Decayed or fresh. Crawling with maggots, flies buzzing around your face as you examine them in light or darkness. Or, a serenity surrounding them, framed in a pale light as if time has come to a stop for them. There’s no tangible difference, really. They’re all the same, each with their own tale to tell, how the end has come.
It doesn’t matter how many times you see one, it never gets easier. Not in reality. You can kid yourself; pretend that you’re immune to it, that it doesn’t affect you any more. That’s all it is though – a pretence, a deception. A way of getting through it.
There was a simple answer in Murphy’s opinion. Seeing death makes you contemplate your own … and most people spend their lives actively trying to avoid their own death. Even those risk-takers jumping off cliffs with a tea towel as a parachute are only giving themselves the thrill of cheating death. They’d leave the tea towel behind if they really wanted to die.
Once the initial shock kicks in, an unconscious mental process clicks into place and professionalism takes over. Makes you forget about what it is you’re dealing with. That’s the way Murphy thought of it. He imagined a shutter going down in one part of his mind, thoughts and feelings closed away and a detachment appearing.
The only time it took a bit longer for that process to occur was when they were below a certain age.
This one was on the cusp.
West Derby is a small town just past Anfield, around fifteen minutes from the city centre. Only a few minutes away from the more infamous estates of Norris Green and Croxteth, it was also the home of Alder Hey Hospital and Liverpool F.C.’s training ground, Melwood.
Now it would gain its own little piece of notoriety.
Murphy stood in the gravel entrance to St Mary’s Church in West Derby – Croxteth Park off in the distance – having arrived a few minutes before the forensic team and pathologist, by some miracle. On the steps leading into the church lay what they’d been called for. A young white boy, or maybe a man. He could never tell age these days. Laid on his side, one arm tucked beneath him, the other draped across himself. Eyes closed over a destroyed face. A mask of smeared blood – an attempt to wash it off, perhaps? – which did little to deflate the impact. Open wounds on the cheeks, skin splitting on numerous areas. Red flesh on show above his mouth, his nose misshapen and swollen. Eyes puffed up under the swelling. A faded scar just below his eyebrow was noticeable only as it seemed to be the lone part of his face that was untouched. The grey-silver of healed skin stark against the surrounding reds, browns and blacks.
Rossi finished talking to a uniformed constable and walked back towards Murphy. ‘Well?’ he said as she reached him.
‘Two twelve-year-old lads found him. They were walking through the park to school and spotted him. Thought it was a tramp at first, but looking closer they saw his face and realised he wasn’t breathing. They pegged it, right into the vicar, or whatever they call them, who was arriving for the day. He was the one who called it in.’
‘They notice anything?’
‘They’re a bit shaken up, but adamant they didn’t see anything else. They walk past here every day apparently.’
Murphy finished snapping on a pair of latex gloves, his faded black shoes similarly covered, and bent down to look at the body closer up, wincing as he looked at the victim’s face.
‘How old do you reckon?’ Rossi said from above him.
‘Not sure. Can’t really tell with these kinds of injuries to his face. All these kids look much older than we ever did at that age.’
‘That’s probably just us getting old.’
Murphy grunted in reply and went back to studying the face of the male lying prostrate on the ground. A thick band of purplish red around his neck drew his attention.
‘Fiver says it’s strangulation.’
‘I’m not betting on cause of death, sir.’
Shuffling shoes and shouted orders interrupted Murphy before he could respond. He looked up, trying to effect a look of innocence as Dr Stuart Houghton, the lead pathologist in the city of Liverpool, bounded over. The doctor had grown even larger in the past year, meaning he moved slowly enough for Murphy to pull away from the body before Houghton arrived on the scene.
‘You touched anything?’
‘Morning to you an’ all, Doctor,’ Murphy said, avoiding meeting the doctor’s eyes.
‘Yeah, yeah. What have we got here?’
‘I thought you could tell me that.’
A large intake of breath as Houghton got to his haunches. ‘We’ll see.’ He snapped his own pair of gloves on and began examining the body.
‘How long?’ Murphy said after watching Houghton work for a minute or three.
‘Rigour is only just beginning to fade. At least twelve hours, I’d say. Body has been moved here.’ Houghton lifted the man-boy’s eyelids, revealing milky coffee eyes staring past him, the whites surrounding them speckled with burst blood vessels. A thin, cloudy film pasted across them.
Murphy stepped to the side as Houghton’s assistant finished erecting the white tent around him. ‘Anything on him?’
Houghton finished fishing around the pockets of the black joggers which the victim was wearing. ‘Nothing at all. Was expecting a psalm or bible quote or something, given where we are.’
Murphy shrugged. ‘Could be nothing religious about it. Something we’ll be looking into, obviously.’ A religious nut or someone with a grudge to bear against the church. Murphy didn’t like the thought of either.
‘He’s been laid here on purpose, in this manner. Almost looks peaceful, just curled up. Like he just came here, lay down and went peacefully. As always, first glance is deceiving. Looks like he was strangled with some kind of ligature. Not before he was quite severely beaten.’ Houghton paused, rolling the torn T-shirt up over the victim’s flat teenaged stomach. Wisps of fine hair tracing a line towards a recessed belly button, barely visible behind angry red markings turning purple and black. ‘Bruises to his abdomen. Some old, some new. This boy was beaten severely before death. I’m guessing four … no, five broken ribs. Pretty sure there’ll be more broken bones to find as well. Also, there’s his face of course.’
‘This has been going on a while then. The older bruises, I mean.’
‘Could be. I’ll have more answers after the PM of course.’
Murphy nodded before beckoning over a forensics tech from the Evidence Recovery Unit – ERU – towards him. ‘Prioritise this one, Doc. The media will be all over us before we know it. Dead teen in suspicious circumstances and outside a church, with these injuries? Easy headlines.’
Houghton sighed at him in response, but before he could give a fuller answer Murphy moved away to meet the ERU tech – a white-suited woman with only her deep green eyes on display before she removed the mask covering the bottom half of her face.
‘Yes?’
‘I want a fingertip search of the whole area of the church. Inside and out. Pathways which run alongside it as well. I’ll see how far we can cordon the place
