THE WORK OF the forensic pathologist had always fascinated Kate. Tim Stanton was one of the best she’d ever come across. A Bachelor of Medicine, Fellow of the Royal College of Pathology and honorary lecturer at Edinburgh University, he’d made significant contributions to major investigations over the years, examining scores of murder victims, young and old.
As devoted to his work as she was to hers, Kate regarded the married father of two as a personal friend as well as a professional colleague. Watching him now, she mourned the fact that they rarely, if ever, saw each other socially. There was a simple explanation for that: their meetings only took place across the stainless-steel slab of his examination room or at her grim crime scenes. Either way, there was always a third party present – one who’d drawn their last breath.
Hardly dinner-table conversation, was it?
Tim had barely mentioned Abbey Hunt when the door burst open and the woman herself marched in fresh from the shower. At least a foot shorter than the DCI, her hair was still damp and tied in a bun at the nape of her neck. She wore no make-up, a pair of navy cargo pants and a pale blue V-neck T-shirt revealing a flabby spare tyre.
Her barefoot technology footwear obviously wasn’t up to much.
Grabbing a newly laundered white coat from a shelf near the door, she slipped her arms into it and walked towards them buttoning it up. A smile played on her lips as she came closer, an I-know-something-you-don’t expression forming on her round face.
‘Have you told her yet?’ she said.
‘Told me what?’ Kate said.
Stanton shook his head.
Abbey turned to face Kate. ‘That’s what I love about Tim, he’s so self-sacrificing, so gallant. He knows how much I ache to be the one to drop a bombshell.’
‘Bombshell’ sounded ominous.
Kate waited, her eyes darting left and right between the two medics, the hairs rising on the back of her neck at thoughts of a breakthrough in her case. Abbey was savouring the moment but itching to divulge her findings. Despite her casual appearance and jocular attitude, which for some reason was never on display when Naylor was around, she was a meticulous and committed professional of international standing. If she had something to say, it was probably worth hearing. No matter how small her insight, Kate was sure it would kick-start her enquiry.
At least, she hoped it would.
Walking between two stainless-steel tables, Abbey glanced at the skeletal remains lying on each and then refocused her attention on Daniels. ‘Tim probably told you that the manner of death is undetermined. Accidental is out of the question. If that were the case, the girls would’ve been found before now. A suicide pact only works if they had the ability to bury themselves after the event—’
‘Unless a third party was involved,’ the DCI cut in.
‘Quite so. Thank you for reminding me.’ Abbey dropped her head a touch, peering over the top of square-framed specs. ‘So . . . given the fact that they were buried together, are we all agreed that these two unfortunate young women were in all probability murdered?’
Trying to work out where this was leading, Kate cocked her head on one side, her eyes sliding over what was left of her two young victims. Apart from a well-healed fracture in the older girl’s right tibia that might prove useful in identifying her, preliminary examination of the bones had proved inconclusive. Stanton had already told her he’d found no obvious signs of trauma that would indicate fatal violence on either victim: no caved-in skulls or bullet holes; no nicks on hands or arms to suggest defence injuries; no ligatures round their necks. Furthermore, no instruments of death had been found by crime scene investigators in the vicinity of the bodies. In short, there was nothing at all on which a reconstruction might be based.
Replaying Abbey’s monologue in her head, Kate suddenly realized what she was getting at. The anthropologist’s words had been chosen carefully, designed to mislead in the short term so she could emerge victorious and put the SIO in her place. Again. No malice intended, simply a bit of humorous banter between fellow professionals to lighten the seriousness of the proceedings.
Kate wasn’t fooled.
The words ‘buried together’ could be taken two ways.
Abbey grinned. ‘I see our clever DCI is awake and paying attention, Tim.’
‘Her default setting,’ Stanton replied. ‘But then I guess you already knew that.’
‘So, they were buried in the same place . . .’ Kate interrupted, ‘but not at the same time. Is that what you’re telling me?’
‘And we’re not talking weeks.’ Abbey pointed at the shorter of the two skeletons. ‘As a ballpark figure, I’d say this one’s been buried for around ten years, the other about five. I need to complete more tests to be absolutely sure, but I’m confident enough for you to work on that assumption, yes.’
Thanking them, Kate left the morgue immediately. No point hanging around any longer; better to let the medical examiners get on with it. She didn’t need telling that cause of death might never be established. To be certain how her victims died she might even require an offender to cough.
No pressure there then.