No stone unturned

Examination

Mike Marks was devastated and needed to be helped from the mortuary viewing room. He told them that Elizabeth was twenty-five years old and was a bank clerk at the Atlantic Capital Bank. She’d been joining some of her co-workers for a bachelorette party after work on the 12th of October. She had not taken her car into work as she knew they would be drinking and the girls decided to use uber. Elizabeth told him not to wait up for her as she would be late, and when he discovered she had not returned the following morning he had been that concerned as he thought she might have stayed over with one of her friends. Mike only became worried later that morning when he called her work to be told that she had not come in. He had started to ring round various friends when the police arrived to give him the terrible news.

Whilst at the mortuary James, anxious to know the cause of death, spoke with the pathologist, who was at the time still completing the external examination of the body, photographing, measuring and detailing all the injuries. He said that he would not be able to give an exact cause of death until he had completed a full internal examination as well, but James pressed him for his opinion on his initial observations. It was immediately clear that Linton had been lying about Elizabeth’s death.

When the body first arrived at the mortuary the pathologist had carefully cut open the bin liners to preserve them for fingerprints. He had noted that Elizabeth’s bra had been pulled up around her neck and twisted so tightly that the hook and eyes of the strap had left puncture marks in the nape of her neck. Her tights and knickers, although still on her, were both torn and ripped. Her leather zip-up boots and scuffmarks on both heels, which implied she might have been dragged backwards along the pavement and into the back of the van.

Elizabeth had also suffered a heavy blow to the back of her head with a blunt instrument, which had caused a depressed fracture and an indentation mark in the shape of a half-moon. The pathologist was of the opinion that the head injury probably didn’t kill her but it would certainly have knocked her unconscious.

From the severe bruising and scratch marks to her thighs and v****a, it appeared that she might have been r***d with a blunt object whilst unable to struggle or defend herself.

All her clothing, swabs and toxicology samples had already been taken to the forensic lab for examination.

Because of the head injury and the possibility Elizabeth might have been strangled or suffocated to death the brain would have to be left in formaldehyde for two weeks and then sent to an expert in forensic neuropathology for examination, which would further delay the pathologist’s final report and his finding on the actual cause of death.

James Ulster asked if a balloon pump handle could have caused the head injury but the pathologist doubted that it would be heavy enough or leave the half moon impression. James put in a quick call to the lab and asked for details of items that had been recovered from the back of the van. Amongst them was a nine-inch heavy-duty-spanner which the pathologist said could leave the type of head injury that Elizabeth had suffered. James asked the lab to make the spanner a priority.