The body lay under a sheet, waiting to communicate her final secrets. Ted was already in scrubs and testing his mic. He looked up at her and she slid onto a steel stool. She’d already slathered her top lip with Vicks. Gentle classics played in the background and Kelly absorbed Ted’s calmness. Late afternoon in Ted’s mortuary was a glaring paradox. Death and life in one breath. She felt more alive in here sometimes than she did sat at her desk at Eden House.
It was a moment of serene calm, and one in which she forgot time. Her team at Eden House was busy creating a victim profile for the woman in the hope they’d identify her soon. For now, she was called Water Nymph. The woman had no personal belongings and so the usual social media and phone checks weren’t an option. The unfortunate woman was merely a lump in a heavy-duty bag with a loud zipper that reminded Kelly of an old 50cc motorbike she used to ride in London past the Museum of Childhood.
They’d released an artist’s sketch to the local media hoping someone might identify her.
The postmortem operation began. Seeing a dead body after refrigeration, stripped and bolstered by wedges, ready for autopsy, took away the last vestiges of humanity for Kelly.
‘Contusions consistent with blunt trauma across left mastoid, travelling along sternocleidomastoid muscle. It looks like she was overwhelmed from this side,’ he said, looking up at Kelly. ‘These muscles are torn and badly bruised,’ he added. He pointed to where he observed the worst injuries to the woman’s neck and Kelly got off her stool to get closer.
‘Evidence of some kind of strap used?’ she asked.
‘Not that I can see from the surface wounds. I’ve seen it before when something has been put over the victim’s head, like a jacket or coat. The force of it has damaged her ability to support her own neck.’
‘So, she was surprised,’ Kelly said.
She took in the vision of the woman naked. Ted’s technicians did much of the work of examining the body externally before the coroner got down to the internal state of the victim. Her clothes had been cut off and sent for testing. All they needed was one small drop of DNA to match with a suspect. Her skin was discoloured from rot and bloating. Underneath the rowing boat had provided a cocoon-like oven for the multiplication of pathogens and insect larvae in abundance. It left her skin looking like a modern painting of clouds forming across the sky. The bruising had turned green and purple against a background of a body devoid of lifeblood. It would be poetic if it wasn’t so repulsive.
Her skull was bloody and damaged extensively and Kelly thought about what might have caused it. Kelly didn’t want to imagine the poor girl’s last moments, but she forced herself to for the sake of the life she’d fought so hard to hold on to.
‘Scraping underneath the fingernails,’ Ted said. He worked methodically and it was almost soothing knowing where he’d go next. She knew his routine so well that she felt looked after by him in this space, as much as he looked after the poor souls he was trying to put to rest. Eternity was something she couldn’tunderstand, but Ted made it a little easier. Nobody was more thorough, and if there was anything to find on the body – or inside her – that might aid them further, Ted was the man to find it.
‘This is quite a wound here on her hand.’
Kelly looked at it.
There was a dent in her palm that was deep and appeared like a real hole. In death, the skin hadn’t popped back and healed like it would have if the woman had survived and so it was forever imprinted on her flesh.
‘She fought hard. She’s got several broken fingers too.’
Kelly winced, imagining this small woman fighting her aggressor, knowing she was losing the battle.
‘Her fingers appear stained with something like charcoal,’ he added.
Kelly peered at the digits. ‘Mud?’
‘No, that would have washed off; this is engrained in her ridges and looks like it’s from a habit like handling ink or paint.’
Ted moved lower down the body and Kelly felt her heart pump a little harder. This was where Ted would tell her if he thought the woman had been sexually assaulted and the horror might get even worse.
She had.
‘Sorry,’ Ted said. ‘It’s conclusive, even after her being in the water for a night. The contusions are uniform and consistent with violence.’
‘God, this is so tough. It gets harder,’ Kelly said.
She wouldn’t have said it to anyone but her father because she knew he agreed.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you sit this one out?’
‘No, I need to be here. I’m OK. I promise. Please continue.’
Kelly wiped her eyes on her cardigan sleeve and focused.
‘Wait,’ Ted said.
She looked at him.
He palpated the woman’s abdomen as he took swabs.
