Scott Andrews tentatively pushed open the doors to the mortuary and stepped inside. He felt the chill straight away and shuddered. It wasn’t the cold; it was the thought of all those dead bodies stacked up in the fridges. He couldn’t understand how someone as warm, kind and funny as Adele could spend her working days elbow deep in organs and stomach contents.
He walked slowly down the corridor. There was nobody about and he was hoping he’d had a wasted journey and would have to return to the station with his task incomplete.
‘Jesus, you scared the life out of me,’ Lucy Dauman said as she entered the corridor from a side room. She tucked her blonde hair behind her ear.
‘Sorry Lucy. Is Adele around?’
‘Yes. She’s just washing up. Anything wrong?’
‘No. Why?’
‘You’ve got the look of someone who’s been caught with their hand in the till.’
‘Oh. I’m fine.’
‘Ok,’ she smiled.
Adele smelled of soap and perfume. She was sitting at her desk peeling a satsuma and leaning in close to her computer screen, reading intently. She caught something moving out of the corner of her eyes and looked up.
‘Hello Scott. Have you come to ask for my son’s hand in marriage?’
‘Marriage?’ he asked, startled. His eyes widened. He even took a step back. ‘No. No. Nothing like that. No.’
‘Calm down, Scott, I’m only teasing,’ she smiled. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I’m afraid I need your help with Craig Armitage.’
The only way to unlock the three phones found beneath the living room floor was by using his fingerprint on the home button. Unfortunately, as Craig was dead, his fingers would need bringing up to body temperature in order for them to work to unlock the phone.
Craig was wheeled out of the fridge and Adele handed Scott a pair of latex gloves.
He stood holding all three phones in his shaking hands.
‘You want me to do it?’
‘You’re the one who wants the phones unlocked,’ Adele grinned.
‘What do I do?’
‘You take his finger, wrap your hand around it, and wait until it warms up,’ she said in a mock tone as if talking to a five-year-old.
‘Which finger?’ he asked, glaring down at the blue hand with a look of revulsion on his pale face.
‘I don’t know. Shall we ask him?’
‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’
‘Just a tad.’
‘You’re a ghoul, do you know that?’
‘Oh yes,’ she smiled. ‘Well, come on, get on with it. Craig Armitage might not have anything else to do today, but I certainly have.’
Scott hated dead bodies. He hated gruesome crime scenes and he would sell his own mother to get out of attending a post-mortem. He swallowed hard, took a deep breath and stepped forward. He put two of the phones on the side of the trolley, held one in his hand, and wrapped his other hand around Craig’s solid cold thumb.
‘Oh my God,’ he said quietly.
‘I think he likes that,’ Adele said.
‘What?’
‘Look, he’s smiling.’
‘Fucking hell!’ Scott screamed and jumped to the other side of the room, much to the joy of Adele and Lucy who were bent double laughing.
***
Once the phones were unlocked, Scott changed the settings so they were permanently unlocked, then quickly left the mortuary. He didn’t even say goodbye to Adele and Lucy who he thought he could still hear giggling from Adele’s office.
In the car, he took one of the phones out of the evidence bag and scrolled through it. There were very few numbers stored in the phone book and the one identified as ‘J’ he guessed to be Jodie’s number. There was nothing in the messages app either; all had been erased. That wasn’t a problem; forensics would always retrieve them. Craig had WhatsApp downloaded. There was only one conversation listed, but there was no name attached. He opened it and scrolled up. The conversation had been going on for years by the look of the number of messages. When he came to a photo, he stopped scrolling. The picture was a selfie Craig had taken of himself at the wheel of his van. He was smiling. It was an innocent enough photo. Scott pressed ‘All Media’ and every photo sent to and from this person came up.
What he saw was worse than anything he’d seen at a post-mortem.