let’s not fight, da-dada, night …
let’s do it, do it, do it …’
The singing drifted to a halt. ‘Ah, there you are.’
I turned. Alf: hair scraped back in a ponytail, high forehead gleaming in the flickering light, beard neatly trimmed, wearing pale blue scrubs, and hauling a hospital gurney behind him. Its occupant was covered in a white plastic sheet. Alf popped an earbud out and smiled. ‘Was about to send a search party for you guys. You know what the Prof’s like if he can’t start bang on nine.’
Alf nodded towards the mortuary. ‘Can you get the door for us? Bloody gurney’s like a wonky shopping trolley today.’
And when I turned back, the rat catcher was gone.
‘Break on the left tibia and fibula show approximately eight years of bone growth …’ Professor Mervin Twining, AKA: Teaboy, ran a gloved finger along the stained bone. His dark floppy hair hung over his forehead – with the square jaw, dimple, and little wire-rim glasses he looked like an extra from a period spy drama.
The skeleton laid out on the dissecting table in front of him had been cleaned of dirt and mud, but it was still the reddish-brown colour of stewed tea. They’d put the head back where it belonged.
Alf looked up from a set of notes, earbuds dangling loose from the neck of his scrubs. ‘Lauren Burges fell off her bike when she was five, treated for broken left leg.’
Castle Hill mortuary was a Victorian monstrosity. Cracked black tiles on the floor, grout turned grey by generations’ worth of bleach, formaldehyde, and disinfectant. Drainage channels leading to wire-mesh grilles and the sewers beyond. The walls had probably been white once, but their tiles had aged to a dirty ivory. Harsh overhead lighting glittered off stainless-steel work surfaces, a wall of refrigerated drawers, and the dissecting tables.
Three of them, each with an inch-high lip, a drain, a tap, a hose, and a blood-coloured set of bones.
Half a dozen flip charts were arranged around the room in pairs, one of each set was covered with copies of the victim’s birthday cards – the other with medical notes, X-rays, and dental charts.
It was cold too, almost as cold as it was outside. Dr McDonald’s nose was going pink, the woolly hat still pulled down over her ears, duffle coat toggled up to her chin, shoulders hunched, hands in her pockets. ‘Shouldn’t we be wearing masks and safety goggles and things?’
Professor Twining looked up from the remains. ‘Not a huge amount of point, I’m afraid: no soft tissue, no DNA, just bones. And they’ve been cleaned by the soil science people, so there’s nothing left for us to contaminate. Can I have the corresponding X-ray, please, Alf? … Thank you.’
Twining worked his way through Lauren Burges’s skeletal remains, comparing the damage to her medical records and the photos on the birthday cards. Confirming her identity.
Three sets of bones on three separate cutting tables. It wouldn’t be long before the SEB turned up the other victims. Only they’d get one more than they were expecting: Rebecca, laid out on a cold metal slab. My little girl, reduced to a collection of mud-stained bones. Chipped and scarred where he slashed and stabbed and broke …
The mortuary air was like cold treacle, sticking in my throat.
I thrust my hands in my pockets. Clenched my jaw.
No one knew: there was still time to find the bastard.
So why couldn’t I breathe?
Think about something else. Anything else. Anything but Rebecca.
Money. Think about the money. About how utterly and completely screwed I was.
That was better …
OK, so I didn’t get the chance to squeeze money out of anyone before the post mortems, but there was still time, wasn’t there? Slip out for a couple of hours while they were examining the other remains. Plenty of time.
Yeah, plenty of time …
‘… median damage and periosteal hematoma evident on the left humerus, anterior …’
There was no way in hell I’d ever get enough money. Turn up at the Westing with a fistful of fivers and Mrs Kerrigan’s goons would send me home in a wheelchair.
‘… compound fracture of the right radius and ulna, seven centimetres from the wrist joint …’
So don’t. Don’t turn up at all. As long as I kept my head down till the ferry left Aberdeen at seven tonight, I’d be fine.
‘… striated scarring on the fourth and fifth ribs consistent with a serrated blade …’
Well, maybe not fine, but it’d buy some time.
And all this would still be waiting for me when I got back.
The hands on the mortuary clock clicked around to eleven thirty: two and a half hours of watching Professor Twining pick his way through a murdered girl’s bones.
‘… and one tea: milk, no sugar.’ Alf handed me a mug with ‘World’s Greatest Proctologist!’ printed on the side.
‘Thanks.’ One thing you can say about Anatomical Pathology Technicians: they make a decent cup of tea.
Twining stretched out his arms, hands locked together, as if he was about to crack a safe. ‘Well, I think we can confirm that the remains belong to Lauren Burges.’
I settled back against the working surface. ‘And it only took you two and a half hours. Dr McDonald did it in thirty-five seconds.’
Pink bloomed on her cheeks. ‘Well, the position of the head was a bit of a giveaway, I mean there might be other victims he’s decapitated that we don’t know about. We don’t have a complete collection of birthday cards, and most haven’t got to the bit where he kills them yet …’ She cleared her throat, shuffled her feet. ‘It was an educated guess.’
Twining brushed a hand through his floppy hair. ‘Unfortunately, I have to make my identification stand up in a court of law.’ He took his tea across to the two flip charts with Lauren Burges’s details on them, and pointed at the second-last photo in the series of birthday cards. ‘She was almost certainly dead by the time this one was taken. Difficult to tell with no internal organs left to examine, but working from the photographs I’d say heart failure triggered by blood loss and shock.’
Maybe she was lucky – maybe she was dead when he hacked her open and pulled out her insides. Maybe Rebecca was lucky too …
That fizzing sensation burned at the base of my throat again.
Twining tapped the first card. ‘Given the size and colour variation of the bruises between this picture and when she was killed – I’d say Lauren was probably tortured over a period of six or seven hours. Nine at most.’
Dr McDonald looked up at me. ‘She went missing four days before her birthday.’
‘Yes …’ Twining squinted at the first
