‘I’m afraid we don’t have much to go on,’ Graham said.
Graham Chapel was chief mortuary technician, but Dorothy had known him for years as the go-to guy for anything she needed to know about bodies. He was also associate professor of forensics at Edinburgh Uni but he didn’t look like an academic in his white scrubs, blue gloves, grey hair and a barrel-like body that suggested he’d enjoyed all of his sixty years.
Graham, Dorothy and Archie stood looking at the foot on the steel body tray pulled out from the fridges at the mortuary. The mortuary was for all unexplained deaths, suicides, drug overdoses, murder victims, and any oddities such as a woman’s left foot turning up in Bruntsfield. Graham took the foot and turned it over in his gloved hands.
‘She’s a white woman, roughly in her seventies, and she’s been poorly embalmed, as Archie pointed out. We have no DNA match, and there’s no obvious cause of death in the physiology of the skin or bone. But things like cancer or heart conditions wouldn’t necessarily show up in our tests – or dementia or Parkinson’s. Most things, to be honest.’
Archie nodded, focused on the foot.
‘Can I?’ he said.
Graham nodded at the box of gloves. Archie pulled a pair on and took the foot, examined the ankle. ‘And the bite marks?’
‘We don’t know for certain it’s the Beast of Bruntsfield,’ Graham said rolling his eyes. ‘But it seems very likely.’
The tabloids had run full speed with the big cat sightings. The Beast of Bruntsfield was terrorising residents of the affluent Edinburgh suburb, old people terrified to go to the shops, teenagers roaming in gangs with cans of cat food, filming on their phones and laughing. But things had died down after a rash of sightings, and there had been nothing in the last day. Didn’t stop newspapers winding everyone up.
Dorothy shook her head. ‘So where does a panther get a human foot?’
‘An embalmed foot,’ Archie said.
Graham shook his head. ‘Cemetery or funeral home, would be my guess.’
‘Have you checked?’ Dorothy said.
Graham waved around the empty lab. ‘Does it look like I have the manpower to check every cemetery and funeral home in Edinburgh? I’ve got three autopsies today, a pile of lab reports to write and samples to send to forensics.’
‘The police then,’ Archie said, still holding the foot.
‘Thomas doesn’t have the time either,’ Dorothy said.
‘So we just have an unclaimed human foot?’ Archie said.
Graham snorted a laugh. ‘She can join the rest of the misfits downstairs.’
Dorothy frowned. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I checked through our storage records,’ Graham said. ‘It’s years before we inter an unidentified body, and when we do, it’s an anonymous council funeral. But they’ve never put a policy in place for body parts. We have a handful of them downstairs going back fifty years.’
‘What?’
Graham nodded. ‘Two legs, not a pair, one arm, half a torso, a hand. Most of them wash up in the Water of Leith, Union Canal or on one of the beaches.’
‘I never knew,’ Archie said.
‘There are two feet down there too,’ Graham said. ‘I checked, not a match.’
Dorothy shook her head. ‘I’m not letting this foot rot down there.’
Graham faked being affronted. ‘There’s no rot, it’s pristine and climate-controlled.’
‘You know what I mean,’ Dorothy said. She nodded at the foot in Archie’s hand. ‘I won’t let this go.’
‘You might have to,’ Graham said.
‘I found a goddamn foot in my local park. I need to know where it came from.’
Graham held his hands up. ‘Fair enough.’
Archie placed the foot on the body tray. He always treated the deceased’s bodies with respect and gentleness, and he handled the foot no differently.
‘We can find out,’ he said softly.
‘What?’ Dorothy said.
He looked up. ‘I’ll help you find who this foot belongs to.’
‘You mean check funeral homes and graveyards?’ Dorothy said.
‘The embalming is the key. It’s a hack job, I don’t know anyone who would do that. Maybe a funeral director has someone untrained on their books. And the fluid’s not right, it’s nothing like the stuff I use.’
He looked from the foot to Graham. ‘Can I take it?’
‘What for?’
‘I want to show someone, an expert, they might be able to tell us more.’
Graham looked at Dorothy for confirmation. She glanced at Archie. He was more animated now than she’d seen him in months. Plus Dorothy was invested, she found the damned thing, she had to know where it came from.
She turned to Graham. ‘Honestly, it would help.’
Graham thought about it for a while then gave a nod. ‘As long as we do it properly, appropriate paperwork.’
Archie smiled and Dorothy tried to remember the last time she’d seen him smile.
‘I promise we’ll bring it back,’ he said, looking at the foot. ‘Once we have the rest of her.’