The Silent Sleep of the Dying (Eisenmenger-Flemming Forensic Mysteries) (6 page)

Denny grinned.

"I opened one up. I thought I'd leave the other one for you."

Hartmann didn't like the way his lips smiled and his voice assumed a faint cruelty.

They were in the body store, a rectangular room in which there were forty-eight fridges and four freezer compartments, two mortuary registers (one for hospital deaths, the other for deaths outside the hospital), a wooden measure and a hydraulic body trolley which could be raised to any height so that bodies could be put into and taken from the higher fridges. Hartmann had just come from the male changing room, a deeply depressing chamber which contained battered lockers, sundry items of male clothing (many of which seemed to be perpetually sweat-soaked) a rather sorry collection of weight-lifting equipment, and quite an astonishing collection of pornography. There was also a shower and a small toilet but Hartmann had never had the courage to investigate that particular part of the room.

Changing consisted of trying to find somewhere to put his clothes (the floor was filthy, all the hooks were either occupied or broken and the lockers, perhaps logically, were all locked), trying to find some clean theatre "blues" (there were usually none to be seen and a visit to the laundry room then had to be made — this room resembled a set from a gruesome horror picture) and then trying to locate his Wellington boots; although they had his name on, they were apparently in constant use by anyone and everyone.

Once attired, he would cross to the body store by way of a room that housed spare instruments, specimens for later histological examination and, more often than not, a registrar performing a foetal autopsy. Every time he encountered some poor unfortunate engaged on such a task, Hartmann felt sympathy welling up within him, so vivid were the ghastly memories of his time spent in paediatric pathology.

In this room were the gowns, plastic aprons and rubber gloves — assuming he was lucky and they had been replenished. This time his luck was in, and it was on his way through the body store to the dissection room that Denny accosted him.

Denny was tall and thin and short haired. He claimed to have been a skinhead earlier in his short life and his general demeanour supported that proud boast; certainly Hartmann had never felt the urge to contest it with him, nor to make jocular remarks about his ginger hair and freckled face. Denny regularly reminisced about fights he had won, people he had "decked," and women he shagged.

In actual fact, Hartmann rather liked Denny. He was intelligent, for all his violence, and could be pleasant company. Certainly it paid Hartmann to be companionable, because it not only meant that he was assisted rather than obstructed when doing autopsies, but also because he received a regular supply of cremation papers to sign and thus collect the fee for.

Hartmann had never met Denny's father but he assumed he was a man who considered himself to have a fantastic sense of humour. Either that or he was immensely dim, for he had thought it normal to name his two sons Denny and Lenny; bad enough in itself, but catastrophic when combined with the surname of Tennyson; Hartmann had often wondered what Alfred, Lord, made of it all from his presumably lofty vantage point.

"You've got company," Denny informed him in a voice that was not only not confidential but was positively boastful of the fact.

Hartmann showed interest but only of the polite variety. A clinician, he assumed, although Denny's demeanour made him suspicious. "Have I?"

Denny nodded but said no more on the subject. "Let me know when you want some help," was all he said. He walked out of the body store whistling and left Hartmann vaguely uncertain of why he was worried.

Walking through the wide doorway to the dissection room, the uncertainty left him. He didn't have Denny's heightened sense of what was "police" and what was "non-police," (Denny moved in a world where this was the single most important survival trait) but he could tell that the man and woman waiting side by side in the clinicians' gallery were not doctors.

The clinicians' gallery was slightly raised with respect to the rest of the large room and separated from it by thick perspex screens which came up to head level of anyone performing a dissection and waist level of anyone in the gallery. It ran for the entire length of the room. The dissection room itself held six white porcelain tables, all topped with stainless steel trays perforated with rows of slits. Over each table was a bright light and at the base of each was a water supply connected to a hose. Two of the tables were occupied, one by an elderly man who was naked and who had been eviscerated, leaving his body open and empty like a primitive, landed boat; on the other table was a white body bag, clean and bright.

Hartmann's entrance made the two visitors look up at him and move to the perspex divider. It was the man who spoke. He was losing his hair and his face was creased with fatigue; he exuded a kind of masculinity that Hartmann envied. The woman was younger and undoubtedly extremely attractive. She had, though, a cruelty around her eyes that Hartmann found unnerving. She hung slightly back, clearly the subordinate.

"Dr Hartmann?"

"Yes."

"My name's Lambert, this is DI Wharton. I believe Mr Cowper told you we might be here."

Experiencing irritation and concern in equal measure, Hartmann shook his head. "He didn't mention anything."

Lambert sighed and Wharton smiled a smile of contempt.

"I see. Well, the fact is we're ever so slightly intrigued by the death of this girl, Sweet. We can't find any evidence to suggest that there's anything to worry about but the suggestion has been made that she died from burns. The circumstances in which she was found would argue against that, however."

"You're sure, are you? You're positive that there are no suspicious circumstances?"

Hartmannn's plea for reassurance was understandable. He would be chewed up, swallowed and then excreted by the forensic pathologists if he undertook a post-mortem on somebody who, it subsequently emerged, had been the victim of a crime. It had happened to him once before and he did not want to repeat the experience.

Lambert shook his head and, although his superior couldn't see her, Wharton did likewise. "None at all," he said. What did it matter to him? The door from the department opened and one of the Registrars, Belinda Miller, came in.

"Mind if I watch?"

Belinda was short and slightly overweight with short black hair and a mobile, boyish face. She was the brightest of the registrars and Hartmann got on well with her. According to the registrars' rota it was her week for autopsies but juniors were not permitted to do Coronial cases and there were no hospital post-mortems that day. Hartmann smiled and consented, slightly relieved to have an ally in the room.

Hartmann glanced at the body in the bag. He had been hesitating but knew in his soul that he was at least going to have a look at it, if only because he was curious. He nodded minimally to Lambert and then turned away. He would have preferred to have done the autopsy on the cyclist first — road traffic accidents were easy money, the autopsy merely a catalogue of superficial, bony and soft tissue injuries — but he thought it would be unwise to antagonize his guests.

"Denny!"

The shout echoed indistinctly around the room and produced no immediate response. He began to unzip the body bag, knowing that Denny had heard and that he would take his time. No amount of screaming, calling or pleading would alter that. Anyway, his first sight of the girl immediately struck Denny from his mind.

Hartmann was used to Death and he was used to the varied marks that Death left. He knew that some people would emerge from their inevitable encounter with Death apparently unscathed in body, some even (those who chose to leave this life with the aid of the internal combustion engine and a long length of hosepipe) looking in ruddier health than ever they did in life. Many would disgrace themselves, soiled in vomit, blood or even faeces and a few would be disfigured by abrasions, lacerations, even amputations.

But this girl …

He heard Belinda whistle softly and when he looked up at Lambert there was a small smile of little amusement. Lambert raised his eyebrows.
See
what
I
mean
?

Denny came in, followed by Lenny. "Wotcha want, boss?"

"Can you give me a hand getting her out of the body bag?"

Denny signalled to Lenny and they both came over. Hartmann was effectively pushed aside as they both quickly and fairly efficiently rolled the body first one way and then the other so that the unzipped body bag could be taken away

Lenny asked, "Do you want her undressed?"

Lenny was two years older than his brother and considerably less bright. He wore glasses which he presumably thought were okay but which were square, thick-rimmed and black; they eliminated any chance that people might think he was intelligent and any chance that he would ever have much sexual success. His love life seemed to consist of keeping the ugly one occupied with numbing conversation while Denny rogered the attractive one in the next room. Occasionally Denny would give him a cast-off but even then, as far as Hartmann could work out, Lenny's usual line of attack was to soak the girl in alcohol before launching himself upon her unconscious body.

"Please."

The word "undressing" was accurate only in that it referred to the removal of clothes. It consisted in this context of opening the dressing gown and then taking a pair of scissors and slitting the clothing up the front. Hartmann could imagine that under other circumstances this was their idea of foreplay.

The nightie, rather prim and proper, fell away and revealed the extent of what Death had chosen to inflict on this particular human.

Her entire skin seemed to have been burned off her, leaving the raw, redness of the underlying soft tissues and these seemed to glow with warm, bloodied pain even in the harsh light of the dissection room. There was not a square centimetre of her body that was not thus affected, even the soles of her feet, her scalp and, Hartmann saw as the boys tilted her to pull out the nightie and dressing gown, her back.

He moved closer as they stepped back. He glanced up at them but they were passive, Lenny because he was stupid, Denny because it wouldn't have been manly to show any emotion at the sight of a corpse, no matter how bizarre.

There were skin scales present, he now saw. He put out a gloved hand to touch her abdomen and rubbed the surface gently. A few small flakes came away. Then he noticed small, irregular lumps, darker than the background, scattered about her body, clustered in the groins and the axillae.

Suddenly relieved he looked again at Lambert.

"I don't think this was caused by burning of any kind."

Lambert said only, "Oh?" Behind him Wharton looked disappointed. Belinda had moved forward in order to see better. Her face bore a look of concentration and interest. She had a way of puckering her lips when she was thinking that had often struck Hartmann as oddly attractive. Lambert's question interrupted his musings on Belinda.

"What is it, then?"

"It's some sort of skin disease. Psoriasis, maybe."

Lambert frowned as he sifted through his vast medical knowledge.

"Can you die of that?"

Which was Hartmann's problem. "Not usually," he admitted, "But then you don't usually get it as severely as this."

He turned back to the corpse and asked Denny for a knife. This was produced and he made the first incision, starting at the neck, just in front of the larynx. He drew the knife down over the sternum, onto the abdomen, curved gently around the umbilicus and then down to the pubic hair.

"Could you get me a pot for histology, please?"

Both Denny and Lenny went off, although only Lenny returned, in his hand a small white plastic pot that was half-filled with formalin, the preservative that was routinely used. Hartmann had cut off a thin strip of skin from the edge of the incision and he dropped this into the pot. He could hear Denny whistling in the body store. Then there was a long, loud ring. Denny moved across the doorway between the dissection room and the body store in response to this. There was the sound of voices and various clanging noises followed by a car door being shut.

"I think you can carry on the evisceration now, Lenny."

Lenny grunted, displaying a lack of enthusiasm for this request but nonetheless taking the proffered knife from Hartmann. He might have been stupid but he was undoubtedly quicker and surer at removal of the organs than Hartmann. Two undertakers, dressed in dark clothes, appeared in the body store. They didn't look into the dissection room. Any impression of reverence that the dark clothing might have given was dispelled by the open shirt necks, the ties at half-mast and the coarse laughter that surrounded their discussion with Denny.

Lenny began to strip the skin off the ribs on the left side so that the breasts hung away like sandbags. As he did this he pulled away the edge of the abdominal wall to expose the left lobe of the liver and the stomach. Hartmann said suddenly, "Hang on, Lenny."

Lenny looked up, the welcoming light of intelligence singularly missing from his eyes.

"Look." Hartmann gestured down at the abdomen. Lenny grunted and stood back.

"What is it?" Lambert's question came from behind Hartmann.