Authors: Michael Robotham
“What was she wearing?”
“A woolen jumper and leggings.”
“You didn’t find any shoes?”
“No, but that’s not unusual. People do strange things when they’re suffering from hypothermia. Some victims think they’re overheating because their skin feels hot and itchy. They take clothes off instead of putting them on. She could have dropped the shoes or kicked them off in the water.”
He picks up a model helicopter from his desk and spins the rotor blade with his forefinger. There are more helicopters on the filing cabinets and shelves.
“I fly them,” he explains, noticing my interest.
“Model helicopters?”
“No, the proper ones,” he laughs. “I have a Robinson R44. I should take you up some time.”
“I’m only in Oxford for a few days.”
“You sound nervous. I’m a very good pilot. Only crashed once. Mechanical failure. My old heart was racing, I can tell you.” He glances at his watch. “My students should be here. Come and observe.”
The post-mortem room has a viewing area overlooking the theatre. A dozen chairs rise in tiers. Students have taken up the front seats, leaning forward to get a better view.
Dr. Leece tugs on his surgical gloves and waves up to them, checking his microphone. His assistant pulls aside a curtain to reveal a pale thin cadaver, bleached even whiter by the brightness of the lights. She is naked, stretched out with her arms against her sides and her legs together.
The dull whiteness of her skin makes her look almost like a marble statue that has been defaced by grazes, scratches, sores and bruises. Her arms and legs are scored with carmine marks and her eyelids are like pools of purple dye. The outline of her rib cage can be traced easily and hip bones stick out sharply where there should be curves.
Dr. Leece begins the post-mortem, reading from his notes.
“At approximately 1300 hours on December 19, at the request of Thames Valley Police, I attended the scene of a death near Abingdon, Oxfordshire. I was logged into the outer cordon of the scene at 1445 hours and approached via a farm track and field. Senior SOCO Marcus Larkin gave me a short background briefing.
“The deceased was a young woman, partially clothed, embedded in ice at the edge of a frozen lake beside a railway line. Heavy snowfall had hidden the body and only her right hand was protruding from the ice.
“Photographs were taken under my direction. She was lying on her side with her head resting on her left shoulder and left upper arm. Her right arm, flexed at the elbow, was wrapped around her chest. Her legs were retracted so that she lay in a fetal position.
“Her clothing consisted of a heavy woolen jumper and dark cotton leggings. She had no underwear. Her feet were bare.
“Ice cutting machinery was necessary to recover the deceased, whose body was transferred to John Radcliffe Hospital, Oxford, on the evening of December 19. The body was received in a white, signature-sealed body bag and wrapped in a black plastic sheet.”
Dr. Leece pauses and glances at the students. “This sort of post-mortem presents a variety of challenges. A frozen body thaws out at different rates—the limbs first, then the head and the torso. Cells can only maintain water if they’re unfrozen and undamaged. They are rupturing as they hit room temperature, which is why I have to work quickly.”
He begins describing what he’s seeing.
“The deceased is of slim build, approximately a hundred and fifty-five centimeters tall, of malnourished appearance, weighing only forty-two kilos. She has blonde wavy shoulder-length hair, cut roughly. Her pubic hair is denuded. Her ears pierced. Her fingernails bitten.”
Dr. Leece pulls open her eyelids.
“At ten degrees Fahrenheit her body would have changed color fully to a pale shade of white with maybe a tint of blue. Her corneas became glazed and the pupils have turned a grayish shade.
“She has two inoculation scars on her forearm and an old curving scar around the outer aspect of the right elbow. She has grazes on the outer skin of her thighs at the widest point of her hips.”
His voice washes over me. Raising my head, I glimpse my face reflected in the glass and try to focus on something other than the post-mortem. I feel foolish, almost cowardly. My worst memories of medical school were cutting up corpses, blunting my scalpel on preserved flesh that had the consistency of frozen butter. Surgery 203—Anatomy—how to dissect a human cadaver.
We were never told the patients’ names, only the cause of death, but that didn’t stop me imagining their lives, their families, their voices, their laughs, their careers. That was my problem, I was told, I imagined too much.
Dr. Leece is still talking. “The arms and legs are symmetrical and there is no visible evidence of acute injuries. No injection marks. Skin somewhat shiny…”
His gloved fingers slide down to her ankles, turning them. “Both ankles show evidence of bruising and old scarring. The skin has been broken and healed.”
He moves higher, stopping. “The large bruise on her left thigh indicates an impact injury. Blunt force. Approximately thirty centimeters long.” Glancing up at the window, Dr. Leece addresses me. “This could be evidence of a vehicle impact. It’s the right height.”
He carries on, until I hear a sudden intake of breath. Without warning, he steps backwards, raising his arms. He’s stumbled against a metal trolley, upending a tray. Instruments clatter to the floor.
From the body, he looks up at the viewing window, like an actor stranded in the middle of a stage, lines forgotten.
Then he finds his voice.
“Get out of here! All of you!”
The students are staring at each other—nobody reacting.
He yells this time. “I said get out! The lesson is over.”
He turns to his assistant. “Get me DCI Drury.”
Leece closes his eyes for a second, but opens them, swaying slightly, as though he’s trapped on an out-of-control merry-go-round and the world is lurching past him. His hands are resting on the cool edge of the stainless steel bench as he stares at the cadaver. This should have been a routine job. Now it scares him.
W
hen I was a kid
we had this board game called Operation. It’s the one where you pretend to be a surgeon and use tweezers to take things out of a patient, stuff like funny bones and broken hearts and butterflies in the stomach.
Right now I feel as though someone has taken something out of me and left a Tash-sized hole behind. I imagine I can feel the outline with my fingers.
I stand on the bench and look through the crack at the bottom of the window. It’s daytime. The snow has gone, leaving mud and flattened grass. The trees are like ogres with outstretched arms.
I need a plan. What if George isn’t coming back? What if he just leaves me here? What if Tash didn’t make it? What if she can’t find her way back?
Normally he comes every few days. I’m down to my last can of food: baked beans and cheese. Ugh! When Tash was here we’d have these “would you rather” discussions. Most people have choices like tongue-kissing your granddad or eating a bucket of snot. But we had to decide between dying of cold or starving to death.
I remember the first time we were in the basement when George came. We heard something heavy being moved above the trapdoor. Then his voice: “Are you decent?”
He laughed; his little joke.
The trapdoor opened.
“Mind yourselves,” he said. A rope snaked down and slapped against the concrete floor.
Tash tied the end of the rope to the gas bottle and he pulled it up, before lowering down a full one. Then came a basket of food: cans of tuna, baked beans, rice and pasta.
He called for Tash. Told her to climb the ladder. She told him to fuck off. We stared into the blackness of the hole. Waiting. A nozzle appeared. A hose. He released the valve and hosed us down. Water like ice, stinging our backs and legs. We curled up in the corner, hugging each other, trying to escape the spray.
He wet our beds and all our clothes, before he turned off the lights and left us in the dark.
We hung the blankets from the ladder, trying to get them dry. Then we turned on the gas ring and took turns drying our underwear and T-shirts. I thought I was going to die that night.
Two days later he came back. He dropped the rope. Emptied the bedpan. He asked for Tash. This time she went.
Because the ladder doesn’t reach all the way to the trapdoor, she had to stand on the top rung and raise her arms. He reached down and grabbed her by her wrists, hoisting her upwards. The trapdoor closed.
It seemed like she was gone for a long time. Longer than a day on Venus, my dad would say, or longer than a month of wet Sundays. I thought of all the things that might happen to her, which only frightened me, so I stopped trying to think.
When the trapdoor opened, I wanted to scream I was so happy.
He lowered Tash down. She wore different clothes—a pretty dress, with clean underwear. She had shampooed her hair. She smelled clean. Fresh.
“What happened?”
She didn’t answer.
“Are you all right?”
She crawled onto her bunk and rolled over, facing the wall.
The next morning, she didn’t get out of bed. She lay in her pretty dress, not talking.
“Please tell me what happened.”
“Nothing.”
“Did he do something to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
I stroked her hair. We lay there for a long time. She was feverish and then shivering with cold.
“We’re not getting out of here, are we?” I said.
She shook her head.
Normally she was the one who cheered me up. She was always coming up with elaborate escape plans that needed things that we didn’t have—like shovels, or explosives, or guns.
A week later the same thing happened. George opened the trapdoor. Called her name. Tash climbed the ladder.
Again I worried that she might not come back. I didn’t want to be alone.
This time she returned with treats—chocolate and soap and magazines. A part of me was jealous. Her hair was shiny and clean. Her legs were shaved… and under her arms. She smelled like a Body Shop and she wasn’t hungry. We were always hungry.
I lay on the bunk that night and watched the shadows move across the wall beneath the window. Jealous. She was his favorite. He gave her nice things.
“What happens up there?” I asked her.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“Do you know where we are?”
“No.”
“What did you see?”
“Nothing.”
Then she curled up and went to sleep. She didn’t have nightmares, not like me. Sometimes she slept so quietly I got frightened that she was dead and would tiptoe over to her bunk and put my face close to her face, listening; or I’d blow gently in her ear until she snuffled and rolled over.
Then I’d be sure.
T
he hospital cafeteria is an echoing space full of scraping chairs and easy-wipe tables. It’s mid-afternoon and already dark outside. The lunchtime meals are warmed over in the trays: lasagna and baked vegetables and dried-out roast.
John Leece slumps in a chair, staring at the window as though looking at something that he can’t quite bring into focus.
“I’ve never really understood what people see in alcohol, but sometimes I wish I was a drinker,” he says. “It seems to bring people comfort. My father wouldn’t touch the stuff, but my mother has the occasional sherry or lager shandy.”
“What did you see in there?”
“I can’t comment until I talk to the police.”
“OK, we won’t talk about the post-mortem. I’ll ask you general questions.”
He nods.
“How long would a person survive outside without shelter in a blizzard like the one on Saturday?”
“A matter of hours.”
“The bruises and cuts…”
“She was wandering around in a blizzard. She could have bumped into trees and fallen into ditches.”
“Nobody has reported her missing.”
“Maybe she’s not a local.”
“They haven’t found a vehicle.”
Dr. Leece presses his thumbs into his eye sockets. “I don’t know. Sometimes I’m grateful that I don’t have to understand human behavior.”
Augie Shaw saw a woman standing barefoot in the middle of the road. It has to be the same one. She didn’t take her shoes off next to the pond. She wasn’t wearing any to begin with. Why run off? Why was she outside in a blizzard? Who was she running from?
“Did you notice anything else unusual about the scene?” I ask.
“We found a dog.”