I step in front of him, looking directly at his face. ‘Tell me again that you didn’t attack her.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘I wish I’d been on the jury.’
‘So do I.’
21
Cyrus
The Nottingham Mortuary is in the Queen’s Medical Centre, one of the largest hospitals in the UK. The receptionist acknowledges me by name, which is depressing because that sort of familiarity leads to circumspection rather than contempt – I’ve been here too often.
Cassie Wright comes to collect me from the waiting area.
‘We meet again,’ she says, smiling as though we’re old friends. I suddenly wish we were. I’d like to spend more time with her. Today she’s dressed in proper clothes, instead of a hazmat suit. Black jeans, black shirt, black shoes. She’s my age, maybe younger, with an upturned nose and a slight overbite which reminds me of the actress Liv Tyler, who played Arwen in The Lord of the Rings – daughter of Elrod, wife of Aragorn, Queen of Gondor. As a teenager, I had a poster of Arwen on my bedroom wall, with her dark hair pushed back behind elfin ears, and her eyes swimming with tears.
We are walking along a wide, brightly lit corridor and I feel my gaze drift down to her figure. Some far-flung part of my brain tells me that I shouldn’t be objectifying her, but another part of me wonders if she’s single.
‘Do you remember where we met?’ she asks.
‘No.’
‘You gave a lecture to my forensic science class at university. I was in my second year, and you were a postgraduate psychology student, specialising in criminology. I queued up afterwards to ask you a question.’
‘I remember.’
She laughs. ‘No, you don’t.’
‘It was a very intelligent question.’
‘Really? What did I ask?’
‘You asked me if I thought that psychology was a science.’
Her eyes widen. ‘Not bad. That was my friend Meredith, but not bad.’
We have reached the postmortem suites.
‘Are you going to watch?’ she asks.
‘Does that surprise you?’
‘A little. A lot of people are upset by the sight of dead bodies, but I guess you’ve seen it before.’ She stops herself. ‘I didn’t mean … I’m sorry, that was a terrible thing to say. Awful.’
She’s referring to my family.
‘It’s OK. I’m not offended.’
Cassie pushes her hair behind her ears in a gesture that I’ve always found appealing. She leads me to a small auditorium overlooking the postmortem suite. The rows of tiered seats are designed to allow students the opportunity to watch as postmortems are conducted below.
‘This adjusts the volume,’ she says, showing me the controls. ‘If you need to talk to us, you can press that button.’
Below us, Robert Ness is making the final preparations. Dressed in green scrubs and a mask, he reaches to adjust an overhead light. The pale, thin body of Maya Kirk has the dull whiteness of a marble statue, laid out on the stainless-steel slab. Despite being naked, she has more dignity now than when I saw her body in that muddy, fetid ditch. In life she had been young and vital, but death has bruised her eyelids and blood has settled at her lower parts.
Ness touches her cheek, as though apologising for what he’s about to do to her.
‘At approximately 2200 hours on the tenth of November, at the request of Nottinghamshire Police, I attended the scene of a death near Newstead Abbey, north of Nottingham. I was logged into the outer cordon of the scene and approached via a farm track. Senior crime scene manager Craig Dyson gave me a short background briefing.
‘The body of a young woman was lying partially submerged in a drainage canal. Photographs were taken under my direction. She was curled on her left side with her head resting on her left shoulder.
‘The deceased is a Caucasian female, of slim build, approximately 170 centimetres tall with brown eyes. She was found wearing a knee-length dress and black lace underwear. No shoes. Her wrists and arms were bound with rope, secured with slipknots that would have tightened the more she struggled. Her hair had been removed roughly, causing abrasions and cuts to her scalp.’
As Ness recites these details, he is assisted by a photographer, a technician, and someone I assume is a trainee pathologist. Craig Dyson and Stephen Voigt are also watching. Voigt has cleaned up since I saw him last but is wearing the same round glasses that make his eyes float and bobble.
Cassie Wright joins them, having changed into medical scrubs. She adjusts a plastic face shield and acknowledges Ness and the others. Voigt steps aside to make room. Cassie ignores him and smiles instead at Dyson. I sense some male rivalry, although I think Cassie has made her choice.
Ness is still talking. ‘Postmortem lividity is reddish-purple in colour, fixed on the neck, shoulder, back and buttocks, and the outside of her left thigh. Rigor mortis appears fully developed. No signs of decay are apparent. Her ears are pierced. Her fingernails are painted. She has two inoculation scars on her upper arm and an old curving scar around the outer aspect of the right elbow. There is a tattoo of a bluebird – approximately an inch square – on her left posterior shoulder.’
Ness begins to itemise her external injuries, every scrape, scratch, contusion and fracture. Moving gloved fingers over her skin, he makes special mention of rope marks that have formed a pattern on her chest and upper arms. He also mentions brick dust found embedded in her knees and beneath her fingernails.
‘Bluish discoloration of cyanosis is present on all nail beds and fingers, mouth, lips, gums, including the face. The mucous membranes of the upper and lower eyelids appear reddish. Petechial haemorrhages have appeared on the inside of the eyelids, in the whites of the eyes and in the mouth.’
He traces his finger along her arms, before examining her neck, where a thick rubber band has created a groove in her skin. He takes measurements and photographs before using a scalpel to cut the bands, which he places in an evidence bag.
When he turns on the oscillating saw, I leave the viewing room because I don’t want to watch the internal examination. I know that it’s necessary in forensic terms, but I don’t need to see her being defiled in death as well as life.
An hour later, I’m sitting in Ness’s office. The pathologist has changed out of his hospital scrubs, but there is still talcum powder between his fingers and a smudge left on the side of his nose.
‘How did she die?’ I ask.
‘The rubber band around her neck would have deprived her of oxygen, but not enough to kill her.’
‘How then?’
‘Her neck is broken.’
‘She was hanged?’
‘No.’
Ness begins drawing a sketch on a piece of paper.
‘Maya had four distinct external injuries. Fractures to her skull, left upper shoulder, right frontal rib bones and severe bruising to her lumbar region. All of these indicate that she fell or was pushed from a height, most likely falling down a set of stairs. That explains the cement dust embedded in her knees.’
I picture the scene. Maya’s arms were bound behind her back. Once she lost her balance, there was no way of shielding her head, or stopping her fall.
‘She was trying to escape,’ I say, thinking out loud.