Or perhaps it’s just me.
My shoes squeaked on the floor as I walked down the corridor. A night-shift mortuary assistant told me where to find Mears, though not without a sniff of disdain when I’d explained who I was there to see.
‘Rather you than me.’
Mears certainly knew how to make friends, I thought. So why are you here? I didn’t owe the forensic taphonomist any favours, and I’d had a long enough day already. But I’d worked on cases before where egos had got in the way, and I knew how damaging it could be. Even if Mears and I didn’t like each other, the investigation shouldn’t suffer because of it.
Besides, I was keen to take another look at the interred victims’ remains.
I found him in the small examination room the mortuary assistant had directed me to. The first surprise was that he was in full scrubs and wellington boots rather than a lab coat like the one I was wearing. Mears hadn’t wanted to say over the phone why he needed help, but he should be well past the earlier stages of the examination process by now, when scrubs would be necessary.
He was leaning over a reassembled skeleton laid out on an examination table, carefully adjusting the position of one of the bones. He straightened when I entered, and I was shocked by the sight of him. His already pale face looked bone white, making the freckles and red hair more noticeable than ever. Unshaven and with dark rings under his eyes, he looked like he hadn’t slept in days.
‘Ah, you’re here!’ He sounded so relieved he was almost effusive. ‘You made good time.’
At that time of night there hadn’t been much traffic. I went over to the skeleton he’d been poring over. I knew from its relatively small size which one it was.
‘This is the female victim?’ I said, taking a pair of gloves from a dispenser.
‘Yes, I, er, I was just finishing off.’
I couldn’t see how there could be much left to finish. He’d carried out the same procedure as I had for Christine Gorski, disarticulating the bones and cleaning them of soft tissue before reassembling them for examination. It was a fundamental part of our work, a process that with practice soon became second nature. I was so familiar with it by now I could almost do it blindfolded.
Although, I had to admit, I’d struggle to improve on the job Mears had done here. The unknown woman’s bones were pristine and laid out immaculately. Each one had been positioned exactly the same distance from its neighbour, virtually to the millimetre, as far as I could tell. It was an impressive piece of reassembly that could have graced the pages of any textbook, bestowing a symmetry no living skeleton would possess.
‘Nice work,’ I commented, pulling on the gloves.
Privately, I thought that degree of precision was unnecessary, but it would have been churlish to say so. And right then I was more interested in the dark marks I’d seen on the bones. The smallest was roughly the diameter of a thumbnail, while the largest — this one on the pubic bone — was the size of a small hen’s egg. All were a yellowish brown in colour, like splashes of weak coffee on blotting paper.
I could also see hairline cracks on the left ulna and radius, the long bones of the lower arm, as well as on several of the ribs. Ward had mentioned fractures, but these weren’t the sort of injuries I’d expect from torture or a beating. There were no radiating fracture lines from a single point of impact, or complete fractures where the broken ends had separated from each other. These looked more like they’d been caused by bending or shearing forces. And the bones of the skull appeared intact. If the victim had been beaten, her assailants had avoided her face.
Turning my attention back to the patches of discolouration, I picked up a right metacarpal, one of the slender bones of the hand. A dirty yellow blemish marred its creamy surface.
‘So these are the burns? How many are there?’
‘Thirteen. On the arms, legs, feet. Skull.’ Mears was starting to regain his poise, either the compliment or the shop talk restoring his equilibrium. Good. ‘All places where the bone was thinly covered by skin. I also found additional burning on the sloughed epidermis where there was no underlying bone, like the abdomen and leg muscles. Seems like they were inflicted at random.’
‘And they’re definitely burn marks?’ They certainly looked like it, but the only way to be sure would be to take sections of the discoloured patches to examine under a microscope. I could see excisions in some of the bones where Mears had done just that.
‘There’s cracking at the microscale and the periosteum’s been damaged,’ he said, an edge creeping back into his voice. ‘Given the discolouration as well, there’s nothing else they could be.’
‘Do you still think a soldering iron could have caused them?’ I asked doubtfully.
‘Or something like it, yes, without a doubt.’ His confidence was growing now he could expound on familiar territory. ‘I wondered about the end of a cigarette, because of the general size. But that wouldn’t be hot enough. It would have to have been held in place for longer for the heat to penetrate to the bone, so it would have burned right through the skin. There was localized scorching to the epidermal and dermal layers over the bone, but that’s all.’
That didn’t make sense. I’d have expected heat so intense as to discolour the bone to cause far more damage to the overlying tissues, regardless of what was used. ‘How localized?’
‘Approximately the same size as the bone burns.’ Mears was obviously feeling more like himself, enough for his smile to verge on condescending. ‘That’s why I think something that can focus intense heat into a small area, like a soldering iron, was probably used.’
That still didn’t sit right with me, but this was Mears’s case, not mine. And he sounded certain enough. I set the metacarpal back where I’d found it. ‘Is it the same on the other victim?’
Mears reached out to adjust the bone I’d just put back, minutely altering its position until it was perfectly aligned with its neighbours. He didn’t answer at first, and when I looked up I saw the blood had rushed to his cheeks.
‘I, er, I’m not sure. I think so.’
‘Can’t you tell?’ I asked, surprised.
‘Yes, of course. I mean… not yet.’ He cleared his throat. ‘That’s sort of why I called you.’
‘OK, I can certainly give you a second opinion,’ I said, still bemused.
I couldn’t see why he was so flustered if that was all he wanted. There was nothing wrong with asking for another viewpoint if something wasn’t clear cut. I’d done it myself on more than one occasion, particularly early in my career when I was still finding my feet.
But Mears shifted uncomfortably. Again, he fractionally altered the position of the phalange. ‘Er, that isn’t… I mean, it’s not…’
He made a needless adjustment to a floating rib, then started to do the same to one at the other side. I put my hand on it to stop him.
‘Why don’t you show me what’s going on?’
He nodded, still colouring crimson. ‘Yes. Yes, all right.’
I followed him into the corridor, peeling off my gloves and dropping them in the bin on my way out. He went along the corridor and opened the door to one of the bigger examination suites. It was in darkness. Lights flickered on overhead, buzzing to life as he clicked a switch. I blinked at the sudden brightness, then saw what was waiting in there.