And I’d caused all that grief for Lola and her son needlessly.
I felt out of kilter, as though the ground under my feet was constantly shifting. Some of it was probably a reaction to the hit-and-run the night before. I’d seen a man I knew deliberately ploughed down and killed by a car, and another badly injured. If that had happened to anyone else, as a former doctor I’d be advising counselling or therapy. But I had my own way of dealing with things.
Finishing my drink, I dropped my cup into the bin and went back to work.
As the door of the examination suite slowly shut behind me, I felt my earlier focus begin to return. The cracked teeth on both Maria de Souza and Darren Crossly had provided the first intimation of what we might be dealing with here. Now I just had to prove it.
Mears had told me there were thirteen of the burn-like marks on the woman’s skeleton, spread out on different bones, apparently at random. At first glance I saw only eight. There was one on the bony protuberance of the mastoid process, just behind and below the right ear. Another was on the right clavicle, and there were two more on the seventh and eighth left ribs. The pubic bone had what looked like a single large burn, several times bigger than any of the others, while the remaining three were all on the metatarsals of the feet, two on the right and one on the left.
With the exception of the one behind the woman’s ear — which I was beginning to have an idea about — all of the yellow-brown marks were front-facing. Meaning they’d probably been inflicted when Maria de Souza was strapped to the bed. At first I was at a loss how Mears had counted thirteen rather than eight, before I looked more closely. The large patch of discolouration on the pubic bone wasn’t one large mark but several, close enough together to overlap. I nodded when I saw that. A large burn wouldn’t have fitted my theory, but several small ones did.
And I was in no doubt that’s what they were: burns. Mears had been right about that. Although the small, tobacco-yellow patches looked insignificant, I knew they would have been agonizing. But I didn’t agree that they were brands, or that they’d been caused by something similar to a soldering iron. True, that might have resulted in small, localized burning to the bones not dissimilar to these. It would also have resulted in far more tissue damage than we’d seen. The skin and flesh above the bone would have been almost completely burned away.
I picked up the skull, turning it to see the mark on the mastoid process. There was a chance it could have happened while she was lying down, her head turned away to expose behind her ear. I didn’t think so, though. I thought this would have been done while Maria de Souza was standing. And it had been the first one.
Mears, what were you thinking? It was right in front of you.
I quickly carried out an inventory on the rest of her skeleton, finding nothing of note, then packed it back into its box. Wiping down the surface of the table, I changed my gloves again and then began to unpack and reassemble Darren Crossly’s bones. They told a similar story to Maria de Souza’s. Numerous small burns the colour of nicotine stains, all on bones that had only a thin covering of skin and subcutaneous fat. In his case, ribs, tibia, the metacarpals of both hands and feet. There was no sign of a burn to either mastoid process, which briefly puzzled me. But he had one on his sternum, low down towards the bottom of the blade-like breastbone. When I saw that I began to understand what had happened to him as well.
Packing away the former porter’s skeleton, I turned to the sections of burnt bone Mears had prepared. Cutting a sliver thin enough to examine with a microscope — especially from fragile, burnt bone — isn’t easy. He’d set the bones he’d selected in resin and then used a microtome — a specialized cutting tool — to pare off wafer-thin slices. That took a good eye and a steady hand, but whatever his other flaws the forensic taphonomist was meticulous when it came to fine details. The sections he’d made were perfect, saving me the trouble of preparing my own.
Putting one taken from Maria de Souza’s rib under the microscope, I bent my head to the eyepiece.
The world became an illuminated display of brown-greys and white. I was looking specifically for the cylindrical structures called osteons, which the outer layer of lamellar bone is made up of. Osteons carry blood through a central canal, although there was obviously no blood in these any more. They’d been discoloured from the burn, and I could see where micro-fractures had formed between them. The periosteum — the fibrous membrane covering the bone’s exterior — had suffered damage too.
In burnt bone that was only to be expected. What interested me was the scale. I’d been struck from the start by how small the burns were, the patches of discolouration tightly focused. Mears had concluded that meant whatever had made them was small as well, something like a soldering iron, where the heat would be concentrated at its tip. It was a reasonable assumption to make, and all his thinking had progressed from there.
That was his mistake.
I examined the rest of the bone sections, seeing the same thing each time. Packing them away, I considered calling Ward to let her know what I’d found. But there was one more thing I needed to check first.
Something I wasn’t looking forward to.
The sun was struggling to emerge from behind the clouds during the drive to St Jude’s. By the time I arrived at the gates it had won a temporary battle, gilding the stone pillars and rusting ironwork with a hard-edged light that was already dimming as dark clouds built up again.
The young policewoman and the older PC were on duty again. She gave me a cheery smile.
‘Back again?’
‘Hopefully not for much longer.’
‘Tell me about it.’
She waved me through, and as though waiting for its cue the sun chose that moment to slide behind clouds once more. Driving past the humps of rubble, I felt the usual heaviness at the sight of St Jude’s rising up ahead of me. Neither Ward nor Whelan had answered when I’d tried calling them. I’d left a voicemail confirming that the woman’s remains belonged to Maria de Souza and that we needed to speak urgently but hadn’t said why. It wasn’t something to leave in a message, and I was due back at St Jude’s anyway to continue with the cadaver dog search. I thought I’d probably find one or both of them there.
Parking with the trailers and police vehicles, I climbed out and saw them both on the steps outside the hospital’s pillared entrance. They were talking to Jackson, the police search adviser. He was in a pair of dirty coveralls, and as I approached a few other white-clad officers were trooping out of the hospital’s cavernous doorway. It looked like the search team had either finished or was taking a break. Not wanting to interrupt if Jackson was briefing Ward on their progress, I hung back until they’d finished.
I was shocked at Ward’s appearance. She’d looked exhausted the night before. Now she was positively haggard, her face hollowed out and drawn. Even the unruly hair seemed lifeless as she nodded at whatever Jackson was saying before turning away. As the PolSA headed towards the trailers, she and Whelan came down the steps.
‘If you’ve come for the cadaver dog search, you’re too late,’ she said, as I went over. ‘The dog trod on a nail so his handler’s taken him to the vet. Doesn’t look too bad, so we should be OK to resume tomorrow.’
She sounded as tired as she looked, listless and flat.
‘Did you get my message?’ I asked.
‘About Maria de Souza?’ She nodded. ‘Thanks. We’re still trying to track down Wayne Booth’s dentist to see if the palate from the boiler was his. You’d think someone would know if he wore a bloody denture, but no one seems sure.’ She seemed to collect herself. ‘You said you’d something else to tell us?’