After having the weekend off, Flyte knew that she had no business returning to the mortuary for the canal guy’s post-mortem. A detective wouldn’t normally attend a routine PM on a non-sus death, especially since she’d been told to hand the case back to CID. But since she was on lates, not starting until 2 p.m., she told herself that she’d be doing it on her own time.
The PM list was starting at the crack of dawn so here she was pitching up to the mortuary on a chilly morning at 0700 hours. And the first person she saw was Cassie Raven, leaning against the wall, one leg up behind her, a coffee in one hand, a cigarette in the other, looking for all the world like a truanting teenager.
‘I must say I’m astonished to see you, of all people, smoking,’ said Flyte.
‘Don’t start,’ the girl snapped. ‘And what do you mean, me of all people?’
‘Because you see what smoking does to people’s lungs, all the early deaths it causes!’
‘I only do it occasionally’ – sounding surly. But she dropped the half-smoked cigarette and ground it out with the heel of a boot that would look more appropriate on a hod carrier. ‘So, you here for Green-Eyes?’ she said over her shoulder as she headed inside.
Cassie didn’t ask why she was attending a routine PM, which was just as well. Flyte couldn’t really nail the reason herself, beyond a feeling that she needed to see the guy’s face again. She’d checked the recent reports of missing persons received by the Met and found nobody matching the description of the dark-haired young man. Why was his absence still unnoticed by his workplace, his friends and family?
Once Flyte returned wearing PPE, Cassie introduced her to the pathologist. ‘Dr Curzon, this is Detective Sergeant Flyte.’ She gleaned from Cassie’s polite neutrality that the two of them weren’t exactly bosom buddies.
‘How delightful to meet you, Sergeant.’ Curzon gave her an appreciative once-over which he probably thought of as ‘chivalric admiration’ but which actually came across as ‘handsy uncle’. ‘Welcome to the house of mirth. I would shake hands but . . .’ He waggled gloved hands that were gore- and blood-stained.
‘Thanks for having me. I’m here to see the unidentified male?’
Curzon frowned, but the older technician – a big middle-aged guy with a red face – had just arrived at the bench carrying a pail full of what looked like offal.
‘You here for Freddie?’ Even this guy, who must be fifty, had a diamond stud in his ear and an ace of spades with a skull inside tattooed on the side of his neck. Why were all mortuary folk so . . . peculiar?
‘Freddie the Floater,’ he clarified. ‘This is him.’ Tipping the bucket so that a deep red organ sprawled onto Curzon’s bench.
Curzon chuckled at Flyte’s expression as the meat-faced guy returned to his bench whistling. ‘Technician humour I’m afraid. Jason calls all bodies recovered from water Freddie.’
‘What if they’re female?’
‘Fergie.’
‘Right.’ Tamping down her distaste.
As Curzon started to slice into what Flyte now recognised as a liver with workmanlike strokes, the smell triggered a childhood memory: the sting of a slapped wrist, her mother’s mouth an angry lipsticked gash . . . ‘Eat your liver, Phyllida! I don’t cook perfectly good food simply to throw it in the bin!’ Why would anyone serve a child something she hated?
‘Are there any clues yet, as to cause of death?’ she asked.
‘There are no ante-mortem injuries to suggest foul play, so the COD is almost certainly going to be drowning. Toxicology will confirm whether he was drunk or on drugs.’
‘It’s clear-cut then?’
‘Drowning is never clear-cut.’ There was amusement in his voice at her ignorance. ‘Death in water is a multifaceted issue. The water in this chap’s lungs could equally easily have found its way there post-mortem. He appears to be physically fit and healthy, and in the absence of any other obvious cause of death we can only deduce from the circumstances that he drowned.’ He looked at her. ‘Unless you have a line of enquiry suggesting otherwise . . . ?’
‘No, no. I just wanted to ensure we’ve covered all the bases.’ The rusty-iron smell coming off the liver was making her want to gag. ‘How long has he been dead?’
‘Difficult to say. Immersion in cold water delays the decomposition process which makes time of death harder to calculate. But there is already some putrefaction. If I had to hazard a guess I would say he’d been dead around thirty-six to forty-eight hours when he was found.’
Enough time for the decomposition gases to build up in his gut and cause the body to float back to the surface. ‘How old would you say he was?’ she asked.
‘Late twenties or early thirties? As you will know, estimating the age of a dead adult is not an exact science.’
‘I’d like to take a look at the body.’
‘Of course!’ But Curzon’s mask of chivalry had slipped to reveal a grimace of impatience. ‘Jason has popped out for a nicotine fix, I suspect, but I am sure Ms Raven would be happy to assist. I would usually accompany you myself but I have a lunch to discuss a paper I’m giving at a conference. In Dubai.’ Unable to resist the brag.
Cassie led her to the autopsy station where the shell of the drowned man’s body lay. The pallor of his skin was tinged blue now, in startling contrast to the Malbec-red chasm from throat to groin where his organs had been. Discoloured patches, which she knew were signs of decomposition, had started to surface on his torso.
Flyte had been coping all right up until now, but now her knees threatened to fold.
Cassie touched her arm, looking concerned. ‘Are you OK? Do you want to sit down for a minute?’
‘I’m fine. It’s just I haven’t been to a post-mortem in ages.’ Although Cassie had taken her hand away, Flyte could still feel the touch of her fingers on her upper arm.
Out of nowhere, she got an image of Eleanor, who’d been her best friend at boarding school – at least until Flyte had blurted out a declaration of love over a private midnight feast. She pushed the memory away. A schoolgirl crush didn’t make you a lesbian.
The dead guy wasn’t especially tall, and now she could see his whole body his shoulders and biceps struck her as out of proportion for his frame. ‘Is this post-mortem swelling?’ she asked, indicating his top half.
Cassie shook her head. Pointing to the wedge-shaped muscle between his neck and shoulder. ‘From the humped trapezius, looks like he was a gym bunny.’
A gym bunny who couldn’t swim. Flyte lowered her voice. ‘So, do you think he drowned?’
‘Looks that way.’ Cassie shrugged.
‘Is there really no way to confirm it? I mean microscopically or something?’ Flyte persisted.
‘You can try aspirating the sphenoid sinus behind the nose to see if he breathed in any water. You can run tests for diatoms – waterborne organisms, which, if they’re breathed in, can reach the bone marrow . . .’
‘But . . . ?’
‘It all costs money and nothing gives a hundred per cent confirmation.’ She pulled a face. ‘So it ain’t gonna happen.’
Cassie appeared to be making more of an effort this time, but she still showed little of her previous curiosity or engagement. Flyte bent to peer at the underside of the body which was a painful-looking bright red at his shoulders, back, calves and heels. ‘Didn’t you say you found him face down in the water? Yet the blood has pooled to the back.’
Cassie nodded. ‘Yeah, you do usually get lividity on the front of the body and in the fingers and toes in drownings. But when he sank initially he might have ended up on his back. By the time he re-floated and rolled over the blood would have coagulated and stayed put.’ She sent her an enquiring look. ‘What is it about this guy that has you so interested?’
Flyte hesitated, unsure whether to admit the reason. Since taking the photos of Green-Eyes, as Cassie called him, she’d found herself going back to the images several times, feeling the mental itch of recognition.
‘I can’t shake the feeling that I’ve met him,’ she admitted. ‘But I have no idea why or where.’
Cassie considered this. ‘Maybe he just has one of those faces. You know, regular features, dark brown hair, good-looking but nothing too memorable?’
She was probably right. Apart from the acne, Green-Eyes had the generically handsome look of a Z-list American actor you might see on some obscure cable channel.
Flyte straightened. ‘I expect someone will report him missing soon enough. You’ll be keeping him here for the time being? We’ll need to take fingerprints and run a DNA test in case he’s already on the system.’
‘Sure. But if no one claims him within thirty days he’ll go into the deep freeze.’
‘And after that?’ – although she already knew the answer.
‘He’ll get a public health funeral.’
The fate of an unclaimed body; what used to be called a pauper’s funeral, with only an officiant presiding. And that saddest of all ends to a life: an unmarked grave. Their eyes met, sharing for an unspoken moment Flyte’s own loss.
Giving into a sudden impulse, she asked, ‘Can I look at his eyes?’ Leaning forward, Cassie gently lifted one eyelid. His eyes had dimmed, the corneas clouding, but their colour was still discernible: a distinctive goldish-green.
Flyte stared at them, once again feeling that nagging flicker of recognition. But his eyes, hair, jawline, they were like a fiendishly complicated jigsaw puzzle that defied reassembly.