‘Shall we begin?’ Derek asked.
He and his assistant stood on one side of the examination table, Juliet and I on the other. Melanie’s body lay under a beige sheet between us. Derek pressed the record button on a shiny Dictaphone.
An extra strong mint burned on my tongue. Strip lights bounced on the white wall and floor tiles, glinting off the metal instruments on a table to our right. No one could mistake the purpose of this room, but that wasn’t why goosepimples were rising across my arms.
I rolled my shoulders. Derek was one of the nicer pathologists. He was in his late forties, with marks of smiles around his eyes. The lights reflected off the hairless brown dome of his head. Despite Juliet’s predictions of doom as I’d driven over, he hadn’t been too much of an arse when we’d signed in two minutes late.
‘We can’t stay for the whole autopsy,’ Juliet announced. ‘We’ve got to dash for an interview with a suspect after the external examination.’
I tried not to sag too obviously with relief. I had no idea what Juliet was talking about, but I’d take any task over witnessing a complete investigation in this room.
Derek sighed. ‘David and the rest of the forensic team can’t be here either. You’ll all have to depend on the recording and photographs, for the most part.’ He gestured at the young man hovering near the edge of the table, a clunky camera held in his hands. ‘Roland’s earning his keep today.’
The blond man blushed but pressed his lips together in concentration when Derek spoke again. ‘There is a lot of damage to the body we’ll have to sort through. Let’s go from the top down.’
Without ceremony, he lifted the sheet away from Melanie’s face. Juliet stilled, holding her breath for a beat before exhaling. A chemical smell overlaid any lingering scent of blood or decay. Roland’s camera clicked.
It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Melanie’s face was largely intact, the worst of the damage clogged with twigs and dirt. Only one part of her chin bone flashed through the meaty gore, bright against her dark brown skin.
Removed from where she had been left for dead on the forest floor, I could see the similarities to the photos at Ida’s flat. This was definitely Melanie Pirt. I felt a twinge of sadness for Ida. She’d been wracked with grief, but there would have been a kernel of hope that we’d gotten this all horribly wrong.
‘The victim’s face was mauled by an animal.’ Derek poked at the mangled flesh with a metal probe. ‘We believe this happened shortly after she died, due to the amount of blood in the wounds and the pattern of clotting. We’ll send off samples to confirm.’
‘Would an Alsatian make sense?’ I focused on unmarked pieces of Melanie’s face while Derek placed cotton swabs and carefully moved sections of flesh into plastic bags. A patch above her artfully plucked brows was smooth.
‘I don’t know my dog breeds well enough to tell.’ Derek tilted his head to the side. ‘If you got me a picture of the jaw and teeth, I could guess. Once we find the animal, the vet will be able to say for certain.’
‘Great.’ I pulled out my notebook, lifting it higher than necessary to block out Melanie’s face.
‘Do you have any idea how long the gap was between her dying and being found?’ Juliet asked.
‘Could only have been six or seven hours.’ Derek pulled the sheet further down Melanie’s body.
Hand tight around my pencil, I braced myself before looking. A modesty strip had been placed across Melanie’s breasts, leaving the bullet holes in her torso visible.
‘Looks like the victim was shot three times from behind.’ Derek picked up a metal rod and worked it into the bullet wound closest to him. He did the same to the others, Roland’s camera the only sound in the cool room. ‘The bullets all went through but one ruptured her stomach. The victim would have died quickly, perhaps even before she hit the ground.’
Small mercies. At least I could tell Ida that Melanie wouldn’t have suffered for long.
I pressed the mint hard into the roof of my mouth and repositioned my notepad as Derek pulled the sheet down to examine Melanie’s genitals. Juliet’s face was still, her eyes on Derek’s hands.
‘The victim had sex earlier in the day. Unprotected, it looks like.’ Derek pulled the sheet up, covering most of Melanie’s torso. ‘We’ll take samples from the area for testing later.’
‘Right.’ I made a note to ask the boyfriend about that. If Melanie hadn’t had sex with him, that gave him a clear motive for murder.
Derek moved to the bottom of the table and lifted the sheet over Melanie’s feet. The joints of her big toes jutted, like she’d worn too many pairs of heels while the bones were developing. Derek bunched the sheet up to expose her thighs.
‘The bruising here is recent, presumably sustained during the chase. A ligament was torn.’ Derek moved a clean probe away from a deep purple stain on the inside of Melanie’s right leg. ‘These are less recent.’ He pointed at a patch of dull circular bruises on her thighs. ‘Looks like someone had been punching her. Could be self-inflicted, but these markings are consistent with a fist. It would have been difficult to punch herself hard enough from that angle.’
Ida was wrong then; someone did want to hurt Melanie. They already were.
‘Good work,’ Juliet said, as Derek laid the sheet over Melanie’s body and pressed a button to stop the recording. ‘Sorry we have to shoot off.’
He and Juliet moved away, dumping their gloves in a bin as they discussed when the full report would be ready. I shoved my notepad into my pocket, ignored by Roland as he clicked through the photos he’d taken.
One of Melanie’s hands had been left exposed. It was delicate, the joints slender. The palm was no doubt torn and bruised, but looking at the back of her hand, I could imagine a whole, undamaged body lay beneath the sheet. The only indication of anything wrong was one missing blue acrylic nail, snapped from her middle finger.
‘Gabe?’ Juliet called from over by the door. ‘You alright?’
I pulled the sheet over Melanie’s hand and hurried across the room. Derek walked back to the body, so didn’t witness my fingers shaking as I tugged off my gloves and threw them in the bin.
‘I’m fine.’ I held the door open for Juliet. She swept through, her lips a thin line.
She was right; I couldn’t feel everything. A young woman had been murdered and that was terribly sad, but I needed to focus if we were going to catch Melanie’s killer. If I wanted to get the job done and successfully lead my first case, then I needed to toughen up and start asking harsh questions.