It was like something from a butcher’s shop.
There were three stainless-steel examination tables in the room. Lying on the one at the far end was the second victim’s body. It had been denuded of bulk soft tissue and a start had been made on disarticulating the connective tissues of its joints. The left foot had been separated at the ankle, and the lower leg had been neatly severed at the knee. The results bore a superficial resemblance to a butcher’s block, but it was all beautiful, painstaking work.
But although cuts had also been made to the pelvic joint, these had been less carefully executed. This was a much bigger individual than the other victim, and the main joints correspondingly harder to sever. The creamy white ball and socket of the hip were exposed but still connected, the tough tendons and cartilage hacked at and torn as though someone had wrenched at them in a tantrum. A fine-bladed scalpel lay discarded on the table nearby, along with several larger knives. All were soiled and greasy from use, and I saw now that attempts had been made to cut through other joints before being abandoned.
I’d halted, taken aback when I saw the remains. Now I understood why Mears had called me. He should have been much further along than this. I’d expected the reassembly of the other victim to be almost finished. At the very least the bones should have been macerating by now.
I looked at Mears, at a loss. He attempted to draw himself up.
‘I, er… I seem to have fallen behind schedule.’
That was an understatement. But I was less shocked by how long it was taking him as by why. He’d done a flawless job of cleaning and reassembling the woman’s remains, so it was hard to see why this should be any different. Although the victim’s larger size might make the physical aspects more difficult, that didn’t explain the mess Mears had got himself into.
‘What happened?’ I asked.
‘Nothing happened. It’s, uh, it’s just it’s taking longer than I expected.’
‘So why didn’t you ask one of the assistants for help?’
Mears looked wretched as he struggled for an answer. ‘I–I thought I could manage.’
I was beginning to understand what was going on now. I thought again about the female victim’s skeleton, perfectly laid out in the other examination room.
Too perfectly.
‘How long did you spend on the woman’s remains?’ I asked.
It was like watching a balloon deflate. He shrugged, trying to affect nonchalance. ‘I don’t know. You know how it is, you can’t rush these things.’
No, you couldn’t. But there was a world of difference between taking long enough to do something properly and wasting time. Parekh had commented on how methodical he was, and the reassembly of the woman’s skeleton showed he was clearly a perfectionist. But that wasn’t always a good thing. He’d let himself become too wrapped up in the minutiae of the first reassembly, obsessing over unnecessary details at the expense of the larger picture. Then, when he ran out of time, he’d panicked and made things worse.
‘Does Ward know?’ I asked, although I could already guess.
‘No!’ He looked horrified. ‘No, I… I didn’t want to bother her with it.’
Of course he didn’t. And he wouldn’t have been in any rush to tell his employers, either. Mears wouldn’t have wanted to admit there was a problem, probably not even to himself. So he’d dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole of his own making, until he’d grown desperate enough to call me.
What puzzled me was that he’d allow himself to make such a basic mistake in the first place. It was the sort of mistake a rank novice would make, not an experienced…
I realized then. Mears was watching me, looking flustered and scared. And younger than ever.
‘This is your first time on a murder investigation, isn’t it?’ I said.
‘What? No, of course not!’ But he avoided my eyes, and the flush on his face deepened even more.
‘How many have you worked on?’
‘Enough.’ He shrugged. ‘Three.’
‘On your own?’
‘That’s beside the point.’
No, it wasn’t. The pressure of a murder inquiry could be overwhelming. Not everyone was able to cope. And there was a huge difference between assisting someone and working a major investigation on your own. I could remember the first time it happened to me, the sweat-inducing fear that I would embarrass myself. No amount of training or study could prepare you for that.
This showed Mears’s behaviour in a new light. Beneath the arrogance and bluster was a core of self-doubt. He’d been overcompensating to hide his inexperience.
‘I was supposed to be accompanying Peter Madeley,’ Mears blurted. ‘There was some sort of falling-out, though, and he quit. There wasn’t time for them to find anyone else, so I… I said I could do it.’
I’d heard of Madeley. He had a reputation as a solid forensic anthropologist, although I hadn’t realized he’d joined the private sector. But this was beginning to make more sense. Talented or not, Mears hadn’t been the first choice. He’d been a last-minute substitute to keep BioGen from losing their forensic services contract. No wonder I hadn’t heard of him.
No one had.
I rubbed my eyes, thinking it through. Ward needed to be told if one of her forensic consultants wasn’t up to the job. It might not be wholly Mears’s fault, but someone untried and untested couldn’t be entrusted with this sort of responsibility. There was too much at stake to take the risk. And it wasn’t as though I owed him anything.
Yet he’d shown with the fingerprints — perhaps the burns, too — that he was competent enough. Perhaps even more than that. It was possible this was just a case of first-night nerves. If I went to Ward now he wouldn’t only be thrown off the inquiry, it could permanently blight his career. I wasn’t sure I wanted that on my conscience either.
Mears was watching me worriedly, chewing his lip. ‘I’m not going to cover for you,’ I told him. ‘Ward has to know about this.’
‘I’m sure she’d be too busy to—’
‘She’s the SIO. If you don’t tell her I will.’
He looked away, but only as far as the butchered remains. His shoulders slumped. ‘OK.’
‘And if anything like this happens again, you need to tell someone. Don’t try and bluff your way through.’
‘It won’t—’
‘I mean it.’
His mouth clamped in a tight line, then he nodded. ‘Fine. But it won’t.’
I hope not. I looked at the wall clock and saw it was after midnight. I sighed.
‘I’ll go and change into scrubs.’
The larger victim’s remains looked worse than they actually were. Mears’s meltdown hadn’t resulted in anything catastrophic. None of his hasty attempts to disarticulate the joints had resulted in cuts to the bone and there was no post-mortem trauma to the skeleton. The damage was purely to the connective and soft tissue, which would be discarded anyway. It was just shoddy workmanship born of panic and, while that was bad enough, no real harm had been done.
He was subdued and quiet as we set about removing the last of the bulk soft tissue from the man’s body. Even though the underlying skeleton was far from fully cleaned, I could already see some of the bones bore the same yellowy-brown burns as were on the female victim. I would have liked the opportunity to study them more closely, but the priority now was to get them soaking so Mears could carry out a proper examination.
He worked painfully slowly, not so much from perfectionism now as nerves. For all his strutting, his self-confidence was a brittle thing. If he was going to recover from this, let alone be any use to the investigation, that had to change.