‘I won’t perform an actual autopsy,’ she had explained on the telephone, earlier that day. ‘But from what I understand I might not need to. Wear an old shirt and bring a clean one to wear home because we can’t be seen in scrubs or white coats. That will give the game away.’
Spiros, the mortuary orderly I’d met earlier, had called Eva Pyromaglou at home and given her my phone number. It seemed that he was going be there, too, if only to keep a lookout.
There was an outdoor restaurant under the orange trees next to the Greek church with the many roofs, and it was there I’d arranged to meet her. She was sitting alone, a copy of Sir Alex Ferguson’s autobiography on the table to identify her. It was Mr Pyromaglou’s copy apparently. I certainly couldn’t have imagined his wife enjoying it. Mind you, I can’t imagine anyone actually enjoying it. That book tried to settle more family business than the last fifteen minutes of The Godfather and you don’t have to be Roy Keane or Steven Gerrard to feel that way about it. Reading the book, I learned that Fergie has always collected Kennedy assassination documents and artefacts and it struck me as a little odd that he even had a copy of Kennedy’s autopsy. Then again I was hardly one to talk; meeting Dr Pyromaglou like this was more than a bit weird — like something out of an old Frankenstein movie — in which she and I were planning to interfere with a young woman’s corpse at the stroke of midnight.
The doctor was in her forties with very pale skin, an almond-shaped face, long auburn hair and worry-lines on her forehead. She wore a hospital pass on a bead-chain around her neck, heavy-framed glasses, a black polo shirt, jeans and a pair of sensible shoes, and looked as if she’d been conceived and born in a library. We shook hands.
There was still half an hour before the new shift came on duty so we ordered some coffee.
‘I know you’ve seen a dead body before,’ she said. ‘Spiros told me that you were okay with that. But looking at a body is different from what I intend doing. I shall probably need your assistance to take some swabs and perhaps to cut her a bit. So if you’re sensitive to the sight of blood then you’d better say so now. I don’t want you fainting while we’re in there.’
‘I’ll be all right,’ I said bravely. ‘When you’ve played football alongside Martin Keown you get used to the sight of blood.’
It was a joke, but she didn’t laugh. I brandished the two whisky miniatures I’d brought from the hotel and then drank one immediately. ‘Anyway, I brought some courage from home.’
‘We’ll be working in quite a tight space,’ she said. ‘Did you bring a clean shirt, just in case of accident?’
I indicated a plastic bag by my leg.
‘Thank you for helping me, doctor,’ I said. ‘And her. The girl in the drawer, I mean. The police seem to be taking their time about everything.’
‘They’re only quick when it’s a matter of cracking heads.’
‘Spiros told me about your son. I’m sorry. Is he all right?’
‘As well as can be expected. But thank you for asking.’
That never sounds good, so I didn’t ask more.
‘Please understand that nothing is going to be written down tonight,’ she insisted. ‘At least not by me. Is that quite clear?’
I nodded.
‘You won’t be able to rely on what we find in a court of law because what we’re doing is illegal. And another thing, I’m helping you, Mr Manson, not the police. This is a private matter between you and me. I figure that if everyone else in this country can work off the books then so can I.’
‘Sure, I understand.’
‘Do you have something for me?’ she said.
I handed over a hotel envelope containing five hundred euros.
She nodded. ‘If someone speaks to you just answer them in English and then they’ll know for sure you’re not breaking the strike.’
I nodded. ‘What’s the strike about, anyway?’
‘Money,’ she said. ‘There isn’t any. At least not for Greek public services.’
‘So I gather.’
‘There seems to be plenty for footballers, however. Even here in Athens.’
I drank my coffee silently; it’s never a good idea to try to justify the salaries in football to anyone, least of all those in the medical profession. And it was a good job that before I could try, my iPhone chimed: Maurice had emailed me a link to an article in the Independent that said Viktor Sokolnikov was planning to fire me at the end of the season. I wasn’t worried by this; no one ever reads the Independent.
‘If it was just picking a team I’d hardly be here now, would I?’
Eva Pyromaglou nodded down at the grimly smiling face on the cover of her book. ‘I certainly couldn’t see him turning policeman to solve a crime.’
She looked at her watch. ‘Come on,’ she said briskly. ‘It’s time we were moving.’ She picked up her phone and quickly texted Spiros, to let him know we were on our way.
35
Laiko General Hospital was as dark as a church inside and almost as quiet. The hospital had a policy of switching off most of the lights at night, to save money on electricity.
‘That’s also in our favour,’ she said, leading the way through dim corridors. ‘But you should be careful where you’re walking. You wouldn’t want to have an accident in a Greek public hospital.’
I smiled; I was starting to like Eva.
Spiros was waiting for us around the next corner. He wasn’t alone. Under a sheet on a trolley in front of him was the body of a woman and you didn’t have to be a detective to work that out; her breasts stood up like a couple of sandcastles on a beach.
‘This way,’ he said and, pushing the trolley ahead, he led us along another dim corridor and through the open doors of a large and brightly lit elevator. Inside, he turned a key quickly, to operate the car, and then stepped outside, leaving Eva and me alone with the dead body. She pressed one of the buttons, the doors slid shut and the lift started to move. Almost immediately she turned the key again and the elevator stopped between floors, with a jerk.
As she threw back the sheet covering the dead girl’s body it was now plain to me that she was planning to examine the body right there, in the lift.
‘Pity,’ she said. ‘She was very beautiful.’
‘You’re going to look at her in here?’ I asked.
‘Yes. In here we can be sure not to be disturbed. Spiros will text me when it’s safe to bring the car back down.’
‘Why do I get the feeling you’ve done this before?’
‘In the elevator? No, you’re the first; and I hope the last. I can’t afford for this strike to go on much longer. It might even get violent, too. Towards the end strikes in Greece always become bloody-minded. You certainly wouldn’t want to get caught in the middle of that.’
‘Now you tell me.’
In a bag between the body’s feet was everything Eva would need: scalpels, swabs, scissors, evidence bags, suture needles, antiseptic hand gel and latex gloves. She put the bag on the floor and then proceeded to examine the girl’s body, meticulously, as if searching her flesh for the smallest blemish. For a while I let her work in silence, admiring the care and respect with which she treated the cadaver.
‘I’m looking for bruises,’ she murmured. ‘Needle marks, abrasions, cuts, scratches, anything.’ After several more minutes she shook her head. ‘But there’s not a mark on her.’
‘To my eye she looks like she was pregnant,’ I said, helpfully.
‘No, that’s not pregnant.’ Eva grunted. ‘You say she drowned? In Marina Zea?’