‘Could that have occurred last night?’ asked the stockier of the detectives. He was a sergeant, Harry thought. A sergeant called Russell. Luke Russell.
‘Not impossible,’ said Clarke. ‘But if you look at the X-rays taken for the coroner’s post-mortem, the lines of breakage are very similar. Later on today, we’ll take more X-rays. We can compare the two, just to be on the safe side.’
‘If her body was subjected to a post-mortem examination,’ asked the tall, thin detective, whom Harry thought was the more senior of the two, ‘wouldn’t it be obvious? Don’t you have to cut the chest open, remove the organs?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ said Clarke. ‘A full internal post-mortem involves cutting through the ribcage and removing the breastplate. The internal organs are taken out, examined, put inside a biohazard bag and replaced inside the chest cavity. The top of the skull is sawn open so the brain can be examined. All very difficult signs to miss.’
‘So…’
‘Unfortunately, not much help to us here because a full internal post-mortem wasn’t done on Lucy Pickup, just an external examination. It’s always a bit of a judgement call, whether or not to go the whole way and open the body up. The circumstances surrounding the death are taken into account, quite often the wishes of the family are considered. My guess is that the examiner at the time didn’t feel the full Monty was merited. What we do have, though, are signs of the embalming work done.’
Clarke turned to one of his assistants, ‘Pass me that bag, please, Angela,’ he said. The older of the two lab assistants took a clear plastic bag from the counter behind her and handed it to him. He held it up to the light, beckoning the officers closer. To Harry, at the back, the bag looked empty.
‘What we have in this bag,’ said Clarke, ‘is an eye cap. Can you see? Looks a bit like a very large contact lens. Embalmers use them to keep the eyelids closed, make the deceased look like they’re sleeping peacefully.’ He reached a gloved hand inside the bag and removed the translucent plastic disc. ‘We found this lodged inside number one’s skull,’ he said. ‘It would have been placed on the eye with adhesive to keep the eyelid in place.’ He returned it to the bag and handed it back to his assistant.
‘We also found traces of wire in the jaw,’ he said. ‘Consistent with the type used by embalmers to keep the lips together. And if you look at the skull, gentlemen-’ He moved back to the body on the gurney. The others followed and gathered at the head end. Harry moved just close enough to show willing. Clarke was pointing out where the fractured pieces of the skull lay separate from the head. ‘If you look carefully,’ he said, ‘you can see where the skull appears to have been glued together in places. Repairing an injury in that way is classic embalming procedure. It’s all about preserving the body and making it as presentable as possible for the relatives in the days leading up to the funeral. Interestingly, this is the only one of the three showing any signs of embalming. We’ll send tissue off for analysis, of course. Formaldehyde is pretty nasty stuff, tends to hang around for a while.’
Clarke stepped away from the body, peeled off his gloves and dropped them in a biohazard disposal bin. Reaching up, he took a new pair from a dispenser. ‘We can also do a DNA analysis to be absolutely sure,’ he said, pulling on the gloves. ‘I understand the parents are coming in this morning, but if you ask me, I’m 95 per cent certain this is the little lady whose grave was disturbed last night. This is Lucy Pickup.’
No one spoke. Above their heads the fans of the air-conditioning unit suggested a coolness in the room that Harry just did not feel.
‘Right,’ said Clarke, and Harry almost expected to see him rolling up his sleeves. ‘That’s the easy bit over with. Now let’s have a look at her two friends, shall we?’
DS Russell glanced over at Harry, as if wondering how he’d respond to any suggestion of disrespect. Harry dropped his eyes. When he looked up again, the pathologist had turned to the second gurney. The others gathered round.
‘This child is a very similar size,’ said the detective inspector. ‘How sure can you be that this isn’t Lucy Pickup?’
‘These remains haven’t been in the ground for ten years,’ replied Clarke, without even pausing to think. ‘I’d be surprised if they’ve been in soil for more than a couple of months. Completely different state of preservation.’
Harry stepped closer and DS Russell moved aside to allow him to approach the gurney.
‘Number three is the same,’ said Clarke, indicating the third trolley. ‘Can you see?’
‘Not skeletonized at all,’ said Rushton. ‘They still have skin. They look…’
‘Dry?’ suggested Clarke, nodding his head. ‘They should. They’re mummified.’
Harry looked from one child to the next. They were, as the pathologist said, completely dry, as though something had sucked all the moisture from their bodies. Their skin was shrivelled, dark as old leather, wrapped like cling-film over their small bones. Their scalps still had hair, there were tiny fingernails on their hands. ‘Incorruptible,’ he murmured to himself.
‘There are no bandages,’ said DS Russell. ‘I thought mummies were wrapped in bandages.’
‘Mention mummies and everyone thinks of Ancient Egypt,’ said Clarke. ‘But strictly speaking, a mummy is just a corpse whose skin and organs have been preserved by exposure to something like chemicals, extreme cold or lack of air. The Egyptians and a few other cultures created their mummies artificially, but mummies occur naturally the world over. Most typically in cold, dry climates.’
‘It can’t happen in the ground?’ asked Rushton.
Clarke shook his head. ‘Not in normal soil, anyway. There’s a property in peat bogs that prevents oxygen getting to the body and so halts the process of decay. That’s why we find so many preserved bodies in peat.’
‘Could these be peat bodies?’ asked Rushton.
‘Doubt it. No sign of staining. My guess is that these two were kept above ground, somewhere cold and dry, where the oxygen supply was limited. Some time within the last two or three months – we can have an entomologist check insect activity, give us a clearer idea – they were moved from wherever they’d been kept and put in the grave with Lucy. If I were you, gentlemen, I’d be asking why.’
For a few seconds, there was no sound in the room but breathing.
‘St Barnabas number two would have been around 105 centimetres tall,’ continued Clarke, ‘putting her in the three-to-five-year age bracket. From what I can tell from the skull sutures, she’d be in the upper half of that scale, maybe around four. Our best friends, though, in these cases, are the teeth.’ He indicated the area around the jaw bone. ‘Primary dentition consists of twenty teeth commonly known as the milk teeth. These start to erupt at around six months and are usually fully through by three years old. From about twenty-four months onwards, the adult teeth start to form underneath the milk teeth.’ He ran a gloved finger along the jaw bone. ‘Milk teeth start to be lost at around five to six years old,’ he continued. ‘Of course, this does vary quite considerably from one family to the next, but a child who has lost several of their front milk teeth is likely to be at least seven or eight. The adult teeth come through in an order that looks random but isn’t. This makes it relatively easy to age the skull of a young child. There are even some pretty good charts I can show you, once we’ve got the bones clean and can see the teeth properly.’
‘Any idea at this stage?’ asked the DI, whose name Harry simply couldn’t remember. Dave? Steve?
‘Tricky until we do the X-rays, but from what I can tell, number two appears to have a full set of milk teeth, suggesting a child between four and six years old.’
‘Boy or girl?’ asked Rushton. Both detectives looked at the senior officer, then back to the body.