Down Among the Dead Men (10 page)

My face must have said it all – I didn’t understand – at which Graham laughed again and said excitedly, ‘Listen to this,’ while pointing to Clive.

Clive went on, ‘Stupid sod not only used to jog,’ – clearly something which Clive thought was a complete waste of time – ‘but every few hundred yards he’d
drop to the ground and do press-ups. The night he died, he decided to do this on an unlit road in the driving rain, and some motorist ran him over. Probably thought he hit a deer or something. The
octagonal mark was from the sump plug of the car.’ He sighed happily. ‘I was even able to tell Parker that it had been a Land Rover that did it. They’re the only cars that have
that shape of sump plug.’

I sat in awe.

The food arrived, but that wasn’t going to stop Clive now that he was well and truly ‘lagered’, plus, there was now a curry in front of him. Then Graham leaned across the table
to him and said, ‘Tell Michelle about Michael Walters.’ Clive’s face exploded with delight, and for a minute I thought I might have been in danger of getting covered in the
contents of his mouth. ‘God, yes! I’d forgotten about him.’ I didn’t need to encourage him to tell me more. ‘Michael Walters was a head case, complete and utter. Lived
with his parents, but kept himself to himself in his room when he wasn’t in the local funny farm. One evening Ma and Pa returned home with a fish and chip supper. They settled down in the
kitchen, to tuck in. The kitchen was directly below the bathroom which was next to Michael’s room upstairs; they heard the bath running, so decided not to bother him but were content he was
home and safe.

‘So, there they are, about to have a right old nosh up, when Mr Walters senior notices that there’s some tomato sauce on his plate when he sat down at the table after making a brew,
which is not what he asked to be put on his plate by Mrs Walters; he’d opted for HP. He’s about to ask his wife what she thinks she’s playing at when he just happens to look up to
the ceiling to see blood dripping off the light fitting.’

Graham chortled at my expression. Clive was getting into his stride. ‘They found their son in the bath, with the walls, floor and ceiling drenched in blood. He had been stabbed
seventy-three times and hit on the head with a hammer three times.’

I winced. ‘Seventy-three times! Who did it? His girlfriend? Boyfriend?’

Clive grinned his usual wicked grin. ‘The house was completely secure, and none of the neighbours reported seeing anyone around the house while the Walters were out; also, because of his
mental problems, as far as his parents knew there was no significant other.’

‘Then how . . .?’

Graham was almost wetting himself, because he knew what was coming. Clive, being Clive, tucked into some lamb vindaloo, leaving me waiting and itching to hear the rest of the story. At last he
found time for me. ‘John Parker decided that since there was no evidence of a third party, it didn’t need a forensic PM and faxed through the details and request, exactly as if Michael
Walters had keeled over after chest pains. Like this was an everyday post-mortem request, with no suspicious circumstances! Idiot.’

‘The pathologist on for that day was Martin Apse – nice bloke, wasn’t he, Graham? Wouldn’t normally say boo to a goose, but he really had the heebie-jeebies when he read
that particular E60 – the request from the Coroner’s office for a post-mortem to be done. I thought he was going to faint. He started to shake and kept muttering, “I don’t
believe it,” to himself He went up to his office and twenty minutes later, John Parker phoned through to say that it was going to have a forensic PM after all.’

‘And?’

This time Clive needed a long drink, followed by calling for a refill before he could continue. I could have collapsed with the anticipation. ‘The forensic pathologist took eight hours to
determine that each and every wound – including the hammer blows –
could
(and he would only say “could”) have been self-inflicted.’

‘You are joking ,’ I decided at once, but Graham rushed to confirm what Clive had said.

‘He’s not. The poor bugger did it to himself. Took slices of flesh off his own legs and everything. I never saw such a mess of a body, and to do it to yourself, well,
unbelievable.’ With that, they both tucked into their curries as though they had just told me a fairy story, and I contemplated that, with time, I was also going to become this blasé
about my job.

Another half hour went by with talk about the mortuary, and at that point I really had started to have enough of work. Yes, I loved my job but, as fascinating as I found Clive’s
reminiscing, I am a breathing human being, and enough was enough for one week. I wanted now to forget death for the weekend and get back to the living. While I had nipped to the Ladies, I secretly
texted Luke to meet me at eleven and, as luck would have it, as I placed my cutlery on my empty plate, a familiar face entered the curry house and I introduced Luke to Clive and Graham. Clive
insisted that Luke stay and have a drink before we left, and he had to listen to ‘how well’ I was doing and what an asset to the team I was.

Although it felt a bit like parents’ evening at school, deep down I was so chuffed I had been accepted by two people who had been doing an exclusive job for so long and who obviously had
faith in me, let alone allow me into their world.

EIGHTEEN

Until I started this job, I’d never really thought very deeply about suicide and, if the subject did come up during conversation in the pub, I suppose I’d thought
that people usually offed themselves by taking an overdose of pills, hanging themselves, or jumping in front of trains. I hadn’t been in the job long before I found out that I had been very,
very wrong.

What first made me realize just how wrong I had been was when Dr Gerald Beaumont was brought into the mortuary. We had no warning from the Coroner’s office that he was going to arrive, so
only had the undertakers’ word to go on concerning what had happened. Dr Beaumont was a successful anaesthetist who lived in a big house with plenty of land in the country. He must have
earned pots of money from private practice and ought to have been as happy as Larry, but he wasn’t. He had made a mistake, resulting in the death of a patient. Referral to the General Medical
Council was pending, which apparently is very bad. ‘Basically, as far as doctors are concerned, it’s pretty much “end of’,’ Clive said.

Dr Beaumont had come home early that morning, leaving the hospital without saying anything. He had got into his Land Rover, then driven out to a remote pasture on which grew an old oak. He had
taken a tow rope, tied it to the tree, then fed it through the back of the Land Rover. He had got back in, tied the other end around his neck and driven off as hard as he could.

When we opened the white body bag, we were relieved to see that his head had stayed on, but it had been a close call. Poor Dr Beaumont’s neck had been almost ripped apart, and was now held
together only by the spine and a few tethers of flesh. The head had been smashed, too. ‘Bloody hell,’ and I spoke almost reverently.

Clive nodded, then said matter of factly, ‘When people decide to duff themselves in, sometimes they really go for it.’

‘What on earth made him think to do it like that, though?’

When Graham saw Dr Beaumont, he winced and said, ‘Bet that stung a bit.’

Back in the office and over coffee, I said, ‘I can’t believe he’s done that to himself’

Clive shook his head. ‘You’d be surprised, Michelle. We get all sorts in here. Most of them are the usual, of course – overdose, hanging etcetera – but some people seem
to think that, as it’s the last thing they’ll ever do, they’ll do it in style.’

Graham said, ‘Like that old girl and the weedkiller.’

Clive nodded enthusiastically. ‘Now
that
was an unwise way to end it all.’

When I inquired what they were talking about, they were keen to tell me. ‘She went to the garden shed and got out the weedkiller, Paraquat. On its own, it’s pretty lethal but she
decided to spice it up. She cooked it with some herbs, then swallowed it like soup. I reckon it might have tasted nicer but she still died about week later on ITU, and it wasn’t nice, by all
accounts.’

Graham added brightly, ‘And there was that poor sod who drank a bottle of kettle descaler.’

Clive nodded and said sorrowfully, ‘Descaled him, no doubt about it.’ There was a moment’s silence, but only a moment, before he added, ‘Don’t forget that woman who
set fire to herself in her car.’

Graham shook his head. ‘Don’t think I ever will forget that,’ he said.

Clive said to me, ‘Poor woman set fire to herself in her car. A passing motorist sees the flames, stops and runs over to drag her out of the car. You know what she did? She struggles and
fights, tells him to sod off, then slams the door shut and locks it.’

Graham sighed. ‘Bugger that.’

Peter Gillard, who was on for PMs that day, came in. When he was told what had happened to Dr Beaumont, he looked rather worried, but all he said was, ‘Oh dear,’ which is a typical
Peter Gillard thing to say. Clive asked, his voice completely genuine, ‘Think you’ll find a cause of death, doc?’ And Peter smiled shyly.

After the post-mortem – cause of death, ‘neck trauma’ – the four of us sat in the office over coffee and Peter Gillard talked to us about suicides. I’d always
thought it a very selfish thing to do and said so, but Peter was more easy-going. ‘A lot of them just aren’t thinking normally.’

Graham said simply, ‘Not right in the head.’

To which Clive added, ‘Reckon you’ve got to be if you’re going to stick your head on a railway line and wait for the train to come. Remember him, Graham?’

‘Oh, aye.’ He shook his head. ‘Cleanest dismemberment I’ve ever seen. Been trying to do it for years, poor bloke, but people kept rescuing him. Very unlucky he’d
been, up until the seven-thirty to London came along.’

Peter said, ‘Usually, though, if you really want to do it, there’s not a lot that can be done to stop you. They’re always succeeding in prison.’

‘And in the local loony bin down the road,’ added Clive. ‘We must get two or three a year from there. They take away all the sharp objects and their belts and shoelaces, but
they still manage it.’

I asked, ‘How?’

‘One bloke used three pocket handkerchiefs tied together, then hooked them around the door knob.’

‘Surely that wouldn’t be high enough?’

Peter shook his head. ‘A surprisingly high percentage of people dying by hanging are in contact with the floor when found.’

I was really surprised by this. ‘How?’

‘Death in hanging is almost always due to excitation of the nerves in the neck that slow the heart and may even stop it. Add to that some constriction of blood supply to the brain and
it’s usually enough to cause unconsciousness and death within a few seconds. Once you black out, of course, it doesn’t matter how low down you are.’

‘Really? That quick?’

‘Less than ten seconds, sometimes.’

‘Never!’

He nodded. ‘Most people don’t appreciate that. It’s likely a lot of hangings are just cries for help but they die a lot more quickly than they thought they would. And that
makes it difficult for the Coroner.’

‘Why?’

‘The Coroner won’t confirm a death as suicide unless he is absolutely certain that that’s what they intended to do. All we do down here is find out what caused them to die, but
it’s the Coroner who decides how that came about. If there’s a chance that it was a cry for help and they thought that someone would find them before it was too late, he won’t
call it “suicide”; similarly, if there’s a remote possibility that when they fell off the bridge, they tripped because they were drunk, he won’t call that
“suicide” either.’

‘What does he call them?’ I asked.

‘He calls those “accidental”.’

Graham said, ‘I don’t see that it matters what you call it, bloody stupid if you ask me.’

‘It does to the relatives,’ pointed out Peter.

It was Clive who brought us back to Dr Beaumont. ‘Well, I should think that the Coroner’s going to have a problem calling his death “accidental”,’ he said grimly.
‘I wonder what type of Land Rover it was.’

Early afternoon and, with PMs over and the dissection room cleaned down, we thought we could relax for a few moments – but, as is often the way in the mortuary, this was
not to be. Three firms of undertakers arrived at once, all collecting patients, two of them collecting two each. One of the undertakers was Vince, a large man with a cheery smile who always stays
for a cup of tea and a chat. Quite often, he brings in pieces of steak for us which, the first time it happened, gave me the creeps as thoughts of the League of Gentlemen and ‘special
meat’ came to mind. It turned out, though, that Vince’s family also owned a butcher’s shop.

Anyway, for twenty minutes, it was absolute chaos, with Graham and me running around while Vince and Clive reminisced in the office. As if all that wasn’t bad enough, no sooner had Vince
left than the doorbell rang once again and in came a group of three trainee nurses; Clive had completely forgotten that he had promised to give them a short talk about the work of the mortuary. I
think he thought about telling them to go forth but politeness got the better of him, although I expect they could see it on his face. He took me to one side and said urgently, ‘Look,
Michelle. Can you take care of these girls? Normally I would, but I’ve got to go and see Ed in his office. He just rang.’

‘What do I say to them?’

‘Just tell them what we do. That’s why they’re here.’

‘What about Graham?’

‘I’ve just sent him off to the wards to collect cremation forms.’

I didn’t feel that I was totally qualified for this task but took a deep breath and went out to the nurses. I led them into the dissection room – now clean and tidy – so that
we were out of the hurly-burly. ‘This is not only a hospital mortuary but also a public one, so we receive bodies from the community as well. They come here if there is a possibility that
they might need a Coroner’s post-mortem.’