THE THESEUS PARADOX: The stunning breakthrough thriller based on real events, from the Scotland Yard detective turned author. (23 page)

Jake sat down opposite the serving counter with his mug of tea.

‘What’s your plan for the lady “professor” then, Jake?’ Lenny asked, sliding into the seat opposite him.

‘We need speak to the coroner’s officer – let them know our concerns. I want to see what the post-mortem turns up.’

‘Two sausage, two eggs, bacon, bubble and beans!’ screeched the woman from behind the counter.

‘Do you think we need to go to the post-mortem? Do we need to be present and get samples, Jake?’

‘We’ll have to let Denswood decide that. I wouldn’t think so personally, not unless they can’t establish cause of death straight away.’

‘Two eggs, two sausage, two bacon, bubble, fried slice, beans and chips!’ bellowed the man at the counter in a deep guttural growl.

‘What’re your thoughts on her and how she died?’ Lenny asked.

Jake sipped his hot tea.

‘It’s a strange one. She was young. She was very skinny though. Maybe drug misuse? Difficult to say. The place looked clean and tidy. Whatever it was that took her, did it all of a sudden – I don’t think it was a gradual thing. She was clearly well enough to keep the place tidy.’

‘Suicide? Could she have done something to herself? Suddenly decided to do it?’

‘What, in bed watching her last
Family Fortunes
show naked, Lenny?’

‘You’re probably right. The blast then? Something to do with that? Is she the fifty-third victim?’

‘I don’t know, Lenny. Got my doubts. Let’s wait for the PM.’

‘Two cheese on toast with beans and egg!’ screamed the woman.

‘House!’ called out Jake, like he’d won the big bingo prize fund.

64

Friday

19 August 2005

1234 hours

Chelsea Harbour mortuary, Imperial Wharf, south-west London

Jake pulled up alongside the double-storey white gates. A ten-feet-high wall ran around the perimeter, securing the mortuary building. Large red signs stated in bold white lettering: ‘No Parking, 24-hour access required. Unauthorised vehicles will be towed.’

Death was indeed a twenty-four-hour business, thought Jake.

The mortuary was nestled amongst plush, high-rise apartments that had sprung up out of the old gasworks like invasive bamboo.

Security at mortuaries was always high. Not that the dead were going to escape. It was more that the dead had a story to tell – the story of how and why they had died – and there were sometimes people who didn’t want that story to be heard. The bodies needed to be protected so that the integrity of that story was sound.

Grief also did strange things to people. Sometimes the bereaved felt the police and authorities were adopting the wrong course of action and wanted to take their loved ones home, or just didn’t want them at the mortuary at all. Jake could commiserate with those feelings all too easily.

Lenny got out of the passenger seat and went to the silver box on the wall by the gate. Jake watched him state his credentials into the intercom and wave his warrant card for identification purposes before the gate swung open slowly on a tiny motor. Jake pulled into the small yard and parked as Lenny walked in behind and found the buzzer to get access to the building.

Inside, a light-grey, tiled floor was met with white tiled walls – yet the tiles did nothing to mask the smell of death, which hit you as soon as you walked in. They were greeted by a man in his late fifties wearing a white lab coat. His hair was unkempt and his face showed several days’ worth of stubble.

‘I’m Derek. I’m the lab technician who’ll be assisting the pathologist today.’

Derek didn’t proffer his hand to shake. Jake wondered how many dead bodies Derek had handled that morning already. Shaking hands wasn’t a particularly attractive scenario in this environment.

‘I’m DI Flannagan and this is DS Sandringham,’ he replied.

‘This way, please…’ Derek wandered off in front of them, following the path of the highly polished, grey-tiled floor as it snaked its way down along the corridor.

They passed through a set of double swing doors and into a large room that was tiled floor to ceiling like the hall, but with harsh fluorescent lighting and gleaming stainless-steel furniture. Four examination tables sat side by side, each one designed to hold an adult cadaver on a raised section that looked like a sieve. The drain holes were there to allow any bodily fluids to drip down into a reservoir underneath and be channelled away unseen.

At the far end of the room was a slim, elegant, red-haired woman in her late forties. Jake had met Dr Angela Farthing some years earlier whilst working on a previous case. She didn’t look like she’d aged a day.

Given the unusual circumstances of ‘Professor’ Groom-Bates’s death, Jake had put in a special request for a registered Home Office forensic pathologist to undertake the post-mortem examination.

Dr Farthing donned surgical gloves and a white lab coat as she looked down at the lifeless, naked figure of the woman Jake had found in bed at the Pennines.

‘Good morning, Inspector. Please tell me what you know about this lady and her death?’ she asked him, primly.

‘Good morning, ma’am. She was thirty-six years old. Lived on her own. Australian by birth. Worked as an editor of a medical journal at the British Medical Association building in Tavistock Square. Bit of a Walter Mitty character by all accounts and appears to have lied about her qualifications and background. She claimed in a newspaper article to have treated the injured on the bus that was blown up outside the BMA building on 7 July. She has no high-level medical qualifications. Her moment of glory in the media unwittingly undid and laid bare her lies to her employer and those around her. She was found dead at her bedsit. It’s a very strange case.

‘Crucially, and what I really want to know is, could it be possible that she picked up some contaminant in the process? Some toxin, bacteria or infection that’s killed her?’

‘Thank you, Inspector. Let’s get started then.’

Dr Farthing began pawing at the skin around Groom-Bates’s left shoulder. She moved down her left side to the foot, across to her right foot and then back up to the right shoulder.

‘Her back please, Derek.’

Derek pulled the ‘professor’ onto her side so that the doctor could look at her back.

‘I see the flies found her. Thank you, Derek,’ she said, referring to the hole in the base of Groom-Bates’s back.

Derek gently laid the cadaver down onto the examination table again, whilst Dr Farthing spoke into her Dictaphone in preparation for her report later.

‘No signs of bruising. No puncture wounds. Slight decomposition of lower back with the presence of fly larvae and localised egg laying. Larvae are small. Are you looking for me to determine time of death, Inspector?’

‘No, ma’am,’ replied Jake.

‘You don’t want me to test a sample of the dead larvae, then?’

‘No, thank you. Neighbour saw her alive twenty-four hours before we found her dead in bed. Time of death is not terribly important in this case.’

Dr Farthing raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips and continued.

‘So, this “contaminant” that you mentioned… Have you any idea what type that might be, Inspector?’

‘We don’t know. One of the victims who was badly injured on the bus, an amputee, is showing signs of a green fluid weeping from the site of their amputation. Coupled with Professor Groom-Bates’s death, there is a distinct possibility that there was a dirty bomb on that vehicle in Tavistock Square on 7/7.

‘We know that there are countries out there experimenting with munitions containing biological agents. Maybe there’s some involvement? Difficult to say at this stage.’

‘OK. Understood… Derek, could you do the brain for me, please?’

Derek nodded. He picked up a scalpel in his right hand and flattened down Groom-Bates’s lank hair with his left. On the very top of her head, he cut a cross in the skin. Then he peeled it back as one would peel an orange, folding her forehead over her face and two flaps over her ears, to reveal the white skull underneath. Jake had seen this done maybe ten times during his police career, but it still made him wince.

Derek then picked up a small, hand-held, electrical circular saw and turned it on. The whir of the motor reminded Jake of the dentist. Derek began cutting around the top of the skull with the saw. There was a smell of burning as the saw blade clattered around the bone. The cerebral fluid ran out and into the sink. Derek then lifted off the top of Groom-Bates’s skull like the lid from a jam jar. With the top of his fingers he pulled out her brain, cut the cord attaching it to the spine and placed it onto a weighing scale behind him.

‘One thousand, three hundred and forty-three grams – no sign of haemorrhaging,’ said Derek as he picked up the buttery mass off the scales and passed it to Angela.

Angela made a visual examination before placing it on a stainless-steel table to her left and dissecting it.

‘Brain appears to have been starved of oxygen – probably at or around time of death, I would say. Let’s look inside her, please, Derek.’

Derek moved to Groom-Bates’s torso. He dug hard at the sternum with the scalpel and ran it down over her chest and toward her pubis. He pulled open the slit he’d made, the yellow fat visible under the skin. From behind the lower part of the ribs, he lifted out a white, j-shaped sack. It was about the size of a grapefruit. Jake recognised it instantly. This was the stomach. Its contents shifted about waywardly as Derek lifted it – like food waste in a bin bag.

The smell was already bad, but Jake knew the worst was yet to come. Nothing could mask it or prepare you for it.

Derek placed the stomach in a stainless-steel bowl before cutting it open to let its contents spill out. The smell was unbearable. It hit Jake like a smack in the mouth. He wanted to throw up. Like distilled essence of rotten eggs mixed with concentrate of rotting cauliflower leaves, but in a heavy gas. It hovered; so dense you could almost see it, touch it.

He always wanted to throw up during post-mortems. Trying to detach himself from them was almost impossible. Standing there, watching them take place, it was an assault on every sense that you owned. Seeing a dead body in situ was easier, thought Jake. In the morgue with the body being cut open, cut up and things being said – every one of your senses was wide open and being abused in the most revolting of circumstances. Vision and sound were bad enough. Then there was the smell. It got the back of your throat. You could taste it, it was so strong. You could see the colour drain from onlookers’ faces. You had to fight the urge to gag. Jake had seen plenty of people faint as the smell from the stomach contents hit them.

Angela sifted through the bowl of stomach lining and stomach contents with her gloved fingers. ‘Undigested food; last meal appears to have been crisps and a bar or two of chocolate – perhaps just half an hour before death. Nothing out of the ordinary about the stomach or its contents.’

Jake started to lose his focus. He began to think about the body parts he’d seen in Tavistock Square. About the intestines found at the door of the BMA. He had to concentrate on something else, otherwise he was going to gag and be sick.

He shut his eyes and tried to name every Premiership football ground in the country to distract himself. It was no good… the smell wouldn’t go.

He gagged. Acid reached his taste buds. It had been a few years since he’d done a post-mortem. Jake forced himself to swallow half a mouthful of sick back down.

Lenny smirked at him, highly amused to see the boss clearly displaying signs of discomfort. Jake knew he’d get a ribbing for this.

‘I’ll wait outside,’ he said, as he walked out. He’d seen enough.

65

Friday

19 August 2005

1330 hours

Chelsea Harbour mortuary, Imperial Wharf, south-west London

He’d been sat in the car for forty-five minutes. What sort of life was this? Watching dead people being cut up, to find out if they’d been killed by some other dead people, who’d blown themselves up?

An advert was playing on the radio: ‘Tonight is the eightieth Euromillions draw. £25 million could be yours!’

‘I
wish it was
mine,’ replied Jake to the radio. ‘I’d give up this poxy game for sure!’

Lenny appeared at the open car door, laughing at him. It wasn’t cool to walk out of a PM in police culture. You had to be the ‘roughty-tufty-nothing-phases-me’ type. Showing emotions or weakness like that was frowned upon.

‘They’ve finished,’ said Lenny. ‘Doctor wants to see you in the office.’

‘First time that has ever happened to me, Lenny. Honest. I just couldn’t stomach it,’ said Jake as he got out of the car.

‘A lightweight – that’s what you are, Jake. You’ll be asking for weekends off and a 9-to-5 office job next.’ Lenny winked.

Jake traipsed across the car park, head bowed in mock embarrassment.

The smell still lingered in the tiled corridor. The door to the office was ajar and Dr Farthing sat at a white, brightly lit, laminated desk, making notes. A large window in front of her overlooked the autopsy theatre. The lab coat was gone. She was wearing a smart black skirt suit with a grey pinstripe in it, and an expensive-looking, cream silk blouse. She looked more like a city lawyer than a pathologist.

‘Inspector – how are you feeling?’ She placed her royal-blue, Mont Blanc pen down carefully on her writing pad. Jake detected a hint of sarcasm in her voice.

‘I’m feeling a lot better now that you’re no longer digging around in a dead body and have taken your lab coat off. Nice suit.’ Jake looked her up and down appreciatively.

‘Flattery won’t get you far with me, Inspector. Sit down,’ she requested in a schoolmistress tone of voice.

Jake sighed and sat down. She smiled at him as if he were an incorrigible pupil.