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And she didn’t know what to do next.

10

When Caffery arrived at the mortuary the remains of Lucy Mahoney were already on the central table, the lights powering down on her, the huge fans in the floor and ceiling roaring, sucking air in from the outside and drawing away the foul smell. The brown-smeared sheet she’d been wrapped in lay open on another table. In it, a scattering of maggots squirmed and crawled over each other.

Caffery put on the mortuary’s bootees and gloves, came into the room, crouched at the head of the block and peered into the mess of her hair.

‘You’re DI Caffery.’

He glanced up. The district DI, a guy who looked as if he spent a lot of time in front of the mirror each morning, stood a pace away. He had his hands in his pockets and was half turned sideways so he didn’t have to look at the body. This was a suicide but Lucy was female, and protocol put a CID officer of at least inspector level at the post-mortem: to rule out rape or sexual assault. From his face Caffery guessed the DI wasn’t ecstatic at having to be there.

‘We met at that SIO’s investigation policy meeting in Taunton. Remember?’

Caffery straightened. ‘Yeah,’ he lied. ‘Good to see you again. How’s it going?’

‘Fine.’ He jingled the loose change in his pockets. Still didn’t look at the body. ‘But Major Crime? For a suicide? Anything about this I should know?’

‘Nothing.’

‘No one warned me.’

‘Don’t worry about it. Forget I’m here.’

‘Would be nice to know, that’s all.’

‘Hello, boys.’ They turned. The pathologist stood in the doorway pulling on latex gloves, eyeing them both. Beatrice Foxton. Caffery knew her from London – they were both refugees from the Met. A formidable woman in her late fifties and drop-dead gorgeous. Beatrice smoked, drank, raced horses and took trekking holidays in places like Uzbekistan. She also had perfect skin, cornflower blue eyes and lots of hair that she wore as it grew out of her head: long, grey and wavy.

‘Lucky me. Two men.’ She made a show of snapping on the second latex glove. Pulled it carefully down her fingers. Gave a dirty smile, as if she was going to ask one of them to bend over. ‘Right. Who’s first?’

Caffery gave a thin smile. ‘Beatrice. You haven’t changed.’

‘Really, Jack. I’m insulted. I meant which of you has primacy? I see two DIs. I don’t know which I’m working with. I have to ask.’

‘It’s him.’ He nodded at his oppo.

Beatrice gave the DI a cool look, then raised an eyebrow at Caffery. He knew what she was thinking: she was wondering what the hell MCIU wanted with a suicide. She wasn’t stupid enough to ask. ‘OK, OK. Come on.’ She tucked her long grey hair into a surgeon’s cap decorated with SpongeBob SquarePants cartoons and gestured at the morticians. ‘Shall we do it?’

As the door closed everyone jostled for space: the coroner’s officer, the district DI, the photographer, who stood at the head of the table chatting quietly with one of the CSIs. The two mortuary attendants stood nearby and Caffery found a place to the right where he could lean against one of the other tables, arms folded. Back on the murder squad in the Met he’d done enough postmortems to have learnt ways to get through them. He’d learnt how not to think about the human being the corpse had once been: how to see decomposed meat and not a person. Scraps of hair, sometimes they didn’t help, sometimes they started a flicker of something, a flicker of reminding him that this was a person, but he’d even learnt to look past those most of the time.

The district DI had found a place by the sinks, as far from the table as possible, and was trying to look nonchalant. He was popping extra-strong mints into his mouth on the heel of his hand and sneaking suspicious glances at Caffery. His face was shiny with sweat.

Beatrice swung the microphone on a rotating arm out over the table so it was near her mouth. She gave the date, the time, the place, the names of those present. ‘I’m looking at the remains of a woman presumed to be…?’ She glanced at the DI.

‘Uh – Lucy Mahoney.’ He tore his eyes away from the corpse, from the sodden clothing drenched in brown fluids, and forced himself to look at Beatrice. ‘That’s what we’re thinking. Date of birth, oh two oh one ’seventy-eight. Been a misper for three days.’

‘And am I supposed to be looking for an ID too?’

‘Next of kin’s IDed the clothing. Her ex-husband. But she’s…’ he gestured at what was left of the corpse’s face ‘… not really in a state for him to ID.’

‘Have we got any personal descriptives?’

‘He’s a bit fragile about it at the moment. Someone’s trying to reach the family liaison officer from when she was a misper, hoping he or she’s got something in the descriptive file, something more detailed. But on the plus side we don’t have to wait for dentals from the dentist or the practice board because the department right here in the hospital has her records on file. She had an extraction under anaesthetic two months ago. Can you believe our luck? They should be here any time now.’

‘In that case, if she’s out of rigor…’ Beatrice switched off the mic, lifted Mahoney’s hand and flexed the arm ‘… which – ah, yes – she is, nice and bendy, I’ll do some bitewings and some periapicals when we’re done. Save the poor ex the trauma of looking at her.’

She switched the mic back on and checked the hanging scale digital readout.

‘Clothed, the subject weighs fifty-five kilos. Usual caveat, though, that there’s considerable decomposition so I suggest it would be lunacy to take that as a reliable indicator of weight before death.’ She looked up at the morticians. ‘Fester? Lurch?’ Caffery watched Beatrice, half a smile twitching his mouth. He’d never known anyone quite like her. Every PM she did, whatever mortuary, she always called the morticians Fester and Lurch. And always got away with it too. Incredible. ‘Move her up a bit.’

The morticians shifted the body so that what was left of Lucy’s neck was resting on the block there. Beatrice walked slowly around the table, talking into the mic as she went, bending every now and then to inspect any part of the body that caught her attention. ‘The decedent is wearing a long green skirt – some sort of velvet – a blouse patterned with flowers, striped woollen sweater, striped tights, lace-up boots, also with a pattern of some description. Clothing has been photographed and logged, so now I’m going to remove it.’

She took her time snipping away at the skirt, peeling it away from the places it had become stuck to the skin, cutting through the sodden blouse. She used a hook to pull the bra out, it was embedded so deep into the flesh. Under the clothing Lucy’s flesh was different, not black and covered with maggots, but hard and soapy – duck-egg blue. Soon all her clothing had been clipped away and passed to the crime-scene manager, who was now checking that each article was properly bagged and labelled. There was a set of door-keys in her pocket, but nothing else. No handbag, money or makeup.

‘Where was she found?’

‘Next to a railway line.’

‘Urban?’

‘Rural.’

‘She’s done well,’ Beatrice said. ‘Not been pulled around too much. Sometimes they come to me in twenty different bags – the way foxes scatter a corpse around, you’d think it was a game. Do you remember that woman on the golf course in Beckenham? You worked on it, Jack, if I recall. Took six men all day to find all of her and there were still bits missing. Still, s’pose foxes’ve got to eat too.’ She bent over and addressed the corpse. ‘All right, my love. I’m just going to move you a little.’ She lifted the body at the hips. Peered under it. Fluid seeped slowly out from between the slack, yellowish buttocks. ‘There are plenty of post-mortem artefacts here.’