’ she said, leaving Kershaw alone with the body.

The girl was opened like a book from collarbone to pubis, revealing a dark red cavern where her insides had been. A purplish pile of guts lay between her thighs, as though she’d just given birth to them. The skin and its accompanying layer of yellow fat had been flayed from her limbs and torso, and now lay beneath her like a discarded jacket, and her ribcage was cracked open, each rib separated and bent back. Water tinkled musically, incongruously, through a drain hole under the gurney.

The good news, reflected Kershaw, was that she looked more like the remains of some predator’s meal on the Serengeti than a human being.

‘DC Kershaw, I presume?’

Tearing her gaze away from the carcass, she saw a tall, silver-haired man in his sixties rinsing his gloved hands at a nearby sink. Shaking off the drops, he approached her, beaming.

‘Welcome, welcome,’ he said.

‘Thanks for having me, Doctor,’ she said.

‘Not at all,’ said Doctor Waterhouse. ‘I’m always delighted to see a new detective braving the rigours of a PM.’

He handed Kershaw some latex gloves with a little flourish, like he was giving her a bunch of violets, then spread his arms to encompass the cadaver lying between them.

‘Our lady,’ he began, in a plummy voice, ‘is an IC1 female who apparently enjoyed good health throughout her life, with no evidence of any chronic condition.’ He spoke as though addressing a roomful of medical students.

‘How old would you say she was?’ asked Kershaw, wriggling her fingers into the second glove.

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ he said with a tilt of his head. Then, seeing her enquiring look, ‘I’m afraid it’s no easier to estimate someone’s age from the inside than it is from the outside.’

Over Doc Waterhouse’s shoulder, Kershaw noticed the Goth girl at the next gurney along. Wielding a huge curved needle, she was sewing up the chest cavity of a big man with tattooed biceps. His face had such a healthy colour, that for a split second Kershaw expected him to sit up and rip the needle from the girl’s hand.

Waterhouse was saying: ‘She was certainly of childbearing age.’ He paused. ‘I found a foetus in utero that, by my calculations, would put this lady in the late stages of the first trimester of pregnancy at the time of death.’

Kershaw’s eyebrows shot up. If the girl’s boyfriend didn’t fancy being a daddy, the pregnancy might have sparked an argument that ended in the girl’s death. She pulled pad and pencil from the pocket of her gown. ‘How many weeks is that, Doctor?’

‘Between nine and twelve, judging by the foetus,’ Waterhouse mused. ‘Perhaps you’d like to see it?’

‘No, I’m fine, thanks,’ said Kershaw, with a nervous smile. ‘Have you found anything suspicious? Any signs of violence?’

Looking at her over the tops of his half-moon glasses, the smiling Waterhouse raised a latexed finger. Patience.

‘Since the body was recovered from the river, let us first examine the evidence for drowning as the possible cause of death,’ he said, with the air of someone proposing a picnic on a lake, and started to stroll up and down the gurney, hands clasped behind his back.

Kershaw groaned inwardly – she was clearly in for the full lecture theatre treatment. At that moment, she happened to catch the eye of the Goth technician. The girl responded with a fractionally raised eyebrow that said – yes, he was always like this.

‘What evidence might we expect to find, post-mortem, in the case of a drowning, Detective?’ Waterhouse went on.

‘Water in the lungs?’ said Kershaw, suppressing a note of bored sarcasm. She’d be here all day at this rate.

‘But how do we know whether the water entered the lungs post- or ante-mortem?’

He stopped pacing and looked at Kershaw. She shrugged.

‘You may be surprised to learn that we currently have no means of establishing the sequence of events,’ said Waterhouse, as thought he’d only just discovered this extraordinary state of affairs himself. ‘If we allow that our lady was in the water six, perhaps seven days, by my calculations, then it is entirely possible that the copious quantities of river water, weed and sand present in her lungs and stomach found its way there after her death.’

‘So how do we find out if she drowned or not?’

‘Well, we couldrun a raft of analyses, to find out whether any diatoms – a kind of river algae – have found their way into her organs.’ He pulled a doubtful grimace. ‘But since none of it is the least bit conclusive I consider it an egregious waste of public money.’

No way of telling if someone had drowned? So those TV shows where a brilliant pathologist solved tricky cases single-handed after the cops had failed were clearly a load of old bollocks, thought Kershaw. She realised that Waterhouse was looking at her like it was her turn to speak.

‘So … if there’s no such thing as conclusive proof of drowning,’ she said. ‘I guess all you can do is rule everything else out – a process of elimination?’

‘Well done, Detective,’ said Waterhouse with an approving nod.

‘However, I must tell you I can find no evidence of foul play. The various injuries to the body are all post-mortem.’

Kershaw felt as though she’d been slapped. She wasn’t ready to see the girl demoted from murder victim to just another bridge jumper.

‘Are you sure?’ she asked.

‘Subcutaneous dissection reveals no deep bruising or other injury.’ Waterhouse waved a hand over the flayed body. ‘Nor could I find any sign of the pinpoint haemorrhages in the conjunctivae or mucus membranes that would suggest asphyxiation.’

He beckoned her over to a deep stainless steel sink where he plunged a gloved hand into a pile of what looked like offal, spread out on a large plastic chopping board.

‘Here we are,’ he announced. ‘The hyoid bone – from the lady’s neck.’ He brandished a pair of tiny bony horns with bits of tissue still attached – which, to Kershaw, looked a lot like a truncated chicken wishbone. ‘When someone is strangled, more often than not, the hyoid gets broken. But this little fellow is intact.’ With the air of a conjuror, he pressed his thumbs into the centre of the horns until they snapped. ‘Voilà!’

Kershaw stifled a grimace. ‘So, in your view,’ she said, pencil hovering over her notebook. ‘She wasn’t beaten, stabbed, strangled or suffocated.’

‘Correct.’

‘How did she die then?’

‘Well, the chalky residue I found in the stomach does suggest she had ingested drugs a few hours before death,’ said Waterhouse.

‘Suicide?’ Kershaw didn’t try to disguise the disappointment in her voice.

‘I’m afraid I must leave intent to you, Detective,’ he said. He drummed gloved fingers on the board. ‘But if I were to stick my neck out, I’d say it wasn’t the common or garden bottle of paracetamol.’

Rummaging through the pile of entrails with the air of a man trying to find matching socks, he retrieved a glistening brown lobe the size of a fist and set it in front of her.

‘Kidney?’ she said. Disgusting stuff – wouldn’t eat it as a kid, or now, come to that.

‘Well done!’ said Waterhouse, smoothing the organ out on the board. ‘Have a little poke around, tell me what you see.’

She took the proffered scalpel and used it to open up a series of incisions in the tissue. What was she supposed to be looking for? Then, bending closer, she saw something – a scatter of bright magenta dots across the pinky-brown surface.