Down Among the Dead Men (16 page)

Peter Gillard arrived. When he asked what he had on for the day, Clive kept a straight face and led him into the dissection room where Mr Walker waited, laid out on a dissection table. I
followed to see his reaction, which was priceless. He almost physically jumped in the air, then squeaked. After that he was silent for a moment while he walked around the body before asking Clive
in such a voice that I couldn’t tell if he was being serious, ‘Got any idea what he died of?’

In actual fact, autopsies like that one are fairly straightforward, because there is little question concerning the cause of death, and it’s just a matter of cataloguing the injuries and
making sure there is no possibility that natural disease played a part; not surprisingly, since Mr Walker was only forty-two, Peter Gillard was able to show fairly easily that this wasn’t the
case and that the cause of death was ‘multiple injuries’. The only other thing that needed to be done was to get samples, if we could, to be sent to the toxicology laboratory.
It’s standard protocol to do this in all cases of accidental death, to determine just how much drink or drugs might have contributed to the deceased’s end.

Clive, who had been doing the autopsy with Peter Gillard, had previously got some urine using a needle and syringe on the bladder before he took it out; now that the body cavity was empty, he
could get some blood. To do this, while I held an empty, sterile pot in the pelvis below the iliac vessels as they passed into the legs, he massaged first the left thigh and then the right, pushing
blood out so that it squirted into the pot. I labelled the blood and urine specimens, then stored them at the bottom of one of the fridges.

Which meant that Peter Gillard was finished, but our job was just starting. While he made notes on what he had found, I poured the dissected organs back into a plastic bag inside the body
cavity. Then, while I cleaned down the bench where Peter Gillard had done his work (he wasn’t too messy, by which I mean no blood on the ceiling, which sometimes happens with pathologists),
Clive sewed up the body cavity.

The pathologist just walks away – some have a shower, some just get changed, perhaps before having a coffee in the office with us – and wanders upstairs to the laboratory to get on
with other things, but there is still a lot of care to be lavished on the deceased, and it’s us who have to do it. Now alone, Clive and I stood either side of Mr Walker and discussed what
could be done. Most of the damage would be hidden by a shroud, but obviously, should the relations want to come and pay their last respects, we would have to let them see his head and I
couldn’t imagine they’d be too chuffed to be confronted with him as he now appeared. He wasn’t exactly looking his best. I said, ‘There’s no way he’s viewable,
is there?’

Clive did what Clive always did, which was to smile knowingly and reply with a twinkle in his eye, ‘We’ll see, shall we?’

I knew better than to doubt him; Clive had twenty-six years’ experience and I, in comparison, knew sweet Fanny Adams. What I saw over the next hour made me relieved that I’d remained
schtum and not expressed disbelief. Clive, concentrating very hard for nearly fifty-five minutes without stopping, somehow managed to transform the crunchy flesh pancake that had once been Martin
Walker’s head into something that was at least vaguely a human face with cranium attached. He did this by packing the skull with cotton wool, very carefully moulding the facial bones back
into something that resembled a normal human face, and some very intricate stitching; Martin Walker was never going to win ten pounds in the Monopoly beauty contest but I could imagine that, in the
half-light of the viewing room and behind glass, the relatives would not be upset at what they saw.

In the late afternoon, as we were having some well-deserved coffee in the office, Bill Baxford rang to arrange a viewing. Clive picked up the phone. The conversation went on for a while, then he
put the phone down and turned to me, shaking his head. ‘We don’t need to worry any more,’ he told me.

‘What about?’

‘The dog. Apparently he’s safe and sound. Ran away when the combine harvester came round and went back home.’ He laughed. ‘So much for man’s best friend.’

TWENTY-EIGHT

The first forensic post-mortem that I did on my own was Mrs Alice Taylor-Wells, who came to us from Amber Court.

I’ve said before that Amber Court had a reputation, and we’d been receiving a regular supply of residents from it throughout the year, all of them looking unkempt and uncared for,
being thin and pale and sad-looking. Mrs Taylor-Wells, though, was altogether a different story. When the undertakers brought her in late one afternoon in November, the first giveaway was when it
only took one man to lift her on to the tray; you could tell that she was as light as a feather. Then, when Graham unzipped the body bag, the second giveaway was exposed. Graham made a face, as did
I when the smell hit me. It wasn’t the same stink as a decomposed body gives off, but it was just as unpleasant. I looked at Graham with a questioning look and he said only, ‘Bed
sores.’

Bloody hell, did she have bed sores. Graham pulled her easily on to her side and I saw what looked like a gaping hole at the base of her spine that must have been four inches across and, I could
see because the packing had fallen out, went down to bone. ‘Oh, my God,’ I whispered, feeling sick. The flesh at the sides was wet and slimy and covered in yellow-grey pus. This
wasn’t the only one either; I could see others on the right hip and the heels of the feet.

Graham growled, ‘Bloody Amber Court.’

The phone rang a few minutes later, and when I picked it up I heard Bill Baxford’s voice. Instead of his usual cheeriness, though, he was distinctly down. ‘It’s about Mrs
Taylor-Wells.’

I handed the phone over to Graham who was in charge, Clive being away for a long weekend. I watched him listening for a while, occasionally glancing up at the clock in the office and saying,
‘OK,’ a lot. When he put the phone down, he said, ‘The relatives aren’t happy about the way she was treated and the Coroner’s had enough. It’s going
forensic’

I felt immediately nervous. I was on call that night, so it was going to be my responsibility. ‘What time?’

‘The pathologist should be here at seven. If I were you, I’d go home, get some tea and then come back. You’ll be fine, don’t look so worried. I’ll be on the end of
the phone if you need me.’

There are four forensic pathologists who come into the county when required. Apparently, three of them are fairly normal, sociable people, but the fourth isn’t. You can
imagine my dismay, then, when I found I had drawn the short straw that evening, for I was to have the delight of Professor Ranulph Twigworth as the pathologist. Professor Twigworth is a very tall
man, with greying hair, a slight bend in his back because of his height, and an outwardly friendly and sociable attitude. Don’t be fooled, though; he must be the most arrogant, chauvinistic
man that God put on this planet. He thinks that he is more intelligent, more attractive and more important than anyone else on earth and, deep down, he clearly despises those of us who work in the
mortuary, regarding us as nothing more than ‘bottom-feeders’, the lowest in the food chain. I had noticed that Clive always greeted him with a smile and a cheery ‘Hello,
Prof,’ an attitude that switched off like a light when his back was turned.

Up until then, he had pretty much ignored me, but even that made me feel unworthy. He seemed to look down on people even while he was smiling and apparently being friendly. You just knew that if
he didn’t have to work alongside you, he would never give you the time of day. I would have to step up to the mark tonight, though, and try really hard to be confident around him,

At least, I consoled myself, he was a very experienced pathologist.

A full-blown forensic post-mortem is a bit like a circus with lots of people doing their bit at different times and the pathologist acting as the ringmaster. A scenes of crime officer will be
taking photographs as directed by the pathologist, other police officers will be looking on and answering any background questions that the pathologist has, the mortuary technician will be moving
around as directed, getting instruments, pots, syringes and swabs, then labelling samples. If it’s a high risk post-mortem – because of possible AIDS or hepatitis – there’ll
be a second mortuary technician staying clean and just ‘circulating’, acting as general dogsbody.

Mrs Taylor-Wells, though, wasn’t anything exciting like a murder; she was just a little old lady who had died in a nursing home where too many old people had died, and who looked as if she
had been in a concentration camp. The question here was neglect and standards of care, which was not necessarily the business of the police. Professor Twigworth was on his own, taking his own
photographs and with just me and Bill Baxford for company.

In one way, a forensic post-mortem is easier for us, the lowly technicians, than a normal Coroner’s. The pathologist will always do the evisceration himself, requiring us only to saw
through the skull. The downside is that they make a lot more incisions, which means a lot more reconstruction. In some cases, they take off most of the skin – including the face – and
putting it all back without showing too much stitching can take hours. Professor Twigworth, being the man he is, cut down on all the bruises and marks, without any thought as to how I was going to
reconstruct poor Mrs Taylor-Wells; after he’d finished with that and was at the dissection bench looking at the organs, I surveyed the mess he had made and I admit that my heart was in my
clogs. I wondered about calling Graham – he had said that he would happily come and help if I thought I couldn’t cope – but decided at once that wasn’t going to happen. I
was aware that Clive especially thought of me as a pretty good technician, but still just a girl. I felt that he would look on any plea for help as weakness.

During all this Professor Twigworth kept up a constant stream of patronizing remarks, unfunny jokes and sexual innuendo aimed at me. I think he half-thought that I – a piece of pond life
– would jump at the chance of a cuddle from a distinguished pathologist, and part of me wanted him to try something on so that I could put him straight about the facts of life. Bill Baxford
chortled at much of this, but I couldn’t blame him for that.

Professor Twigworth finished after three hours. He had taken small samples of most of the organs, as well swabs from the sores, and swabs from the nose and throat. I had already taken urine and
asked him now, ‘Do you want to take some blood?’

‘Of course, my dear. Of course.’

I went to the side where I had laid out, as instructed, all the equipment that might be required. I picked up a sterile pot and went back to the body to massage the thigh to push blood out. As I
began to do this, Professor Twigworth said in a loud voice to Bill Baxford, ‘I’d pay good money to have her do that to me.’

Boy, did I go red at that. Luckily, the mask hid this, and I kept my eyes down so that he couldn’t see how furious I was. How dare he? I just carried on working and after a couple of
minutes, changing to the other leg as well, I had about 20 ml of blood, which would be more than enough. I made sure that everything was correctly labelled while Professor Twigworth made notes,
then he packed up and moved off to the changing room. ‘Right,’ he said loudly. ‘I’m finished now, Bill.’ To me he said with a wink, ‘I’ll be ready to have
my back scrubbed in about five minutes, Michelle.’

It was the first time he had called me by my name, but I wished he hadn’t. I was dead embarrassed again but there was no way I was going to show it. I looked around the PM room, at the
blood on the walls and the floor around where he had done his dissection, at the two bowls of sliced organs, at poor Mrs Taylor-Wells who was still a mass of cuts and skin flaps, and at her opened
body cavity. In a loud voice, I said to him, ‘You’d better get Bill to do it, Professor. I’ve got a lot of work to do.’

Once everyone had left, it was about nine thirty in the evening, and I knew that I would be there for a few hours longer. The porters were in and out bringing a couple of bodies from the wards
– and thank God they were, or I thought I might start getting cabin fever.

It was just gone midnight when I rang Luke to come and collect me from the mortuary. I was tired and my body ached. The fact that I had to return in seven hours was not a nice thought either. I
think I was asleep in the car before we even left the hospital car park.

TWENTY-NINE

Luke and I were at Mum and Dad’s when Clive rang me one Sunday afternoon in late autumn. It wasn’t unusual to get a call from Clive over the weekend, but this time
he had some bad news.

‘Graham’s in hospital.’

I knew that Graham had had some health problems in the past, not helped by smoking since he was thirteen, drinking like a thirsty fish and eating a fry-up for breakfast most days, so I
immediately assumed he’d had a heart attack. However, Clive soon put me right. ‘Stupid git fell down a steep riverbank while he was out shooting. He’s broken his hip. Lucky he
didn’t shoot himself

‘Oh, crap. Is he all right?’

‘Yeah he’s all right, the clumsy sod. They’re going to operate this afternoon, but he’ll be out of action for months.’

His voice told me that he was seriously concerned. The winter was nearly upon us – which was our busy time what with pneumonia and a sudden increase in suicides – and I knew enough
to realize we wouldn’t be able to cope. I asked, ‘What about a locum?’

Clive laughed. ‘I’ll ask, Michelle, but because of the money problems in the Trust, I bet they turn us down.’

‘Surely they know how busy we’re going to be? They wouldn’t think twice if it was the wards.’

He said at once in a voice I was coming to know well, ‘We’ll cope, Michelle. We always do.’

Later that evening, when I was alone with Oscar and Harvey, Maddie phoned for a chat and I had a brainwave. She had shown an interest in what went on down in the mortuary, and had also hinted
that she was getting a bit bored with emptying out the processing machines, filling them up again, taking dictation when it came to describing the small biopsies, and being a general dogsbody. She
had said more than once that if the right job came up she might go back to Wales, so I knew that she was seriously disgruntled. I took the plunge. ‘Suppose you could do a spell with us in the
mortuary? Do you think you might like that?’