Third Degree

by Claire Rayner

  George sighed. Life was complicated enough just doing her job without having to worry over Sheila Keen’s airs and flounces. She’d thought when she at last squeezed agreement out of Professor Hunnisett and Matthew Herne, the Chief Executive Officer, that if she could have a senior houseman-cum-registrar on the path. lab strength life would be easier, but had it hell. She should have remembered Sheila’s well-known tendency to make a grab for any likely-looking man who came her way. She’d taken one look at young Alan Short, a New Zealander with a wide innocent face that made him look like a Norman Rockwell cover for the Saturday Evening Post, complete with shock of untidy fair hair, freckles and huge white teeth under an upturned nose, and that had been that. Sheila had been in full cry even though he was a good dozen years her junior.

  It mightn’t have been so bad, George thought mournfully as she got to her feet to follow Sheila out into the lab to see what she could do to mend fences (because life was never easy when her senior technician was miserable), if only Short hadn’t taken such a fancy to Jane Rose! George herself had seen the way he wasted time staring at her across the lab when he was supposed to be doing the reports for the patients’ notes, and had known trouble was coming. Well, now it had, and she would have to tell Alan to lay off. ‘If he wants to chat up Jane, he can do it outside working hours,’ she told herself. ‘I’ll promise Sheila I’ll sort it all out and maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to convince her and then get on with that leg so that I can get the job finished before I have to go to court.’

  And she hurried out of her office, into the lab beyond where the separating machines and the agitators hummed and clattered and the glint of glass and chrome waited for her.

  4

  Her peacemaking efforts were not aided by the fact that both Jane and Jerry were perfectly aware of what it was she was trying to do and were highly amused by it. Jerry, of course, laughed at everything, but most of all at Sheila, and George couldn’t blame him. Her ever more frantic attempts to snare herself a man – almost any man – were ludicrous; but George was beginning to find it harder and harder to laugh at them. It was too easy to despise women who felt incomplete unless they had a man in tow, especially as she herself had Gus. Sheila was a bright, capable and highly successful woman in her own sphere who had no need of a man to validate her, but she clearly didn’t think so. Hence the antics that Jerry found so funny. Now Jane too was amused, where once she had been sympathetic, showing a sort of fellow feeling. But since she’d had Alan Short trailing after her, it seemed that her self-satisfaction had overcome her kinder side. George began to feel pity mixing with her irritation when she contemplated her senior technician.

  So, she spent the next hour sorting out staff rotas in a way that would make Sheila happy and ensure that both Jane and Alan Short were able to get on with work without being too much together, for Sheila had a point: when they did work together their output plunged and that was the last thing George wanted. Ellen Archer, the Business Manager of the Investigations Directorate of which George’s path. lab was part (together with the X-Ray department and ECG and Cardiography and similar sections), was a tough lady and determined to shave at least three per cent off her budget in the current financial year. Crossing swords with Ellen was far more trouble than spending time rearranging her department so that work ran more smoothly.

  ‘Nice work, Dr B.,’ Jerry murmured when he came in and found on his work station the sheet of paper detailing the new arrangements in the lab. ‘You’ve managed to come up with a system that’ll keep Sheila quiet and won’t leave Alan moping like an abandoned puppy. Let’s see how long this lasts before Sheila hits the roof again.’

  ‘I wish you fancied her,’ George muttered. ‘That’d solve a lot of problems.’

  ‘For you, maybe,’ Jerry said tartly. ‘Do I deserve it, though? That’s the question.’

  ‘Your tongue’s so sharp, you don’t deserve anyone,’ she said lightly and he made a face.

  ‘You could be right,’ he said and George could have bitten off her tongue. Jerry had, she knew, had his share of personal problems in the past. She hadn’t meant to twist a knife in old scars.

  He looked up as he settled himself on his stool and grinned. ‘No need to look so woebegone,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’m in clover these days. I’ve got just the sort of work I like and not a debt to disturb my sweet slumbers. What’s on the agenda?’

  She was grateful for the change of tack and let it take her further than she meant it to. ‘I’ve got a nasty little job in the morgue you can come and help with if you like,’ she offered, and explained about the leg. Jerry listened, fascinated, and made a loud smacking sound with his lips when she’d finished.

  ‘O frabjous day!’ he said. ‘Lots of lovely digging around in the nasties. What more can a man ask for? When are you starting?’

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ she said. ‘The coroner’s officer won’t be here till then. I imagine Harold Constant will come – though maybe, as it’s only a piece of a body, he might not. The coroner’s officer is supposed to be present if there’s going to be an inquest.’

  ‘Can there be an inquest on just a leg?’ Jerry asked.

  George stopped to think and then made a face. ‘Not unless there’s an identification of the fragment, I think.’

  ‘So, why the coroner’s officer?’ Jerry asked reasonably. ‘Or have you said you can identify the leg?’

  ‘Of course I haven’t. But there’s always the possibility, I suppose, if they find a lead via Mispers – the Missing Persons Register. Anyway, I can’t know till I’ve looked and even then I doubt I’ll be able to. Maybe he won’t come. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. See you down there in half an hour, OK?’

  ‘Very OK,’ he said and leered across the lab at Sheila who had just come back in. ‘Aren’t I the lucky one, Shee? I’m going to help dig around in a lovely luminous lump of dead leg. Want to come and help as well?’

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ Sheila said, and George escaped before they could settle into their usual squabbling, finding the prospect of dealing with the leg rather more attractive.

  She found Danny Roscoe, her mortuary porter and general assistant, tucked into his cubby hole with a pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches, which he’d clearly scrounged from someone special since they were delicate things with the crusts cut off. He peered up at her as she came in and offered the plate.

  ‘No thanks,’ she said, even though she had not had breakfast, apart from the cup of coffee in her office. One of Danny’s more remarkable gifts was his ability to enjoy food and drink in the mortuary, quite unperturbed by the sights and smells around him. However long she was in this job she would never achieve that degree of nonchalance, she was sure.

  ‘Please yourself,’ Danny said. ‘All the more for me. An’ they’re smoked salmon’n all. Do themselves well, they do, over on the Admin. Block.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ George said. ‘Listen, has my –’

  ‘– leg arrived. Yers.’ Danny pursed his lips. ‘Nasty one, ’n’t it?’

  ‘It must be if you say so,’ she said lightly. ‘I didn’t think anything ever seemed nasty to you.’

  ‘Oh, I ’as me feelin’s same as anyone else,’ Danny said a little huffily and got to his feet as footsteps came down the corridor behind George. ‘Mornin’, ’arold.’

  ‘Morning, Danny. Morning, Dr B. So, we’ve got a funny one, eh? Makes a change, having just part of a bod, doesn’t it?’ Harold Constant, large, benign, always a little breathless and as reliable as sunrise, beamed at Danny. ‘Would those be sarnies you’ve got there, Danny? Well, well.’

  ‘’Elp yourself.’ Danny was generous. ‘An’ there’s still a cup in the pot, though it’ll be a bit stewed by now. Still, you should manage it all right if you use lots of milk. Dr B.’s not dressed yet, right Dr B.? We’ll be ready when you are.’

  She changed quickly, tying her hair up in a theatre cap to protect it from the smells which tended to cling, if she wasn�
��t very careful. It was the smell of Festival, the thick, cloying, vaguely fruity disinfectant that she found most disagreeable; a little honest decomposition seemed much more human, somehow, than that chemical reek.

  The leg lay in solitary splendour in the middle of its slab, covered with a green cloth because Danny had a delicacy about some things, and Harold, his tongue exploring his teeth for any remnants of his snack, was leaning against the wall waiting for her. Beside him Michael Urquhart was standing with arms folded as he concentrated on not noticing the unpleasantness in the air.

  ‘Two of you, for just one leg?’ George said. ‘Well, well.’

  ‘The Inspector said he wanted me to come,’ Michael said a little grimly. ‘For my part I’d have been happy to have left you to it, especially as you removed the clothing there on the scene, but there it is. Ye canna argue with Roop in one of his moods.’ Then he relaxed and grinned at her amiably.

  She grinned back but said nothing, turning her attention to the leg. Once it was revealed in the hard white light over the slab it was much more a pathetic object than a fearsome one. There was a staining of the skin below the severed surface, and she described that into the microphone dangling over the table before she touched anything, standing with her gloved hands folded under her arms and just talking.

  Then she measured, and tried to do the sums in her head, remembering the proportions of the human body as best she could without a written reference, and measuring the foot, too, to help her calculations.

  Jerry, who had arrived while she was dictating the first appearance of the leg, leaned forwards, clearly fascinated and quite unfazed. ‘I’ve checked the shoe and sock,’ he said. ‘Only briefly of course – I’ll do the more microscopic investigation after this – but the shoe’s a size eleven. Big feet.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said and re-measured the foot. ‘I’d say about six foot two or even three. Not too heavy a man: the joints don’t show the sort of distortion you see on the feet of overweight people. And as you can see, not a lot of fat on the leg … So he was on the thin side. Certainly not too bulky. Now as to his age …’ She pondered a while and leaned over the leg to peer more closely at the foot. ‘I’ll have to check the epiphyses on the tibia, but I have a hunch that he’s a mature adult but not an aged one. Somewhere between, oh, twenty-five and forty-five, say –’

  ‘That’s a hell of a between, Dr B.’ Michael said and she threw a glance at him.

  ‘Fortune telling might be quicker,’ she said dryly. ‘I’ve only got science. And at this stage I’m only using my eyes anyway. Let’s see what we find with a knife and fork.’

  She worked delicately and steadily with her instruments, first shaving some of the edges of the skin at the severed surface to provide a sample for more detailed investigation of the punched-in edge, and next separating the different muscles so that she could inspect the fascia that lay between them. Then she stopped, peered more closely and said to Jerry, ‘A slide, please.’

  Jerry brought a box of the slips of glass and she slid the point of her smallest forceps into the wound and then, moving very slowly, extracted something and lay it on the slide. All of the watchers craned to see more closely.

  ‘Fibres,’ she said with great satisfaction. ‘There’s some fibres here that have been driven into the wound.’

  ‘From his clothing?’ Michael said, his eyes sharp and intelligent.

  George nodded. ‘That’s possible, of course. But we can’t be sure. We’ll have to look more closely at the material; see what it is.’

  ‘If it’s a piece of good wool, showing signs of pinstriping, then it’s natty gentlemen’s suiting to match the Harrods shoe and the silk sock. If it’s a scrap of rubber then he was up to something naughty when whoever or whatever it was got him,’ Jerry said. He leered at Michael who snorted with laughter. Harold Constant ignored them both. He was looking puzzled.

  ‘Dr B.,’ he said slowly. ‘How can you be sure you’ve got fabric fibres there? It looks the same as the muscle from here.’

  ‘Because I’m experienced in looking,’ she said a touch sharply. ‘Of course it looks like muscle to your eyes – it’s covered with blood! But this isn’t muscle fibre. I know.’ She poked the glass slide towards Jerry who covered it and slid it into a tray with a label on which he wrote swiftly.

  ‘I didn’t mean that you didn’t know what it was, exactly.’ Harold had gone a little pink, which made his round face look somewhat like a strawberry blancmange. ‘I just meant that, well, if it looks so like muscle couldn’t there be lots more that you haven’t spotted? If you see what I mean.’

  She looked at him for a long time and then nodded slowly. ‘Yes, Harold, I see what you mean,’ she said. ‘You think I spotted that scrap of fibre by luck.’

  He went even more pink and made noises of denial as she shook her head at him.

  ‘You have a point. I did just happen to spot this bit. Now I’m going to look. Much more carefully. So that you’re completely reassured. OK?’

  Harold looked miserable as she returned to her work and the PM room sank into a relative silence, though they could hear the hiss of the water that was running into the tiled gulleys and the faint hum of refrigeration. After a while they could hear themselves breathing, too.

  She could not have been more painstaking. She explored every area of the exposed muscle, inch by inch, slowly stripping it further and further down the leg so that the bone emerged to stand pallid and glistening in the harsh light; and still they were silent. Because she was pulling from the muscles of the upper part of the leg piece after piece of fibre. The number of slides increased, and Jerry’s face seemed to brighten a little with each of them. In the end he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  ‘Listen, was he stuffed or something? Or are you just taking anything that might be fibrous? I mean, could some of it be roughened connective tissue or something?’

  She shook her head, never lifting her eyes from her work. ‘No, Jerry. These are foreign fibres. It’s a ridiculous amount, isn’t it? If all this is stuff from his trousers they must have been ripped to shreds, and the cut must have been even more violent than I first thought, to have driven the scraps in so deeply. It’s extraordinary.’

  As she went lower into the leg towards the ankle the amount of fibres she found diminished and finally stopped. When she reached the ankle proper, exposing the medial malleolus, it ceased altogether and Jerry took away the remainder of the slides and finished the labelling.

  She completed the examination an hour and a half later. Each and every muscle in the leg was carefully separated out – what remained of popliteus gastrocnemius, soleus, tibialis – and the narrower bone, the fibula, had been exposed more clearly so that detailed photographs could be taken. She took samples of the skin too, though she suspected they would be of little value after a week’s immersion in the Thames, and also of the toenails. Investigation of them might, she thought, reveal something of the owner of the leg’s past uses of heavy metals. Jerry watched her and then snickered softly.

  ‘Seeing you do that reminds me of that awful joke about the fireman who poisoned his wife with a chopper,’ he said. ‘He gave her arsenic.’

  She looked at him witheringly but the two men watching laughed, Harold with a particularly loud bray. ‘Oh, very funny, very funny,’ he said. ‘Gave her arse a nick … Are you saying this fellow might have been given arsenic?’

  ‘You never know,’ George said. ‘Or antimony or thallium. They all finish up in hair and nails eventually. Well, we’ve got no hair, but we’ve got these.’ And she dropped the last crescent of large toenail into the specimen box that Jerry was holding out for her. ‘The fact that we have this section doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead, you know.’

  There was another silence and then Michael said carefully, ‘Not dead? But…’

  George grinned. ‘Oh, I’m pretty sure he is. There’s been heavy blood loss, and no sign that the major blood vessels clamped down to reduce the loss, as
they do if an injury like this happens in life. I’m pretty clear this was cut from a dead body, but you can never be totally sure, can you? If a tourniquet’s used above the line of the incision, then that can mimic the look of an injury to a body in which the circulation has already stopped – a dead one in other words. I’ll know more when we’ve inspected the samples in detail. But if he was dead when his leg was cut off, what did he die of? We have to investigate every possibility, right?’

  ‘Right,’ said Michael.

  ‘OK. We’ll clean up now.’ She began to push the tissues back into some sort of shape and then indicated she wanted a wrapper. Danny brought her one and carefully she wrapped the now almost unrecognizable leg into a neat parcel, ready to be put into one of the cold drawers.

  ‘Right, gentlemen,’ she said briskly. ‘That’s it. We’ll get a report to you as soon as we can, but there’s a lot of work to be done on the samples. I have to tell you, though, that until you find me a bit more of this chap’s anatomy, the chances of my being able to say who he is, or when or how he died, are as slim as a skeleton. So, Michael, it’s over to you and that chap from the river police – Slavin, was it? You have to hunt around for a bit more material for me to work on. I hope you find some. I’d really like to get to the bottom of this one.’

  Again Jerry snickered and murmured in mock cockney. ‘Oh, Dr B., you are a one!’ But she ignored him. She was so used to Jerry’s scatological sense of humour that she hardly noticed it any more.

  ‘I’ll talk to Slavin as soon as I get back to the nick,’ Michael promised, also ignoring Jerry. ‘Between us we ought to be able to get a few more pieces to this little puzzle. I hope so. The Guv doesn’t like bits of dead people turning up on his patch, I don’t suppose. And we have to keep the Guv’nor happy, don’t we?

  ‘Yes,’ George said brightly. ‘We certainly do.’