Bill Stern watched the pathologist’s careless artistry, fascinated and simultaneously sickened by the way the man’s hands moved through the cold stew of organ and sinew inside the nine-inch slash that cut through Father Joseph D'Angelo slight pot-belly.
Pulling and probing with all the consummate skills of a fish-gutter.
“I think I preferred looking at him in stockings,” he said. “What’s it they say, Doc? We’re all the same colour inside?”
“Mmmm…” Ellery mused, tutting as something else failed to add up to his professional expectation.
“Notice how they never say we look like a cold bowl of Hungarian goulash?”
Flecks of the dead padre’s blood slicked off Ellery’s surgical gloves, splashing a film of thin crimson over the kidney tray on the trolley, as he swapped the thick bladed scalpel he had been probing with for a more precisely edged blade.
“So, what do you reckon, Doc?”
“Hard to say,” the pathologist hedged, slicing through another rasher of fatty tissue to expose the motorway of abandoned veins. “For sure. It certainly looks like he died before the first of the knife wounds were inflicted, see here?” he said, pointing at the rough circle of severed veins and arteries with the scarlet-tainted tip of the scalpel. “Not much evidence of bleeding. If the wounds are fresh this would suggest a cardio-vascular failure. In fact, I think I would go so far as to suggest that this major wound, here,” he ran the scalpel blade the length of the cut from the dead padre’s groin to his neck, “was inflicted somewhere in the region of ten to fifteen hours after the time of death. However, the obvious lack of muscle deterioration would rule out the likelihood of any greater length of time.”
The pathologist prodded at the fatty tissue of the stomach wall. “The muscle still hasn’t tightened too badly. Yet, that said, there are signs of several bunched clusters of corded sinew to go against it being much less than ten hours, give or take the effects of cold and that sort of thing.” Ellery paused, scratching at his bearded cheek.
“So what you’re saying is it wasn’t the knife that killed him? Right?”
“I’d have to say no. Asphyxiation. The damage to his thorax is extreme, distending of the atlas and axis, and discoloration of internal tissue suggests some sort of struggle. Look at the slight bruising around his mouth and nose. Most probably from the attacker’s knuckles pressing down against the face whilst he struggled.”
“Number Nine, then?” Stern asked, although he already knew the answer.
“Almost certainly,” Ellery conceded, dropping his scalpel into the kidney tray. “Even without the Trinity tattoo on the left cheek I’d be given to believe that this was our man again.”
“Shit.”
“That’s about the size of it,” Ellery agreed. “Look, you don’t have to stop around while I sew him up. It’ll only take a few minutes. Why don’t you go through to reception and grab a coffee. I’ll come through when I’ve finished up and we can go grab something stronger. This kind of thing always makes me want a drink, just to get the taste of death out of my mouth.”
“Just point me in the direction of the kettle, Doc. I’ll take care of the rest.”