Moran noticed how disheveled Jane looked and could smell the rotting rubbish on her clothes. ‘Don’t take this personally, but...’
‘But what?’
Moran smiled. ‘You stink and look a mess. I suggest you go home to get washed and changed before the post-mortem — and don’t be late.’ Moran walked off.
Jane sighed. ‘Not another bloody post-mortem,’ she said to herself.
Moran, Gibbs and Jane were in the mortuary examination room waiting for Professor Martin. DS Lawrence had already laid out the recovered body parts on the post-mortem table in anatomical order and photographed them. Lawrence had also done Scotch tape lifts on each part to retrieve any fibers from the skin. The search had so far recovered the skinned head, a lower half of a torso cut just below the breast line and above the genitals, left and right upper arms, one right forearm and chewed up left hand, left thigh, left lower leg and foot, all of which were in varying states of decomposition. Lawrence had taken a rough measurement from the top of the head to the heel of the left foot. He estimated their victim was five foot ten to six feet tall. He also surmised that the missing upper torso, genitalia and other body parts had either been dumped elsewhere or taken by foxes.
‘What happened at social services with Simon Matthews?’ Moran asked Jane.
‘I did try and ring you, sir, but you were at the Yard. Mrs. Williams, the senior child care worker, interviewed Simon, and a doctor examined him. They were both of the opinion he had not been sexually assaulted.’
‘So why did Miss Summers suspect that he had been?’
‘It would seem Simon was subdued because he was being bullied and Summers misread the signs,’ Jane answered, careful not to mention Simmonds.
‘Well, I’m relieved the lad wasn’t abused. At least we can put that to bed now and concentrate on finding Aiden Lang. Brenda Matthews can return to her flat, if she wants, but I’ll still keep an armed guard with her until Lang’s under lock and key.’
To everyone’s surprise, DCS Blake suddenly walked in.
‘What’s he doing here?’ Gibbs whispered to Moran.
Moran answered in a low tone, ‘I don’t know... He never told me he was coming. Hopefully he’ll just be a silent observer.’
Professor Martin walked in and slammed his clipboard down on an empty mortuary slab. ‘I hope you lot appreciate I’m missing my Sunday lunch in the pub for this—’ He froze, shocked to see what was laid out on the PM table. ‘Jesus wept. I’ve been a pathologist for twenty-five years and never seen a flayed head like that! I hope the poor bugger was dead or at least drugged when it was done to him.’
The four detectives looked at each other in horror. Even in their worst imaginings, it hadn’t occurred to them that the flaying could have been done whilst the victim was still alive.
‘You said him, Professor. Is the victim definitely male?’ Blake asked.
Martin picked up a scalpel. ‘Long time since I’ve seen you in a mortuary, Blake. Haven’t they got you driving a desk at the Yard now you’re a DCS?’
Blake looked offended. ‘I’m overseeing this murder and the three women’s.’
Martin looked at Lawrence. Whilst Blake’s attention was still drawn to the assembled body parts, he raised his eyebrows and mouthed the word ‘wanker.’ Lawrence nodded in agreement.
The professor stood over the lower torso and proceeded to cut it open with the scalpel. He felt around inside the torso. ‘Well, this bit is male. And I’d say all the parts you’ve recovered so far are from the same body.’ Martin removed the intestine, bladder and other organs, then placed them in a round plastic kitchen bowl.
‘The bladder is intact with some urine still present.’ He picked up a syringe, punctured the bladder, then withdrew the urine, before ejecting it into a small plastic bottle. Using a different syringe, he withdrew some blood from an artery in the left thigh. He handed the blood and urine samples to Lawrence for drugs and poisons testing by the toxicology lab.
Martin then proceeded to examine each body part. ‘The last dismemberment case I worked on was in the late sixties. It was a gang killing in East London—’
‘I told DCI Moran this might be gang related.’ Blake nodded, looking pleased with himself.
Martin looked displeased. ‘How astute of you, Blake. I was going to say the victim had been lured to a flat where he was stabbed to death, then dismembered. They put the bits in bags and threw them into the canal at Bow. Silly buggers didn’t realize that a torso underwater will still bloat from gases created by decomposition.’ Martin laughed, as if it was a fond memory. ‘So of course it floated to the surface.’
‘Was it the Krays?’ Jane asked.
‘Everyone suspected them, but it was never proved,’ Martin said.
‘If it wasn’t for the man walking his dog, we might never have found the body parts,’ Jane mused. ‘People have been avoiding the park because of the rotting rubbish and the rats. Whoever dumped the body probably assumed the rubbish bags would be carted off to a landfill site when the bin strike ended and nobody would be any the wiser.’
Blake threw her a dismissive look. ‘Well, that’s pretty obvious, Tennison.’
Martin shook his head at Blake’s rudeness, then turned his attention to examining the cut edges of the dismembered parts with a magnifying glass. ‘The marks left by the teeth of the saw blade on the bone suggest a hacksaw rather than a thicker and larger handsaw.’
Lawrence got his camera out. ‘I’ll take some close-up scaled photographs of the cut marks on the bone. If we recover any saws, I can do some test cuts on pig bone to see if they produce the same striation marks.’
Martin looked closely at the left hand through the magnifying glass. ‘The fingers and thumb were cut off at the knuckle joint, before the fox had a nibble. Again, most probably with a hacksaw.’
Blake looked shocked. ‘Whoever did this doesn’t want the victim identified. The flayed head makes him unrecognizable and removing the fingers suggests the victim might have a criminal record and could be identified.’
Martin moved onto the head, which had been hacked off where the neck met the shoulders. He slowly peeled back the layers of neck muscle with a scalpel, revealing the underlying bone and cartilage.
‘No signs of bruising on the neck or muscle tissue, and the hyoid bone isn’t fractured or broken.’ Martin shone a torch in the eyes. ‘No petechial hemorrhages in the eyes, either. I think we can safely rule out strangulation as the cause of death, but I’ll just check the tongue to be sure.’ He slowly opened the mouth. ‘Jesus, they’ve even cut out his tongue!’ he exclaimed.
Everyone stepped forward to get a closer look.
‘Cutting out the tongue is a common gangland punishment for police informants,’ Blake pointed out.
‘I think we have become rather saturated with Hollywood gangster movies, don’t you?’ Professor Martin commented.
He spent the next two hours going over every inch of the recovered body parts. Eventually he took off his latex gloves and mortuary gown, and turned to the detectives.
‘The victim could have been stabbed or shot in the heart, since we don’t have that organ. It’s also possible the artery on the missing left thigh was severed and he bled to death. To be honest, I can’t give you definitive cause of death.’
‘Can you give an estimate of his age or time of death?’ Moran asked.
Martin sighed. ‘Hard to tell his exact age with no face. It could be anywhere from twenty to thirty. There are also many variables to consider regarding time of death. The decomposition on some parts is more advanced than others. The parts could have been kept in a fridge or freezer before being dumped. A best-guess scenario would be seven, maybe six days ago — but don’t quote me on it.’