When this PM was finished, another Home Office postmortem, on the human remains recovered from the crusher site, would be carried out. But at the moment, Cleo had been told, a search was continuing there for further body parts, especially for the head and other limbs which were currently absent.
On a metal tray above Florentina Shima’s body, Theobald was carefully dissecting her brain. Her sternum had been removed and placed across her pubis. Her breasts and stomach, either side of the incision down her midriff, were clamped back, exposing her ribcage and intestines coiled beneath. On the wall in front was a chart for listing the weights of the brain, lungs, heart, liver, kidneys and spleen of each cadaver examined here.
Over the course of the next hour her brain was weighed, then placed in a white plastic bag, ready to be put inside her ribcage when Theobald was finished, so that when her body was finally released to an undertaker, she would be buried or cremated with all her organs.
Some while later, after dissecting her heart, lungs, liver and kidneys, occasionally bagging tiny samples for laboratory analysis, and taking blood, urine and vitreous samples for toxicology testing, he moved on to her intestines. After the first incision, Theobald made a rare comment.
‘Oh dear!’
Cleo moved closer, and watched him pull out, to her horror, something with the size and appearance of a chipolata sausage. He made a wider incision, which revealed more of the same. One was split open, spilling out a white powder, much of which had evidently been absorbed into the dead young woman’s body.
Condoms. Each containing a package of a drug. By the time Theobald had finished, Cleo had counted forty-nine. The Exhibits Officer present logged and secured them.
It appeared the initial suspicions had been correct, and that poor Florentina Shima was a drugs mule. Duped by someone totally unscrupulous into swallowing what was probably hundreds of thousands of pounds’ worth, street value, of a drug — heroin or some variety of cocaine, Cleo judged from the colour. The one that had burst had, it would appear, given her a massive and fatal overdose.
Cleo had seen a similar thing, a couple of times before. Doing this job, she saw so much. She had to comfort so many people whose loved ones had been brought in here. Husbands, mothers, fathers, son, daughters, partners who had gone out to work in the morning and died in a car crash. Or had suddenly dropped dead from an aneurism. Or who had been stabbed to death in a pub fight. The last time a body had affected her so much was the Christmas before last. A sixteen-year-old had gone out on his moped to get a pizza for himself and his girlfriend, four days before Christmas. A van had made a sudden U-turn in front of him. She kept looking at him and thinking about what a terrible time this Christmas would be for his girlfriend and family. How crap death so often was for people.
She felt that now, staring down at this beautiful teenager who just the day before had had her whole life in front of her. The victim of some unscrupulous shitbag who had somehow conned her into this, with assurances of a large reward, perhaps a new life.
Who are you? What made you do this? How desperate were you to take this risk? What is your story?
She turned away and hurried back to her office to get a tissue.
66
Sunday 13 August
09.00–10.00
A burning pain in his neck startled Mungo, his eyes heavy and feeling desperate for sleep, and he cried out, but made only a muffled noise.
He heard the sound of waves.
Blinking, he stared around. Shivering with cold, his wrists and his neck hurting, badly. Trying to gather his thoughts. For a moment, he thought he was having a nightmare, but then realized he was awake.
Remembering now.
Help. Help. Help me.
He was shivering from the damp chill and his sodden jeans and shoes, and was perched, precariously, on the concrete ledge. The water had receded and he was no longer immersed from the waist down.
He felt exhausted. He desperately wanted to shift his position, but remembered the wire noose, and was scared to risk moving too much and hanging himself.
Shivering, he wished he had on something warmer than his thin hoodie.
Water was trickling beneath him.
He looked around, ahead, upwards. Above him was a domed brick ceiling. Like a tomb. A shaft of light came through a slit in the wall, reminding him of ones in medieval castles he had seen in Game of Thrones, where archers would stand and fire arrows through. He heard the roar of what sounded like the sea.
Aleksander. Where are you?
He tried to call out his friend’s name, but again his voice stayed trapped in his gullet. He could not open his lips.
What was his friend’s game? He felt totally bewildered. Had Aleksander double-crossed him in some way? Why? What—?
He was remembering the men in black, in balaclavas, entering the room in silence. One of them taping his mouth. The other restraining his hands behind him. The two of them carrying him out. Putting him in the boot of a car. The journey. Rolling around. The stink of petrol. He had lost track of time. Then they hauled him out. He could hear the sound of the sea. Breathed in fresh, salty air. He was carried a short distance. Into a partly submerged chamber or tunnel. Down steps. The dank smell of weed and rotting fish.
The smell in his nostrils now.
Looking around, he noticed slime covering the walls either side of him. And the ceiling. Tendrils of weed on the walls, all the way up almost to the roof. At high tide, this chamber would be completely flooded, he realized. He looked down at the ground below him, one moment covered in water, then just puddles remaining as it retreated. Saw a small, white, dead crab. Another roar of the sea and a small amount of water sluiced in, then retreated. The crab was moved a few inches.
Tide going out. Is good. When tide come back in, is not so good.
Panic-stricken, he wondered what the time was. Daylight. Was the tide going in or out? He tried turning his head to read the time on his watch, but the wire stopped him. He looked up at the ancient-looking brass hoop set into the ceiling above him, and the wire coming down from it, taut, to the noose round his neck. Behind him was the barnacle-encrusted cannon.
‘Gmmmh. Hlllpwwwwww!’ he shouted in frustration through the restraint over his mouth.
Aleksander, you bastard, just what are you bloody doing?
Thoughts strobed through his mind. Where was he? What was the time? Who had brought him here? Why? What was going on?
He heard another sluicing sound of water. Heard it running along the floor beneath him. Saw the little dead crab shoot past him and then get beached as the water retreated. The tide must still be going out. Please. Was it low tide now? His mind went into overdrive, thinking about the geography classes at school which never interested him. Tides. There had been a whole class on tides just recently. The pull of the moon. Spring tides, neap tides, the planets’ effect on the tides. New moons and full moons gave the most extreme tides — the highest and lowest.
The high-water mark was about three feet above him.
It had been a full moon last night.
Which meant the tide would be both at its lowest and highest.
He stared up again at the high-water mark, shaking in terror.
Then he heard the sound of a metal door opening and closing. Footsteps. Thank God! Aleksander finally coming back!
A sudden bright beam of light dazzled him. A camera torch.