Yeah, Norman Chalmers was definitely a pet torturer.
Logan put his notebook back in his pocket on the way to the stairwell. Grinding to a halt as the Addams Family theme tune belted out of his phone. He pushed through the doors and answered it. ‘Sheila.’
‘Professor McAllister requests the pleasure of your company at our humble mortuary. And if you wouldn’t mind getting a shift on, that would be grand. It’s late and some of us have love lives to struggle through.’ She hung up.
Great. Summoned like a small child or an errant dog.
He stared at the screen for a moment. Then turned and thumped through the doors again. Muttering to himself. ‘Thought the whole point of being an inspector was people ran about after you, not the other way around.’
The extractor fans roared. Not that it achieved very much, the mortuary still stank. The source of the smell lurked on the cutting table, caught in the glare of half a dozen working lights. All glistening and greasy, like it’d been carved from rancid butter.
That thick layer of adipocere had smoothed away most of the detail, leaving a sort of revolting jelly-baby shape behind.
Isobel stood beside it, an SOC suit on over her usual mortuary scrubs, complete with booties, full-facemask, gloves, wellies, and a green plastic apron over the top. What every well-dressed pathologist was wearing this season. She’d arranged all the cutting tools on a stainless-steel trolley, everything looking clean and unused.
Sheila Dalrymple was dressed exactly the same, her face creased with concentration as she wrestled a digital X-ray machine into place over the body’s jelly-baby head, aligning the machinery for a sideways view.
Logan stayed where he was — in the doorway. SOC suit or not, that was the kind of smell that oozed into your hair and clothes and skin. And no amount of scrubbing would get rid of it.
‘Right.’ Dalrymple pulled a remote control from the equipment and fiddled with it. ‘Anyone not wanting a dose of X-rays should retire to the other room.’
Oh thank God for that.
He backed into the prep room: all work surfaces and cupboards, a couple of plastic chairs standing guard over a stack of boxes at the far end.
Isobel followed him, carrying a laptop. She stuck it down on the worktop and turned it to face him. ‘You need to see this.’
The X-ray of a knee filled the screen in shades of white and grey. Not a good knee, though. There was something wrong with the way it fitted together.
Dalrymple appeared, holding the remote control. She pointed it into the cutting room and the X-ray machine bleeped. A nod, then she marched back inside again.
Isobel traced a purple finger along the screen. ‘The light areas are bone, the dark areas tissue.’
Lovely.
‘I have seen an X-ray before, I’m not completely stupid.’
‘Good. Then I won’t need to tell you what these are.’ Her finger traced along one of the twisted grey lines that clustered around the kneecap.
He leaned in and squinted at them. They looked a bit like worms, but that probably wasn’t the right answer. ‘Nope. No idea.’
‘They’re distorted now, but if you can imagine the knee bent at ninety degrees, as if the victim was sitting, they would be perfectly straight. And approximately sixty millimetres long.’
‘OK. Still no.’
A long-suffering sigh. ‘Imagine taking a drill to someone’s kneecaps.’
He winced. ‘Please tell me it was accidental.’
‘The first time? Perhaps. But not the eighteen other ones. Both knees, both elbows, both ankles, shoulders... Four in the bottom jaw alone.’
Something heavy congealed in Logan’s stomach. ‘He was tortured.’
It was bad enough finding out DI Bell was a murderer, but this?
Dalrymple appeared from the cutting room again. Stood with her legs apart and her hands hanging by her side, Wild West gunslinger-style. Then she snatched the remote control up. Fast. Beep.
She blew across the end of the remote, mimed slipping it into a holster, then sashayed through the cutting room door as if it was the entrance to a saloon.
Isobel ignored her, fiddling with the laptop instead so a fractured clavicle appeared on the screen. ‘Then there are the percussive injuries. Possibly a hammer.’
‘God.’ Logan huffed out a breath. ‘DI Bell tortured him...’
‘And last, but not least, there are nicks in the ribs.’ A section of ribcage appeared, small dark Vs marring the white curves. ‘See how they line up in pairs? That’s consistent with multiple stab wounds to the chest from a double-edged blade. Going by the pattern and number, most likely a frenzied attack.’
Wonderful.
Just. Sodding. Great.
Logan sank down into one of the plastic seats. ‘Any idea who our victim is?’
She stared at him, face as dead as her patient’s.
He shrugged. ‘Because if you don’t, then I’ve got a suggestion you could look into?’
Dalrymple moseyed out into the prep room and stood there, facing away from the door... then snapped around holding the remote in one hand and mashing the button with the palm of her other in one swift seamless motion. Beep.
Another blow across the ‘barrel’, then she spun the remote and holstered it. ‘Aaaaand, we’re done, pardners.’
Isobel didn’t move. ‘We don’t do nominative investigations here, Inspector McRae. We follow the evidence.’
‘Which is great, but you might find it leads you to Fred Albert Marshall. DI Bell was convinced Marshall killed Sally MacAuley’s husband and abducted her son. He was obsessed with it.’
Still nothing.
Logan stood and backed towards the exit, both hands up. ‘OK, I can take a hint.’
She strode into the cutting room. ‘We’ll be in touch.’
‘Y’all come back, now.’ Dalrymple tipped an imaginary Stetson at him, then cowboyed off after Isobel, leaving him on his own.
‘Only trying to help.’ Logan stripped off his SOC get-up, chucked it in the bin, and got the hell out of there. Along the corridor, through the doors, up the stairs, and onto the rear podium car park.
OK, so it was raining, but at least he wasn’t enveloped in that horrible stench any more.
You could add that to the list of ‘Reasons Why It Is Not A Good Idea To Sleep With Pathologists’. Very difficult to get amorous when the object of your affections smelled like rotting cadavers.
He hurried across the car park and in through the rear doors. Shook the rain from his shoulders and trouser legs. Pulled out his phone and called Rennie on the way to the stairwell.
Rennie picked up with a sigh. ‘Guv.’
‘Have you got that warrant sorted for Rod Lawson’s medical records?’
Through the double doors.
‘The Sheriff won’t give us one till he’s read the post mortem report. I emailed it over, but he says it’s nearly nine on a Sunday night and we should know better.’
Typical.
‘What about the search warrant for Norman Clifton’s mother’s house?’
‘Same. Only he used fewer words. Three of which were quite rude.’
Logan headed up the stairs. ‘You told him this is a murdered police officer we’re talking about?’