Harsha Krishnamurthi came in. Tall, greying. All business. Fiddling with his new toy, a hands-free dictaphone with headset, he got it into position then briskly pulled away Rory Peach's sheet. Everyone in the mortuary stiffened slightly, as if they'd drawn a collective breath.
He was crunched into a croissant shape, almost like a sleeping cat, his hands wrapped over his head. He looked as if he was examining something on his chest. Brown parcel tape had been wrapped around his head, covering his mouth and eyes. He didn't smell, as if his flesh was too clean and young to smell, and his skin was smooth as if he'd just got out of a bath. Krishnamurthi cleared his throat, asked Caffery if this was the same body found in the tree in Brockwell Park. Caffery nodded: "It is." The formalities were over.
They removed the knots first. Krishnamurthi severed the rope with painstaking attention, more than two inches from the knot: the ligatures could be tested not only for DNA, but also by forensic knot analysts and he was careful to preserve their shape as he put them into an exhibits bag. The photographer moved around the table, working from every angle as the exhibits officer sealed and initialled the bag and put it on his trolley.
The process was repeated until all the ropes were removed and Rory looked quite different. He lay curled up, like a young spider in defence mode, deep swollen furrows made by the ropes on his arms, knees and ankles. Krishnamurthi gently tested the thin legs. When they uncurled obediently he hesitated, an odd look on his face. For a moment no one dared breathe. Krishnamurthi looked quickly up at the clock on the wall and carefully flexed Rory Peach's feet, then examined the boy's hands and face.
"There's uh, yes." He flipped up his plastic visor and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "There's rigor mortis present only in the face and upper torso. I'm… going to…" His pause was almost imperceptible. Only those with their antennae quivering, like Caffery, would have noticed the brief blush of emotion. Those flexible feet had started the pathologist thinking the unthinkable. "I'm going to take a liver temperature."
Caffery turned away. He had seen hundreds of postmortems, most less recognizable as human beings than Rory was. He'd seen a forty-year-old man, reduced by faceless business associates to nothing but a one and a half stone cut of torso, rolling on the dissecting table. He'd seen a fifteen-year-old girl eaten by foxes from her eyes down to her shoulders. He didn't kid himself that he had a right to feel horror more deeply than anyone else but, like Krishnamurthi, he knew the mechanics of rigor he knew what that stiffness in the facial muscles, what the flexibility in the feet said about Rory's death. He didn't want to think about it. For the first time in his life he had to step out of a post-mortem.
He was standing in reception, pressing Altoid mints into his mouth, rubbing his hands together hard, the smart of blood clearing his thoughts, when the door opened. Souness came in, brushing her jacket as if she'd walked through a cobweb.
"Fucking press all over me." She shuddered. "Talk about quick off the mark." She pushed the door closed behind her, pressing her foot on it to check that it was properly shut, turned and saw instantly that Caffery was trying to avoid her eyes, was trying hard to find somewhere to hide his attention. Her voice softened. "Ye all right?" She came a little bit nearer. He was slightly cyanosed around the mouth. "No, ye're not. Ye're crapping it, aren't ye?"
"I'm fine. Mint?"
"No thanks." She chewed her thumbnail, looked towards the dissecting room, and back at him. "Funny. I suppose if it was me I might be just a wee bit jealous."
"Jealous?"
"Rory's been found. He's dead, but at least he was found Mum and Dad can start grieving now." She rested her hand affectionately on his arm. "And where does that leave ye, ye poor wee soul?"
Caffery didn't answer. He didn't dare speak or even reach into his pocket for cigarette papers in case his hands were shaking. He turned for the door to the autopsy suite. "I uh I think we've got a time of death. Just guessing from the rigor."
"And?"
"Uh look, let's go back inside, shall we?"
Back in the dissecting room Krishnamurthi had moved on. He had taken nail cuttings, putting the scissors he used into the exhibits bag with the last cuttings and passing them all to the exhibits officer. He had removed the packing tape from Rory's face. DS Fiona Quinn was hopefuclass="underline" in evidence bags on a separate gurney were five white fibres Krishnamurthi had removed from the ligature furrows on Rory's wrists with a strip of low-tack tape. She could run them through mass spectrometry and gas chromatography to find chemical composition and colour hopefully match them to a suspect's clothing. Now Krishnamurthi was carefully breaking the rigor mortis in Rory's upper body and gently straightening him out on the table.
Caffery and Souness stood against the wall, Caffery sucking mints, Souness jiggling her finger in her ear as if she was embarrassed to be watching this.
Rory measured 127 centimetres from his left heel to his crown. He weighed 26.23 kilos. A Tanner scale reading would mark him down as slightly bigger than an average eight-year-old. A bloody paper towel with pale blue flowers around the edge had been scrunched against his shoulder and it clung there, pressed under his back when he was straightened.
Krishnamurthi, the photographer and the morticians moved around the table in a complex, calm ritual, each anticipating without word or signal when it was time to step in. Caffery and Souness watched in silence they had the same two questions in their minds: was the paper towel hiding the source of the blood in the kitchen? And: had Rory Peach been sexually assaulted?
"I'm looking at an averagely nourished body of a child," Krishnamurthi said softly, into the headset. His voice echoed in the scrubbed-down room. "The face shows marked turgor, and what appears to be multiple aspects of Hippocratic facies, the occular orbits are prominent, while the globes are sunken. Cheekbones and mandibles prominent. Mouth and nose appear…" he bent in and squinted at the child's face '… dry. Crusted. Skin is tight to palpation so flag histology to look for hyperkalemia and I want sodium counts, anti-diuretic hormone levels and plasma volume."
"Harsha?"
Krishnamurthi looked up at Souness. "Yes, yes. When the micros copies are back I'll tell you more." Krishnamurthi had a reputation for denying the police the immediate answers they wanted. "And when I've looked at the organ capsules."
"What are you expecting?"
"Sticky, tacky capsules, maybe bleeding in the intestinal tract."
"Meaning?"
"I'll tell you when I've had a look." He narrowed his eyes at her, making a disapproving clicking noise in his throat. "OK?"
"Fair enough." Souness held up her hands. The last thing they needed was to alienate him. "That's fair enough."
"Right." Krishnamurthi bent nearer to look at Rory's throat. "There is a poorly defined mark overlying the larynx indicating some sort of uh -occlusion of the carotid and jugular, some sort of ligature strangulation, but no petechiae in the eyes. Some scratch marks and bruising to the neck." He looked up at Souness. "But it's not the cause of death."
"Really?"
"Really."
Yes, really, Danni. Caffery looked at his shoes. That's not how Rory died. I think I already know how he died.
"I'd like later," Krishnamurthi continued, 'to get some alternative light sources on these marks, photograph the area and see if we can see anything else. Right." He stepped back and allowed the mortician to turn Rory's body expertly, efficiently, not looking at the child's face. The dissecting room was absolutely silent. Lying on his face the little lumps of Rory's spine protruded through the thin skin; the paper towel stayed stuck in place. Krishnamurthi didn't look at anyone as he peeled it away, dropping it in an evidence bag. He peered down at the wound on Rory's shoulder and after a breathless pause he stepped back and looked up.