Sarah sat upright in the chair and her pulse rate quickened at the thought. McKirrop’s body would be lying in the mortuary. She could simply go along and see for herself. Any probing she would have to do would be disguised by the wound site. The pathologist need never know that she’d interfered with the body. The thought made her pulse beat even faster. ‘Interfered with the body’ — that sounded serious. She supposed that it was.
For a medical practitioner to interfere with a cadaver before a legally required post mortem sounded like a very serious offence indeed. “Taking a look” could turn out to be professional suicide if she was found out and someone chose to make it so. Despite the fact that she would not be altering or trying to cover anything up, the thought that Dr Derek Logan might be consulted in any repercussions if she were caught was not a comforting one. What should she do?
Sarah’s need-to-know triumphed over the temptation to play safe. She just had to know about that head wound. She checked her watch; it was just after nine fifty. The others wouldn’t be back until around eleven. That gave her plenty of time if everything went smoothly. She returned briefly to her room to change into a sweater and slacks and slip on a suede jacket.
Sarah hit the first hurdle as she hurried along the bottom corridor to the stairs leading down to the basement where the mortuary and post mortem suite were located. She suddenly realised that the mortuary would be locked. She knew that she could get a key at the front office but that would mean signing it out and then it would be known that she had visited the mortuary. There was another key, she remembered. The hospital porters had a key of their own for use when a patient died during the night and they had to remove the body from the wards. It was kept beside the ‘dead cart’, the nickname given to the covered trolley used to transport the dead from the wards when the occasion arose. The cart itself was kept in a little outhouse attached to the porters’ lodge by the front gate.
Sarah left the main corridor by a small side door and made her way to the porters’ lodge. There was little in the way of lighting on the road between the main hospital and the lodge so it would be unlikely that she would be seen. But with each step that brought her closer to the trolley shed, she felt more afraid. Her mouth became dry and something inside kept urging her to go back. Forget about it! It’s not worth the risk! Her feet refused to listen; she was almost at the porters’ lodge. Light spilled out from the mess room where she could see three men inside. One was reading a newspaper, the other two were arguing about something. She could hear their raised voices.
The trolley shed was comfortingly dark. She turned the handle slowly and felt the door release. The hinges squealed as she pushed it open and she froze with her fingers on the handle, trying to think what she would say if the lodge door opened and the porters found her there. It remained shut as the argument inside continued. Sarah let herself in and closed the door behind her, her teeth clenched as she tried to avoid making it squeal again. She was safe for the moment.
She knew that the mortuary key was kept on a hook on the wall with a skull and cross bones above it. Some porter had seen fit to add this refinement in the past with red and black marker pens. This was largely the reason for her remembering the existence of the key. She had seen it when she and the other new house officers had been shown around the hospital on their first day — their ‘orientation tour’. Right now, it was too dark to make out the skull and cross-bones but Sarah felt along the wall until her fingers touched the key and closed around it. At that moment she heard the phone ring in the lodge through the wall.
Her heart skipped a beat as she imagined the worst possibility. There had been a death in one of the wards and the porters were being called out to remove the body. Any second now they would open the door and find her there. She stood there, clutching the key in her hand with her eyes tightly shut as if in prayer. The door of the lodge opened and the voices were suddenly loud.
“That’s the third time that bloody staff nurse has called us out,” complained one.
“Maybe she needs the company,” said another.
“I know what she bloody needs.”
The door of the lodge closed and the voices started to fade as the two porters moved off. Sarah let her breath out slowly and tried to steady her nerves. As soon as everything was quiet again she let herself out of the shed, steeling herself to do it as silently as she could when all her instincts told her to make a run for it — there was still a porter left in the lodge. With a final look round as she moved off, she started out for the mortuary.
The fluorescent lighting stuttered into life as Sarah clicked on the switch. Her heart was beating so strongly that she had to rest for a moment leaning against the wall. There’s nothing to worry about, she told herself. You’re almost there. She looked at the row of refrigerated body vaults in front of her. Her first task was to find McKirrop’s body. There was a card index held in a metal holder on the front of each vault door indicating who lay inside and on which tier — there were three tiers to each. John McKirrop lay on the middle tier in vault 4.
Sarah undid the large metal clasp on the door and jumped back as the refrigeration plant sprang into life at the same moment. She chided herself again for being so edgy and bent down to examine the label on the big toe of the corpse on the middle tray. It confirmed that the sheet-wrapped body was that of John McKirrop. Sarah dragged the transporter trolley over and adjusted it to the required height by winding the handle at the side. When it was in position and the brake applied firmly she slid out the tray with John McKirrop’s body on it and locked it on to the transporter with the metal pin that hung down on a chain. She moved it back a few feet and shut the vault door. It closed with a clunk that seemed to echo throughout the whole suite.
Sarah wheeled McKirrop’s body through to the post-mortem room and turned on the lights. The light switch also turned on a series of extractor fans which whirred into life. Sarah reckoned that she would not need to get the cadaver on to a table; she could carry out the examination with it lying on the transporter. She doubted whether she could have manhandled McKirrop’s body on to a table on her own anyway. She did however, wheel the transporter parallel to one of the three PM tables so that she had access to water and electric power if required. She turned on the big flat lamp above the table and angled it so that McKirrop was bathed in white, shadowless light. Next, she collected a series of instruments together on a metal tray and laid it on the table beside her. She undid the sheet wrapping McKirrop’s head, grimacing a little at the cold clammy feel of it.
McKirrop’s face had taken on the parchment pallor of death and the wound in the centre of his head was so dark that it looked like a black hole. Sarah adjusted the lamp slightly so that the wound was illuminated perfectly. She picked up a metal probe from the tray beside her and investigated the depth. Her heart sank almost immediately. It was perfectly clear that the skull bone had indeed caused massive damage to the front of McKirrop’s brain.
“But how?” Sarah murmured. “Why had the X-ray of McKirrop’s skull suggested that his frontal lobe had been protected? Why had it not shown actual penetration of the brain by the bone?” After all it had penetrated to a depth of... Sarah measured the extent of invasion... one and a half centimetres. “Crazy,” she said, shaking her head. She ran the metal probe gently up and down the anterior surface of the bone and was suddenly struck by something odd. “This wasn’t the angle!” she murmured. She checked again and was now convinced that the angle of McKirrop’s skull bone was different from the angle that had appeared on the X-ray.