‘There,’ he said, pointing with the scalpel at the underside of the liver. I couldn’t see anything for a moment, then made out some stitching that was embedded in pus. ‘See how loose that is?’ he asked. As he spoke, he gently pulled at one of the stitches with forceps and it came away easily. ‘Bile’s leaked out into the abdomen from that and, hey presto, this is what happens.’
I asked, ‘Does it happen often?’
Ed shook his head. ‘No, not often, thank God.’
‘Should it have happened?’
He hesitated, then said neutrally, ‘That’s for the Coroner to decide.’
TEN
Easter was here before we knew it, and Mum wanted us all to do our normal bank holiday stuff. This consisted of a night in with a takeaway on the Saturday at their house, then up early on the Sunday, and ready to catch the bus into town at eleven thirty for a pub crawl, in our Sunday best, with bank holiday Monday to recover. This was the whole family – Mum and Dad, Michael and his girlfriend Sarah, myself and Luke. These Sundays nearly always turned into a long day, so my first task was usually to find a sitter for Harvey and Oscar; being German shepherd crosses, they can be a bit of a handful. I had happened to be having lunch with Maddie mid-week, on one of the rare occasions when we both managed to escape the pathology building at the same time. I was telling Maddie about the dogs needing a sitter, and she jumped at the chance. ‘I’m not going home, as Mum’s going away; anyway, I love your house, and it’d be nice to cosy up with the dogs. Better than being in the flat on my own all weekend.’
Maddie almost glowed as she was saying this. Luke and I really appreciate such offers, and take advantage of them when they come, which is all too rarely. We arranged that Maddie would arrive on Good Friday afternoon and stay over till bank holiday Monday.
On Thursday evening, Luke and I went out and bought Maddie all the goodies we could think off, including a supply of her favourite cider (not forgetting the blackcurrant to go with it), a bottle of vodka with a few cartons of orange juice, and treats and food for the dogs.
On Friday morning, Luke and I woke early, got Harvey and Oscar into the back of the wagon and drove them out to the local hills surrounding Gloucestershire. Luckily for us, the rain stayed away, and it was perfect dog-walking weather. It was a bit cold for us humans, but perfect for canines; for an hour and a half they ran about like animals possessed, so were pleasantly sleepy when Maddie arrived at one o’clock. Luke and I were then shoved out the door by Maddie at about two o’clock after I’d spent sixty minutes trying to organize her. ‘Look at them both,’ Maddie said, pointing at Harvey and Oscar fast asleep on the sofa. ‘How difficult can it be to look after two sleeping angels?’ she asked, followed by a wink.
We arrived at Mum and Dad’s shortly after, kitted out with our overnight bags ready for our three-night stay. ‘Your brother’s not staying over, so you two can have the big room,’ Mum informed us as we came through the back door.
‘Good afternoon, Mrs Williams,’ Luke replied in joking manner as he greeted Mum with a kiss on the cheek.
Luke and my parents had got on like a house on fire right from the off. Mum was proud of the way he looked out for me, and also admired him for putting up with me. I think I have become less hectic with age, but I’m sure she would disagree. In my head, I am now reasonably sensible and not nearly so difficult – I still cringe when Mum and Dad remind me of some of things I did and said when I was a teenager – but sometimes Mum looks at me and I see in her eye the same look as she used to give me. It helps that Dad and Luke have a lot in common – and, although this is mainly sport, they also get on well as people. Not only that but, as far as Dad is concerned, if Luke makes me happy, then he is happy.
‘You’ve arrived just at the right time,’ Dad said. As I looked around to see what was waiting for our perfect timing, I caught Dad grinning at Luke. ‘The football’s just kicked off on the TV.’ With this unspoken decision made by the males of my family to sit and watch the whole ninety minutes, Mum and I decided to do a bit of internet shopping and bored the backsides off Dad and Luke as to how much cheaper things are online; I even managed to get Luke to part with his credit card, which was a victory indeed.
As the evening approached on Good Friday, the mood in the Williams household became very mellow and very, very relaxed. Mum cooked a huge pot of chilli served with home-made bread and, as Dad said, ‘Real butter, not that spreading rubbish.’
Saturday morning consisted of a hugely long lie-in and the usual Scottish fry-up after twelve o’clock, then more football for the men, and the town centre for Mum and me so that we could do some real shopping (again supported by Luke’s credit card). You may think this is an unnecessary thing for me to do – spend my well-paid boyfriend’s salary – but, for all its glamour, confidentiality, excitement and strangeness, an APT is pretty poorly paid. I have to cover the expenses of living – Luke and I both have our own homes – so my low salary leaves little for luxuries.
Saturday evening was fairly quiet as well, and I could not help calling Maddie to see how she was doing with the dogs, and, of course, they were all fine.
‘I don’t know why you fuss so much about them,’ Luke told me. But he knew deep down, as much as I did, that every now and then they could become a little excitable and start to chase each other around the house, up and down the stairs, through the kitchen, out the garden, back in the house, finishing by throwing themselves against the front door, with a quick rest ready for the next lap.
Not long after this, the Indian meal that we had ordered arrived and we all sat down and ate to the point of bursting before collapsing on the sofa and watching TV for the remainder of the night.
Sunday arrived and the inevitable fight began over the bathroom. We all needed to be ready to go out the door at eleven thirty that morning, and no one wanted to be last one in the shower and therefore the last one that everyone was telling to get a move on. Anyway, with a bit of planning and bickering, we all managed to be ready to go out on time. We met Michael and Sarah in town and, as usual, Mum and Dad wanted to start the day off at the Social Club. Gramp would probably be in there with his friends and this was always good for some giggles. But the downside of the Social Club was that Sarah was going to be the youngest in there; after her in age terms would come my brother, then me and Luke, and then the age gap would jump twenty-five years to my parents; following that, the age range extended into the far distance.
There was compensation, though. It wasn’t exactly rockin’, but it was at least cheap and cheerful, as Mum has always said. As we walked into the bar, which, incidentally, women are allowed into, but only on best behaviour, we saw that the place was full of retired people, elderly ladies dressed up in their best clothing with full make-up. All of them appeared to be wearing the same bright blue eye shadow and deep red lipstick. Gramp was sitting with his friends and we were encouraged to join them. We stayed for a couple of hours in the Social Club, which turned out to be very sociable indeed, and good fun. We left Gramp and his friends to continue the afternoon in the club, which I was sure they would do in the accustomed manner, and the six of us then headed over the road to a proper pub. Dad knows most of the landlords around town and we are always warmly welcomed by them. Since my parents gave up the pub trade, they do not see a lot of their old social circle, so in a way, days like these are very much a chance to catch up with their old friends and acquaintances.
ELEVEN
Clive had put me straight about mortuary security very early on. ‘There is nothing, Michelle, nothing at all, more important than the security of this place.’ Graham nodded in silent agreement. ‘You never let anyone in unless you know who they are and why they want to be here, understand?’ Clive, laid back about so many things, was clearly telling me that on this subject he wanted me to listen and mark his words. He continued, ‘There’s a lot of funny people out there, and some of them think that the best way to spend a day out is drooling over dead people.’
I had known that people like that existed, but I didn’t think that it would be a problem in a small mortuary in a rural county. My disbelief must have shown on my face because Graham added, ‘You’d be surprised, Michelle. We get all sorts around here. A few years ago, one of the porters was caught in the mortuary when he had no business being here. Nobody could prove anything, but we all knew what he’d been up to, didn’t we, boss?’
Clive nodded. ‘Dirty bugger.’
‘What happened to him?’
Clive said, matter of factly, ‘The head porter had a chat with him. He got a job as a milkman shortly after, I believe.’
‘And you have to be careful when it comes to viewings, too,’ said Graham.
‘What do you mean?’
Clive explained. ‘We’ve had occasions when the “next of kin” weren’t quite as closely related as they claimed. In fact, we’ve had one occasion when he wasn’t related at all.’
‘You’re joking!’
Clive shook his head. ‘Luckily, I didn’t leave him alone, although he was bloody keen that I should. Turned out he wasn’t the brother of the deceased lady but the bloke who had lived over the road from her. Always fancied her, apparently.’
All this was an aspect of the job that I hadn’t really thought about before. It had seemed obvious that you have to keep a mortuary locked, but I hadn’t realized that you had to regard the place as a high security vault.
Clive said, ‘You’ve got to look on viewings as the weak point in our security; it’s when we have to allow outsiders in and so when we’re vulnerable.’
‘We get all sorts in,’ chuckled Graham, shaking his head. ‘All sorts.’
Clive asked him, ‘Do you remember that bloke who wanted to bring his cat in to pay his last respects?’ They both laughed.
Graham added, ‘And that old woman who wouldn’t leave Dr Romney alone. Remember her?’
Clive became excited. ‘Yes!’ He turned to me. ‘Dick Romney used to work here as a pathologist about ten years ago. Poor bloke. This widow kept after him for ages. It got so he was afraid to answer the telephone.’
Graham began to laugh so much that he caught his breath and went red in the face, stamping his foot and coughing up phlegm. I asked, ‘Why? What had happened?’
‘She and her husband had been a very devoted couple who’d lived together for years and years, and she’d gone a bit doolally, I suppose. Finally he died and she came in to view him. I had the body laid out really nicely so that he looked as if he’d just gone to sleep, and she came in, took one look at him, turned to me and said, “That’s not my husband. That’s an actor.”’
‘What did you do?’
‘I argued, but it was no use. She knew that it wasn’t her hubby, and she wasn’t about to listen to me. She insisted that we had substituted an actor who looked exactly like her husband. Didn’t seem to think it odd that we happened to have had a dead actor identical to her hubby on hand, just when required.’
Graham added, ‘She got really worked up, too.’
Clive nodded. ‘Took me forty minutes to calm her down and get rid of her, but she didn’t leave it there. A week later, Dick got a letter. It wasn’t in green ink, but it could have been. She insisted that, as head of department, he was the one who had substituted an actor for her husband, and she demanded to know what he had done with him.’
‘What did he do?’
‘He put the letter in his desk drawer and tried to forget about it.’
Graham laughed again. ‘He did the same with the next one . . . and the next.’
Clive joined in with the laughter. ‘He was still getting them ten years later when he retired.’
TWELVE
I had been working at the mortuary for a couple of months when I arrived in good time one Monday morning, feeling like an old hand now and thinking I knew what to expect; it had already become evident to me that Clive had a stable morning routine that rarely altered. I rang the doorbell and he greeted me with a smile. I could hear the usual Radio 2 blasting out in the background from the PM room and walked into the office just as the kettle had clicked off. Clive had all the cups ready for the hot drinks, but I couldn’t help noticing that the smell was definitely not the usual disinfectant smell. This was different. This was rotten; it reminded me vaguely of how Mr Patterson had smelt by the time he left us, only much worse. Clive didn’t mention it, so neither did I, but I did begin to question if he could actually smell it; I wondered whether, after so many years in the business, he had become used to stenches like that, or even lost the ability to detect them altogether.
Graham arrived and instantly said with a grimace, ‘How long has that been hanging around?’
So, I wasn’t going nuts, and there really was a foul smell in the air. Clive said that he didn’t know because he had not yet had the pleasure of opening the fridge. Graham turned around and went straight to the body store mumbling something about getting it over and done with and out the way. I followed him.
Four trays on the left-hand end of the twenty-eight-fridge bay were larger than the rest. These were for obese patients, which back then were very few and far between, so they were also used as an isolation bay for decomposed bodies. Because most of the time they were empty, we didn’t have to open the door very often, so that the smell wasn’t able to leak out and contaminate the whole department.
When Graham opened the fridge, the smell hit me like a ton of bricks, and then proceeded to do over and above its duty by further smacking into the back of my throat with an almost physical punch, and that was while the body was still concealed inside three body bags. I waited in dread-filled expectation for these to be opened, wondering just how it could get any more offensive. Graham approached the tray which the body lay on without thinking twice, and for the first time since I had started, I saw him wearing gloves.
If you can picture the goriest horror film you have ever seen and double it, then you’re just beginning to have some idea of what he exposed when the final body bag was unzipped. When he did this, although the stench – by now even more potent and eye-watering – would normally have wiped everything else from my awareness, what lay in front of me vied for attention and won; it was a slimy, green, moving body. Layers of skin falling away, huge blisters waiting to spill their watery contents, lips and eyelids eaten away so that the teeth and eyeballs were exposed in the most horrific manner. The reason it was moving was that it was infested with maggots that were having a huge feast on human flesh and were writhing like a Mexican wave at a Premiership football match. Clive informed me airily that the human body was a perfect environment for maggots. Since I had not really had any idea of what was going to be revealed, I was slightly annoyed that I had been subjected to such a sight and smell without prior warning, while Clive and Graham obviously knew what lay ahead of us.
But I realized then that this was how it was going to be. No deliberate surprises, just things as nature intended them to be – its own way of disposing of a body if the person was unlucky enough to die on their own and not be found. This did not put me off the job, but did make my skin crawl and the smell catching the back of my throat made me retch. Since I did not want to run from the mortuary screaming, I dealt with it and told myself again and again that it would get easier with experience.
Clive asked if I was OK and began to tell me how he had seen six-foot males brought to the floor by such sights. He did not elaborate on this, but I was beginning to learn that Clive liked to drip feed you only little bits of information at a time. So we left it at that and I stood back as Graham wheeled the trolley past me to take the body through to the post-mortem room. The body was transferred over to the PM table, left in its bags, door closed behind it and we all returned to the office for the coffee that we were going to have originally, while we waited for the pathologist to arrive. After a while, though, the smell of the rotting body seemed to be getting worse, so I asked Clive if it was all right to go out for some fresh air. Graha
m came with me and after ten minutes it was time to face it again. When we returned Dr Burberry was having a coffee with Clive in the office and merrily regaling him with the news that the stench of the decomposed body was wafting through the whole lab above us, and the staff were complaining once again. It was far, far worse than Mr Patterson and, at the time, I truly believed I would never have to experience worse.
How wrong I was, though.
Having identified the body from the labels attached, Ed told Graham he could get on with the evisceration, and he went back upstairs to continue reporting surgical pathology specimens from living patients. Graham and I put on our scrubs, after which I stood in the background watching. From what Neville at the Coroner’s office had said, it turned out that this person was female and had, in the prime of her life, been a GP. As she got older, the GP side came racing back to the surface and, thinking she knew better than other doctors and could self-diagnose, she refused any help from her own family doctor. Because she had no next of kin, and because she was a private woman with no friends, this had led to isolation and she had subsequently died a lonely death without being discovered for – as I was eventually to learn – a couple of weeks. Graham then went on to tell me how we were lucky it was late winter – if it had been summer, he said with a wink, she would have been a lot worse. My initial reaction was to wonder just how she could possibly get a lot worse.
Down Among the Dead Men: A Year in the Life of a Mortuary Technician Page 5
