‘We’ll leave that to you, too,’ said Blake. ‘And we’ve seen all we want here.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Or rather not enough. There’s not a tyre tread to be seen and a herd of elephants couldn’t have trodden the side track and undergrowth any flatter.’
‘And the guy who found the body heard nothing, saw nothing and knows nothing,’ added Harding. ‘It was the dog, obviously, who found it: smelled it.’
‘Maybe there’ll be something from the autopsy,’ said the disappointed Poncellet.
The mortuary attendants emerged from the tent with the remains sealed inside a body bag, leaving it on the ambulance gunney while they added their overalls to the dying bonfire.
Claudine and Rosetti, both long inured to the horror of violent death, returned to the city separately from the others, their bodies cramped together in the front of the ambulance, each aware of the closeness of the other but not acknowledging it. It was, thought Claudine, a bizarre surrounding in which to come physically closer to the man than she ever had before.
There were changing facilities at the mortuary and Claudine stripped and showered with strongly disinfected emulsion before re-suiting and re-masking herself, sprinkling the inside of the protective clothing with disinfecting powder. She only bothered with bra and pants beneath.
The body was already on the metal dissecting table when she entered the examination room, Rosetti, the Belgian pathologist and the photographer about to start. Three of the American forensic scientists were in the side laboratory in which Claudine and Rosetti had earlier examined the amputated toe. One was already working on the hessian. The other two were waiting to test samples from the body.
Rosetti led the dissection but in consultation with the other surgeon. Their masks, as well as Claudine’s, were electronically linked, enabling them to communicate with each other. Everything said was automatically recorded. Rosetti dictated quietly, in French, and formally, according to the accepted medical format. He identified himself, the Belgian and the mortuary and stipulated the date and the time. He also named Claudine as an official observer.
He worked quickly but methodically, removing facial skin scrapings, body fluid, head and pubic hair and finger and toenail samples for the waiting forensic experts. He had to break the jaw to carry out the dental examination. When he sawed into the chest cavity – carrying the opening up to the humped left shoulder – they were all covered in a fine spray of bone and body fluid and had to stop to sponge clean each other’s visors. At Rosetti’s urging, as soon as the chest had been opened, the Belgian pathologist sectioned several lung samples for the side laboratory, first having each photographed. Rosetti also had several pictures taken of the anal distension before carrying out an internal examination. To do so he had to turn the collapsing body on to its front. Having done so he shaved the back of the head up to the crown, pointing out to the other man the patterned discoloration that became visible.
Until that moment Rosetti had completed ignored Claudine. Now he turned, although keeping strictly to medical protocol, declaring for the recording that he was interrupting the autopsy for preliminary discussion. And gave the time – 5.45 a.m. – of the break.
It was, literally, like an alarm clock awakening Claudine. Her first impulse was to excuse herself and leave at once but just as quickly she realized she had more than enough time to listen to what Rosetti had stopped to tell her. There was just the possibility there would be something she could use in what he said, although for what she wanted to achieve she doubted it.
Rosetti did not come to her immediately. From the side laboratory he collected the clipboard log, flicking through the several attached notes as he approached.
‘A professional male prostitute,’ declared Rosetti. There was a metallic playback to his voice through the headset. ‘Very active. I wouldn’t put him older than seventeen but I found tunnelling during the internal anal examination. The epithelium is thick, too, indicating constant intercourse…’ Rosetti went to the clipboard. ‘There were traces of make-up on the facial skin.’ He paused. ‘Also of a glue that quite heavily impregnated the hessian in which the body was wrapped…’
The clock on the autopsy wall registered 6.05 a.m. Claudine saw, impatiently. Why hadn’t she thought of it before! Why! Why! Why!
‘There was also the same varnish on the nails that we found on the severed toe,’ continued Rosetti.
‘How long has he been dead?’ asked Claudine, forcing the calmness. Six eight.
‘Sometime during the last fortnight,’ said Rosetti. ‘I can’t be more definite than that. There is still some residual rigor: that’s why the shoulder snapped when the body was thrown down. It was just picked up, obviously from a vehicle, and tossed aside, landing on the shoulder. That’s why it had rolled almost completely free of the hessian. As you saw there was no attempt to conceal it.’
‘What the caller told Smet Gaston was going to do, just get rid of it,’ remembered Claudine. ‘Anything special about the hessian? It looked comparatively new.’
‘It was, although he’d been wrapped in it for a long time.’ He looked quickly at his clipboard. ‘Forensic say it’s high-quality sacking: the sort of stuff used for wrapping things of value.’
‘How did he die?’
Rosetti led her to the dissecting table. Claudine followed, unworried by the closeness to a partially dissected carcase. He pointed to the opened anus, then to the blackened pattern on the back of the shaven head.
‘They’re finger bruising; could be either ante or post death. Hands being pressed either side of the head. I think it was during anal intercourse, not necrophilia. There’s no rectal lesion or tearing, which there would have been if entry was forced after death. The lungs are bubble-enlarged, definitely showing suffocation. During the act of buggery his face was forced into something soft, most likely a pillow, until he died. The anus is distended because muscles don’t contract after death.’ He indicated another pattern, wounds this time. ‘Bite marks. Which could give us a jaw formation impression of the killer. I think the penis was bitten, too.’
Momentarily Claudine lost her impatience to leave the room. Almost to herself she said: ‘And that was done by one of the people who’ve got the ten-year-old child we’re trying to get back unharmed.’
‘Yes,’ said Rosetti. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever examined a worse manic sex attack. It’s totally animal.’
‘I’ve got to go. Now!’
‘But…’
‘Later.’ It was six fifteen.
Claudine ran clumsily from the room, hampered by the encumbering suit. Remembering the victim’s homosexuality and the spray of the body fluids she forced herself to slow, stripping off the protective clothing, and was even more careful against outside contact while thrusting it down the incinerator chute.
It was six twenty-three when she emerged from the shower, six twenty-eight when she burst into the corridor, searching wildly for a telephone. And physically collided with Peter Blake.
‘I’ve been stupid,’ she gabbled. ‘If we tell Smet this early he’ll call…’
‘I already did,’ Blake said, holding her at arm’s length, smiling. ‘And he called, too. Twice. And we got the numbers. Felicite is Felicite Galan. She lives at the Boulevard Anspach. Gaston’s name is Mehre. He’s an antique dealer in Antwerp.’ The smile expanded. ‘We’re well up to speed, so you don’t have to run.’
With the image of the distorted and sexually mutilated body horrifically vivid in her mind throughout the remainder of the long day, Claudine couldn’t dispel the feeling mat to run was exactly what she – all of them – had to do. To run as fast as they could in every newly pointed direction and break any law to get to Mary Beth.
It was irrational and unprofessional, she accepted, and totally opposite from what they actually had to do. Which was to proceed step by step with the utmost care. Make no unpremeditated move until they’d located Felicite Galan and established the child was with her, and only then risk a strike to prevent Mary Beth being the next disfigured body on the mortuary slab.