Mersey Murder Mysteries Collection

Chapter 10

Drake and Ross stepped into the sunlight as they alighted from the Mondeo in the car park outside the mortuary building. As Ross stretched to his full height, relieving the stiffness in his neck and back, Izzie Drake couldn"t help but admire the man who she worked closely with.

Detective Inspector Andy Ross might be the wrong side of forty, but his full head of dark brown hair and his healthy skin tone gave him the look of a man almost ten years younger. Drake had noticed a framed photo of his parents in his office soon after she"d started working under Ross, and had commented on the handsome couple in the picture. Ross explained that his father, a military policeman at the time, had met his mother during a posting to the Far East in the fifties, and fell in love with the beautiful dark-skinned daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant. Apparently Ross"s mother came from an old Anglo-Indian family, with a strong hint of Spanish blood in the mix, hence her mother"s maiden name of Martinez. It was therefore easy for Izzie to see where her boss got his good looks from.

Izzie often envied Ross"s wife, Maria, a doctor in general practice not far from where they now stood, looking at the entrance to the mortuary building. She wished she could meet a man with the looks, integrity and self-assurance of Andy Ross, but her luck with men never seemed to follow a straight or true course. Maybe one day, but for now, work took priority over everything else.

“Ready, Sergeant?” Ross asked as Izzie pressed the button on the remote and the car answered with a beep as the door locks engaged.

“Ready as I"ll ever be, sir. God, I do hate these places.”

“Don"t we all? I doubt this place is anyone"s favourite place to be on a warm, sunny day, except of course, someone like our friendly neighborhood pathologist, the good Doctor Nugent.”

“Not forgetting his faithful hound, Lees, of course,” Izzie chuckled as she spoke.

Ross joined in Izzie"s lighthearted banter for a few seconds.

“God, yes. I must say, Lees is almost more cadaverous than some of the poor sods in this place, looks like a good meal might kill him.”

“He"s good at his job though, eh, sir? Doctor Nugent won"t have anyone else assisting him, so I"ve heard.”

“True. Well, here goes.”

The two detectives stood at the entrance to the building where an intercom system was in place, beside a small keyboard which only staff had the code to, in order to effect immediate entry. A notice adjacent to a small silver button read "Press here for entry" and Ross duly pressed where indicated. Almost immediately, a tinny disembodied voice squeaked from the small speaker above the button.

“Hello. Please state your name and business.”

“Detective Inspector Ross and Sergeant Drake, Merseyside Police, for Doctor Nugent. We"re expected.”

“Ah yes, I have your names here. Please push the door when the buzzer sounds, Inspector.”

Ross and Drake entered the building as instructed and walked a short distance along the corridor immediately inside the door, quickly arriving at another door beside which a small window looked into an equally small cubicle. Within, a young man sat at a small desk with a computer screen and keyboard in front of him, obviously the disembodied voice from moments earlier, Ross surmised. The man wore a lapel badge that gave his name as Peter Foster, the title Mortuary Reception below the name. Foster spoke to the detectives through a grill in the glass partition that separated him from mortuary visitors.

“Good morning, may I see your identification please, Inspector Ross, Sergeant Drake?”

Both officers produced their warrant cards and passed them through the small gap at the bottom of the glass. Foster checked them carefully. Ross couldn"t remember seeing him here on previous visits to the building.

“You new here?” he inquired of Foster.

“Been here a month, Inspector,” he replied as he passed the warrant cards back to the detectives. “Sorry if I seem over careful, but we"ve been instructed to be very fastidious and only allow authorized personnel into the actual examination suites.”

“No need to apologise for doing your job the right way, Mr. Foster,” Ross replied. “It"s a rare thing to find nowadays.”

Foster smiled, grateful to the inspector for putting him at ease. Ross assumed not everyone was as understanding as he was about being held up in their attempts to enter the "business end" of the mortuary, as he thought of it.

“Thank you, Inspector,” Foster smiled again. “I presume you know your way to the autopsy rooms?”

Ross noted the change in terminology; Foster acknowledging his professional status rather than using the terms presumably used with grieving relatives and so on.

“We do indeed.”

“Doctor Nugent is in Autopsy Room Two,” said Foster, as he handed over two "visitor" badges which Ross and Drake proceeded to pin on their jackets.

“Thanks for your help, Mr. Foster,” Ross smiled at the young man, who beamed an equally expansive smile back at the detectives.

“You"re welcome, Inspector. Please remember to hand the badges back to me before you leave the building.”

Ross nodded and the two walked through the door that opened magically as Foster pressed a switch, out of sight to those outside his small but functional cubicle, which, Ross thought, he probably thought of as his office.

As soon as they entered the next corridor the two officers became instantly aware that they were now in what could best be described as the "mortuary, proper" as their olfactory senses were assailed by the smell familiar to such establishments the world over, that heady mix of formaldehyde and disinfectant. Their nostrils twitched involuntarily as they followed the wide corridor, its walls a pallid "hospital green" in colour, until it suddenly opened up into a large circular room with large double doors spaced evenly around it, each bearing a small plaque carrying the room, or "autopsy suite" number.

“At least we don"t have to watch any bodies being sliced and diced this time,” Izzie Drake said with a tinge of relief in her voice.

“Something to be grateful for, I suppose, Izzie,” Ross replied, himself relieved that he wouldn"t need to avail himself of the "Vick"s Vaporub he and most other police officers usually smeared under their nose to help combat the smell of decomposition and putrefaction. No need either, to dress themselves in the surgical scrubs usually worn when attending autopsies either, as Nugent had advised earlier on the phone. No matter how many autopsies he"d attended over the years, Andy Ross had never been able to get used to the odours associated with the process of post-mortem examinations. With nothing but a set of skeletal remains on the table today, both detectives would be spared the gruesome sights and smells of a regular autopsy.

They paused for second or two outside the doors to autopsy room two, then Ross slowly eased one of the double doors open enough for himself and Drake to pass through. The detectives walked in to the room, which contained all the usual paraphernalia associated with the process in hand, steel autopsy table with channels at the sides for the blood to drain along into waiting receptacles at the end of the table, a set of large cold-boxes set into the far wall, where the bodies would be stored and further tables and counter tops, all in gleaming steel, holding saws, drills, cutting tools and everything a proficient pathologist could ask for in order to determine his or her findings.

As the door slowly closed silently and automatically behind them, both Ross and Drake found themselves staring in surprise at the sight before their eyes. In the centre of the room the skeletal remains lay, displayed in the middle of the autopsy table, with Doctor Nugent standing on the opposite side of the table to the detectives, facing them as they entered the room. With his back to them, Francis Lees was busily dictating something into a small hand-held recorder, probably on Nugent"s instructions, his voice low and inaudible from where they stood.

What took Ross and Drake by surprise however was that, for the fist time in either officer"s memory, there was a third person in the room with the pathologist and his assistant. Ross in particular was quite amazed as he took in the sight of an extremely beautiful blonde-haired woman, dressed not in surgical scrubs as Nugent and Lees always were, despite Nugent"s instructions to the opposite to Ross, but in an extremely expensive looking light blue skirt suit, the hem of the skirt ending just above the knee, revealing just enough for Ross to appreciate a terrific pair of legs. Topped off with a short white lab coat, the newcomer looked more like a consulting psychiatrist then a pathologist and Ross knew immediately that something was definitely different about this examination of Nugent"s, that much was for sure. Ross led the way as he and Drake approached the trio at the table.

“Ah, Inspector Ross, and the good Sergeant Drake, come in, come in,” Nugent urged, “I have someone here I"d like you to meet.”

Avoiding the urge to reply that such news was rather obvious, Ross instead replied, “I see, Doctor, and just who is this lady that we are to have the pleasure of meeting?”

“Well,” Nugent went on, “As you know, I"m pretty much acknowledged as one of the leading pathologists in the country, and there"s not much that leaves me floundering, but this time, I did feel the need to consult another expert in order to give you a true picture of what these remains might mean to your investigation.”

Ross ignored Nugent"s blatant statement of his own self-importance and waited as the pathologist continued. “Allow me to introduce you to Doctor Hannah Lewin. Hannah"s an old friend of mine, and she"s a professor of forensic anthropology, at Cambridge.”

“Forensic anthropology?” Ross queried.

“Aye, Inspector Ross. My speciality is in working with something a little, er, fresher than our friend on the table, and knowing Hannah was in town for a lecture at the University, I took the opportunity to ask her opinion of our remains.”

“I see,” said Ross, reaching out to shake hands with Hannah Lewin. The woman however, held her hands up, and stepped back, Ross able to see she was wearing rubber autopsy gloves. “Oops, sorry, Doctor, or should I say professor?”

“Hannah is fine, Inspector,” she smiled at him. “I never like all these grandiose titles, do you?”

“Well, no, I suppose not, then you must call me Andy, and this is Izzie,” Ross replied, as he nodded in the Drake"s direction.

A flicker of recognition passed across Ross"s face as he went on, “I think I"ve heard of you, Hannah. Didn"t you assist the police down south with the identification of the bones found in the old factory building in Herefordshire a couple of years ago?”

“You"re quite right, Andy,” Hannah replied. “It was in Leominster to be precise, an old shoe factory that Samuel Metcalfe used as a burial site for his victims, nine of them to be precise. I was able to determine cause of death and also individual identifications for the majority of the remains.”

“Ha, got you,” Izzie suddenly exclaimed. “I"ve seen you on the telly too. You were on that show that told the history of the Viking bones at the settlement in Hillingdale last year, weren"t you?”

Hannah Lewin smiled at Izzie"s remark.

“I was indeed, Sergeant, er, sorry, Izzie. Are you interested in such things?”

“A real history buff, that"s me,” Izzie replied. “I love to learn from the past, and the history of our country is really what shapes its future, don"t you think?”

“Certainly,” said the anthropologist, impressed with Izzie"s enthusiasm.

Ross gave an exaggerated cough, eager to bring the conversation back to their reason for being in the autopsy suite. Hannah returned to her professional persona as she spoke again.

“I"m really pleased to meet you both. Doctor Nugent has told me you"re very good at your jobs. He speaks highly of you, don"t you, William?”

Nugent grunted, obviously feeling a little uncomfortable at Hannah Lewin"s bluntness.

“Aye, well, no need to go making them big-headed now, is there lass?”

“Oh, don"t be so gruff, William. Now, shall we get on with what we"re here for?”

“Aye. Let"s do that,” Nugent went on, relieved to be back on familiar territory. He looked at Ross and Drake as he now spoke in his usual, professional tones. “As you know, there was really nothing but bones when we finally extracted the remains from the dockside river bed. The lack of hair or any tissue after so many years of immersion, first in the water and then in the mud and silt that had built up in the disused dock area had ruined any chances we may have had of obtaining a good DNA sample and of course, even then, we wouldn"t have known what the hell to compare any such sample with. Facial recognition was definitely out of the question, and that"s when I thought Hannah"s expertise might be of assistance to us.”

“You"re sure it"s been there since before the dock was drained, then?” Drake asked the pathologist.

“Aye lass, I"m pretty sure of it. You see, we know the dock was drained about ten years ago, as part of the urban regeneration plan for the whole docks area. If the body had been tossed in there after draining, it would, I"m sure have been discovered sooner and would not have sunk into the river bed and been buried in the mud as it was when we found him. Hannah has conducted a pretty extensive initial examination in the time she"s had available and has some findings to report to you, I"m pleased to say.”

“Anything you can add to the investigation will help, I"m sure,” Ross replied. “We have very little to go on so far.”

“Well, I can"t actually tell you too much, but I do have one or two points of interest to give you,” Hannah Lewin replied.

As Ross and Drake waited, she picked up a clipboard from the side of the autopsy table and began her report to the detectives.