Dead Like You

It came up, swinging, scraping against the sides, the pulley creaking, all the way until the bottom of the coffin was several inches clear of the grave. It swayed. Everyone in the tent watched for some moments in silent awe. A few clumps of earth tumbled and fell back into the grave.

Grace stared at the light-coloured wood. It did look remarkably well preserved, as if it had been down there for only a few days, rather than twelve years. So, what secrets do you contain? Please God, something that will co

The Home Office pathologist, Nadiuska De Sancha, had already been contacted, and would head straight to the mortuary as soon as the body was loaded into the Coroner’s van.

Suddenly there was a deafening crack, like a clap of thunder. Everyone in the tent jumped.

Something that was the shape and size of a human body, shrouded in black plastic wrapping and duct tape, plunged through the bottom of the coffin and disappeared into the grave.

107

Sunday 18 January

Jessie was fighting for breath again. Panicking, she thrashed about, frantically trying to turn her head sideways to clear her nose a little. Benedict, Ben, Ben, please come. Please help me. Please don’t let me die here. Please don’t.

It hurt like hell, every muscle in her neck feeling as if it was being torn free from her shoulders. But at least now she could get some air. Still not enough, but her panic momentarily subsided. She was desperate for water. Her eyes were raw from crying. The tears trickled down her cheeks, tantalizing her, but she couldn’t taste them with her mouth clamped tightly shut.

She prayed again. Please God, I’ve just found such incredible happiness. Ben is such a lovely man. Please don’t take me away from him, not now. Please help me.

Through her living hell, she tried to focus her mind, to think clearly. Some time, she did not know when, but some time, probably soon, her captor was going to return.

If he was going to bring her the water he had talked about, unless he was just taunting her, he would have to untie her – at least enough so she could sit up and drink. If she was going to have a chance, it would be then.

Just one chance.

Even though every muscle in her body hurt, even though she felt exhausted, she still had her strength. She tried to think of different scenarios. How clever was he? What game could she play to fool him? Play dead? Pretend to have a fit? There must be something, something she had not thought of.

That he had not thought of.

What time was it? In this long, dark void in which she was suspended, she suddenly felt a burning need to measure time. To figure out what time it was, how long she had been here.

Sunday. That was all she knew for sure. The lunch he had talked about must be Sunday lunch. Was it an hour since he had gone? Thirty minutes? Two hours? Four? There had been faint grey light but that had gone now. She was in pitch darkness.

Maybe there was a clue in the sounds she could hear. The endless, mostly faint clangings, clatterings, squeakings and bang-ings of loose windows, doors, panels of corrugated iron, sheet metal or whatever it was outside the building. There was just one that seemed to have a rhythm to it, she noticed. One of the banging sounds that reverberated. She heard it again now and counted.

One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three, one thousand and four. Bang. One thousand and one, one thousand and two, one thousand and three, one thousand and four. Bang.

Her father was a keen photographer. She remembered as a small child, before digital photography had taken over, her father had a darkroom where he developed films himself. She liked to stand in the darkness with him, either the total darkness, or in the glow of the weak red light bulb. When he opened a film roll, they would stand in total darkness and her father would get her to count the seconds, the way he had taught her. If you said, One thousand and one slowly, that equalled, quite accurately, one second. It worked the same for all numbers.

So now she was able to calculate that the banging occurred every four seconds. Fifteen times a minute.

She counted out one minute. Then five. Ten. Twenty minutes. Half an hour. Then a surge of anger ripped through her at the futility of what she was doing. Why me, God, if you bloody exist? Why do you want to destroy the love between Benedict and me? Because he’s not Jewish, is that what this is about? Boy, are you one sick God! Benedict’s a good man. He’s dedicated his life to helping people less well off than himself. That’s what I try to do also, in case you hadn’t sodding noticed.

Then she began sobbing again.

And counting automatically, like the banging was a metronome. Four seconds. Bang. Four seconds. Bang. Four seconds. Bang.

Then a loud, sliding clang.

The vehicle rocked.

Footsteps.

108

Sunday 18 January

The Brighton and Hove mortuary had recently undergone substantial building works. The reason for this was that more people were eating themselves to death and then were too fat to fit into the fridges. So now new super-sized fridges had been installed to accommodate them.

Not that it required an extra-wide fridge to accommodate the desiccated remains of the woman who lay on the stainless-steel table, in the centre of the newly refurbished main post-mortem room, at 5.30 p.m. this Sunday afternoon.

Even after half an hour in here, Grace had not got used to the horrendous smell and breathing though his mouth only helped a little. He could understand why almost all pathologists used to smoke and carry out their work on corpses with a cigarette between their lips. Those who didn’t put a blob of Vicks just above their upper lips. But that tradition appeared to have stopped along with the smoking ban a few years back. He could have sure done with something now.

Was he the only one in here who was affected?

Present in the room, and all gowned, masked and rubber-booted, were the Coroner’s Officer, the forensic archaeologist, Joan Major, the SOCO photographer, James Gartrell, who was busy alternately videoing and photographing every stage of the examination, Cleo and her assistant, Darren Wallace, and, centre stage, Nadiuska De Sancha. Spanish born and of Russian descent, the Home Office pathologist was a statuesque beauty almost every male police officer in Sussex lusted after – and liked to work with, as she was fast and good-humoured.

Also present was Gle

It was always strange attending a post-mortem when Cleo was at work. She was almost a stranger to him, bustling around, efficient and impersonal. Apart from the occasional smiling glance at him.

Since the start of the post-mortem, Nadiuska had painstakingly taped every inch of the dead woman’s skin, bagging each strip of tape separately, in the hope that it might contain an errant skin or semen cell invisible to the naked eye, or a hair or clothing fibre.

Grace stared down at the body, mesmerized. The skin was almost black from desiccation, in a virtual mummified state. Her long brown hair was well preserved. Her breasts, although shrunken, were still clearly visible, as were her pubic hairs and her pelvis.

There was an indent in the rear of her skull, consistent with a heavy blow or fall. Before going into a detailed examination, just from what she could see, Nadiuska said that would be enough, in that part of the skull, to kill a normal person.

Joan said that her teeth indicated the woman was between late teens and mid-twenties.