Down Among the Dead Men (22 page)

Michael and I might now be grown up, with our own homes and lives, but it’s as if it has been ingrained into us unconsciously that Christmas Day needs to be spent with each other as a
family. Around about November each year, Mum asks us what we have in mind for the big day, if anything, and tells us earnestly that she doesn’t mind if we have plans to spend Christmas Day
elsewhere. ‘Dad and I don’t mind at all,’ she always says. ‘We can see you before or after, it’s not a problem. We know you’re grown up now.’ I
wouldn’t have things any other way, though, and even Michael will spend the day away from Sarah his girlfriend, while she is with her parents (although his mobile, guaranteed, will be going
non-stop during the day, and she will always happily join us for the evening). Luke and I share our families; his being larger than mine, we are able to spend Boxing Day with them without feeling
we have left anyone on their own.

When Mum had initially mentioned Christmas in early November, my first thought was to wonder, Am I going to be on call? As much as I cared about the mortuary and its patients, this was the last
thing I wanted. Being on call meant no participation in the champagne breakfast, staying on soft drinks in the local pub for the customary two hours it would open in the morning, one glass of wine
with Christmas dinner to toast the day, and being the sober hostess for the evening while all the family and friends arrived and tucked into the spirits cabinet. I fully admit, I cringed at this
thought. In my old job, if I had to work – and as I organized the rotas, I had an advantage – I would make sure that I was on the night duty Christmas Eve, which no one wanted to work
anyway, with a finish at seven in the morning Christmas Day, so the whole day was free; or, if not that, then the early shift with a two-thirty finish Christmas Day, ready to catch up with the
festivities in the afternoon.

Clive was not overly impressed when I had asked him about the on-call over Christmas, and I fully understood that he must have had an absolute gutful of doing it over the years. He started to
tell me about how he had been called in for a forensic post-mortem at 6 p.m. one Christmas day, and that he had brought his pudding with him, along with a paper hat, cheese and biscuits, and a
cigar, and had enthusiastically partaken of these in the office while he was waiting for the police to arrive. My spine ran cold at the thought of this happening to me, but I also felt I could not
let him down, and that he half expected me (all right, three-quarters expected me) to take the stand this Christmas. With Graham no longer around as a working body, and Maddie fairly new on the
scene, I knew I was trapped and the responsibility was going to lie with me.

Maddie had yet to arrive for work, because she had an appointment that morning and was not going to be in till a couple of hours after our normal 8 a.m. start. With no PMs that morning, Clive
and I sat in the office, me with a face that could sink a battleship at the thought of working Christmas Day, and Clive reminiscing about Christmases past, almost like a modern-day Scrooge. Always
pleased to see Maddie, I cannot explain the feeling of relief when she walked into the mortuary late that morning. Clive continued with his Scrooge impression and Maddie gave me that ‘What is
he on about?’ look as she sat down. Clive must have seen this, as he started to repeat his stories to Maddie about covering the mortuary over Christmas. I could see that Maddie could read the
pain on my face and she interrupted Clive confidently. ‘So who is supposed to be covering this year?’ she asked brightly. The room went silent; I was not about to offer my time, and
neither was Clive.

‘I haven’t yet done the rota,’ Clive replied. ‘As Graham’s no longer with us, I need to think about things carefully.’

What came next out of Maddie’s mouth was music to my ears. ‘I’ll do it. I hate Christmas. As long as somebody is willing to cover New Year’s Eve and Day, I’m happy
to do the Christmas period cover.’

I wanted to jump out of my seat and hug her. Clive’s response was not as swift though, until I reminded him that I, too, had only been with them a short time when I took on the
responsibility of the out-of-hours service. And the fact that I then said I would support Maddie in any major problems over the festive season probably clinched the deal with Clive and he agreed
since this took him out of the equation completely. Total and utter relief on my behalf. I knew Maddie would not be in contact with me on a work basis unless it went completely Pete Tong, and this
doesn’t happen often as the dead, despite rumour to the contrary, do not go anywhere.

So, Christmas Day arrived, and Maddie did ring early, but only to wish us Merry Christmas. I invited her to join us at my parents’, but she had her mind set on staying in and wasting the
day. Maddie was a huge learning curve for me: I think it seemed so odd that not everyone celebrates Christmas. We don’t exactly do it in a religious way, for the reason that the Christian
churches believe it should be celebrated, but I was not about to argue with the public holiday and the sense of family love it gives us.

Luke and I, again dressed in our Sunday best as has always been the norm when it comes to the Williamses on Christmas Day, walked to my parents’ with the dogs after our short morning
together enjoying each other’s presents and breakfast at home. We settled Harvey and Oscar on the sofas once we arrived, then waited (as usual) on Michael arriving while the dogs were teased
by Dad for the ‘doggie antlers’ they were wearing. We then all attended the local pub on my parents’ estate. Just as we started to get into the Christmas spirit the pub called
time and we returned to the dogs, who had taken up residence in the kitchen at Mum and Dad’s house thanks to the smell of the turkey and beef coming out of the oven. Then, as on every other
Christmas Day, we amused ourselves with games, these days DVD interactive ones which have taken over from the old board games. But, as ever, the playing cards and dominoes came out at some point.
Dad won every one, as per tradition, but not without strong competition from Michael and Luke. We were then interrupted by the one and only Mrs Williams presenting a fantastic traditional Christmas
dinner.

This devoured, the table was cleared, then there were more DVD games for a while, before moving on to music at about six o’clock as other family and friends began to arrive. It usually
turns out that at least fifteen people pass through my parents’ door on Christmas Day alone. Mum always makes sure that she has enough food for a cold buffet to feed everyone. It was going
just as it should do and, I suppose, going too well.

My mobile rang. When I looked at the screen, I saw that it was Maddie and I knew at once that here was trouble. ‘Yes, Maddie?’

She sounded devastated. ‘I am so sorry to be bothering you, Michelle . . .’

My heart, hovering somewhere about the level of my knees, dropped to the soles of my shoes. ‘What is it, Maddie?’

‘There’s a forensic. A young lad’s been knifed in Whaddon and he’s high risk.’

THIRTY-NINE

I had to get a taxi to take me to the hospital because Luke was a little too far gone to drive and I couldn’t blame him; I have to admit to being slightly frayed at the
edges myself as I sat in the back of the taxi and cursed my luck. It was costing megabucks, but I hoped that Ed would swing it for the Trust to pay. I felt mighty low, what with being dragged away
from the celebrations and sitting in the back of a smelly taxi, probably on a dried sick stain; the driver was none too chatty either; seemed to think he was doing me a favour. I thought, Should
have turned my phone off, but I knew that I would never have done that to Maddie.

She was in a right state when I arrived. The forensic pathologist, Nick Jones from Cardiff, had already arrived and wanted to get going double quick, and poor Maddie had gone into a bit of a
meltdown. She had only done two forensics before but never a high risk one (for which two people are needed anyway). I took charge at once, finding it surprisingly natural. I put on scrubs and told
her that I would act as the technician while she would be the runner. She didn’t argue and immediately looked relieved.

When I entered the dissection room, I began to understand why she had been so nervous, because for this particular forensic the whole shebang was there – enough police officers to control
a riot, SOCOs, two Coroner’s officers and, I was astonished to discover, the Coroner himself. That was unheard of and I began to suspect that this was no ordinary deceased person.

Nor was it, because it was the grandson of General Armitage, who had had a long and distinguished war record. Bill explained to me in a whisper that the grandson, suffering from schizophrenia,
had gone off the rails big time and fallen among drug-dealers, living in a squat and no longer taking his medicine. He had contracted hepatitis from dirty needles and been in very poor health for
some time. He had apparently got into a knife fight with one of the other members of the squat and been stabbed several times in the abdomen.

There wasn’t much conversation and certainly not much Christmas cheer about the place. Bill’s face when he muttered, ‘Merry Christmas,’ could hardly be described as
enthusiastic. As I looked around the room, I could see, too, that I was not the only one who had been called away from the party spirit.

As it happened, it turned out to be a typical forensic post-mortem. The wounds had penetrated his liver and small intestine, causing him to bleed to death in fairly short order. Unfortunately
for me, Nick found several potential injection sites which he enthusiastically cut down on, as well as several bruises large and small on his arms and legs from which he stripped the skin with gay
abandon. By the time he had finished, the corpse looked as if it had been through a flaying machine.

Three hours later and he was done, so that the mortuary emptied with quite astonishing speed; by three o’clock Maddie and I were alone, tired and depressed as we looked at the work that
was still to be done to clear up. We set to with energy that came from an overwhelming desire to be up and out of there, and managed to get things fairly clean and tidy in forty-five minutes.

I got out of the taxi outside my parents’ house at five thirty on Boxing Day morning ready to drop and not get back up again. I tried not to make too much noise as I let myself in, then
crept up to the spare room where Luke was snoring to himself. I climbed in beside him without waking him up.

FORTY

Clive summed it up. ‘Whose stupid idea was it to have two bank holidays in a row?’

Both Maddie and I could only agree. Because I’d been the one on call over the New Year, I’d had to go into the mortuary after a busy social weekend and, accordingly, had been feeling
like a corpse myself; it was unseasonably warm and that somehow made it worse. This year was proving a nightmare because the bank holiday period was even longer than usual and bodies were piling up
after several days of only the porters having access to the mortuary. Because all the porters are able to do is take them from the place in the hospital where they died, or give access to
undertakers bringing in Coroner’s bodies, then put them in a fridge and shut the door, it means that eventually we run out of space, and then they ring one of us, at any given time of the day
or night, to say that there’s only one fridge space left. So what are we supposed to do? Take the dead home with us? Do I prop them up on my dining-room chairs till the holidays are over? So,
at three-thirty in the afternoon on the Tuesday after New Year, I had to make my way into work.

Over my first few months in the slightly tatty mortuary, I had learnt to enjoy coming into work. Despite what we have to do in there, despite the terrible things we see, and the sadness and
tragedy that inevitably accompany death, the people that I work with – the sense of teamwork and comradeship – and the knowledge that we are doing an important job mean it isn’t
always a bad place to be.

Coming in alone on a winter bank holiday, though, was different. Then the mortuary was empty and cold and forbidding; it was made worse by the fact that I had a huge hangover – something
that I would normally never allow myself to do – and that I only had a dyslexic undertaker for company; he dotes on me and had willingly volunteered to give me a lift in. What I had to do was
to figure out which bodies needed to be moved to our sister hospital (which has more fridge space). The only ones that would be able to be transferred would be those that had had a post-mortem
where a natural cause of death had been found, and therefore the paperwork accompanying the body would be complete.

I finally got to return to my parents’ an hour or so after the New Year’s meal my mother had been looking forward to cooking since Christmas Day was over. On my return, Dad asked
brightly, ‘Many in, love?’ as he had taken to doing. I replied with an exhausted grunt and collapsed on the sofa in my usual fashion.

I spent the rest of the evening worrying about the stress that the next day was going to bring for all three of us technicians and about how co-operative the pathologist was going to be feeling.
I had a suspicion that I was not going to get much sleep that night.

Most of the hospital tends to wind down over Christmas, with the operating theatres shut and as many of the patients as are well enough to go sent home. As Maddie explained,
this means that the laboratory becomes fairly quiet. Far from it, down here with the dead men. Over Christmas, people keep dying as they always do and, because the funeral parlours close until the
New Year and the crematorium may not open, all the bodies pile up with us. Moreover, come the first working day after the holidays, the Coroner’s office will start sending through request
after request for post-mortem examinations; Clive told us that sometimes he’d had to do double shifts with Ed, morning and afternoon, just to keep up.

From my trip in the day before, I knew that we’d be up against it, and wasn’t surprised when, by ten o’clock on the Wednesday, the Coroner’s office had already faxed
through five E60s, with a promise of more on the way. Clive sighed. ‘I hope you girls have had three Weetabix this morning.’