River Deep

by Priscilla Masters

  Mark Sullivan broke the silence. “Better get on with it, I suppose.” His voice, echoing around the room, bouncing off the white tiles and clinical floor, was directed at the mortician.

  Two of the police officers cut the suit very carefully into halves, slicing along the seams under the arms and at the side. They did the same with the shirt, the tie, the socks, the underpants. All were placed on a table nearby ready for examination. Now the body lay naked and exposed.

  Mark Sullivan’s description earlier had been accurate. Humphreys was well-nourished and muscular, dark-haired and about forty. In good shape. It wasn’t hard to surmise that he had probably been physically attractive – alive. Adding to the fact that the suit had looked expensive, Martha’s mind wandered. She was surprised he had not kept more regular contact with his wife. They were assuming he had died sometime Sunday night or in the early hours of Monday morning. Yet his wife was “missing”, “uncontactable”. She wondered whether Mrs Humphreys was, perhaps, away on holiday. It was a nice time to go. But in these days of ready communication she was curious to know where Mrs Humphreys was.

  This was something else that intrigued her. No ID in his pockets? No mobile phone? She leaned across to speak to Randall. “Did you find his wallet?”

  He shook his head.

  “A mobile phone?”

  Again he shook his head. She met his eyes and read his concern there too. “He could have been robbed,” he said, but without conviction.

  She turned her attention back to the post mortem. Mark Sullivan’s eyes had fixed on a small elliptical wound a little below the dead man’s left nipple. Right over the heart. And from the set of the pathologist’s face she knew he was already querying this as the cause of death. But it looked such a small, almost insignificant injury to fell this man. Sullivan would have to delve deeper to find out the truth, expose skin, bone, finally the very chambers of the heart. However he actually said nothing, but stood motionless, his hands clasped together, as the mortuary assistant performed the preliminaries, measuring the height from crown to heels, and checking the weight.

  She knew that Mark Sullivan was waiting for her to make some comment. She contrasted him to the policeman. Shorter, early forties, cropped brown hair and tired but shrewd blue eyes. He invariably looked as though he’d passed a rough night. He gave her a tentative grin.

  Before even making the first cut he was busily making his observations into the tape recorder. While Martha looked on. She was not meant to be an active participator but an impartial observer – the conductor of the orchestra whose role was to make sense from the various discordances between the law and medicine. So as Sullivan penetrated the skull and brain of the dead man she observed that James Humpreys, presumptive, had been in good health and shape – right up to the moment of his death.

  At first there was little to see. Some marks on the shoulders and torso which they all knew could have been caused by a fall down the steps or being bumped around in the cellar by the rising tide of flood water. As Sullivan worked on the head she turned her attention to the chest. There was inevitable discoloration of the skin, a pale, dead fish appearance and to the right of it a puzzling mark. Small, perfectly round, pinkish bruising. She wondered what he would make of this. Sullivan worked steadily, his hands seeming to grow steadier and more confident the longer he worked. His face gradually looked less lined, less tired, more relaxed as he became increasingly absorbed. Martha watched him work, seeing the man he should be and wondering why he invariably did look so strained. As he finished with the head and turned his attention back to the chest area she was even more aware of his competence. He stood back and looked first, his latexed fingers touching the small, round contusion in the centre of the chest that she had noticed. “I wonder what caused this,” he mused.

  Randall leaned forward. “I don’t know. We couldn’t see anything in the house that would have caused it.”

  “Well – whatever it was – there’s very little bruising. It was inflicted within a very short time of his death.”

  “Is there nothing in the cellar that could have caused this wound?” Martha looked at them both.

  Randall answered. “Not that I’ve seen.”

  “I’ll need to study the underlying tissues. It looks superficial but inflicted with some force. Now – let’s look at this.”

  Sullivan’s index finger stroked the injury in the chest now, which gaped and smiled like a baby’s mouth. Gently he brought the edges back together. Peter handed him a ruler and he measured the wound very carefully. Two centimetres. They all marked the number and knew its significance. The width of the blade of the causative instrument cannot be larger than the size of the wound. But because a man may move either to defend himself or to try and escape when he feels the first prick of the knife a small knife may make a big wound.

  Sullivan frowned and pointed out more detail. The wound was asymmetric, tapering thinly at one end, blunt at the other. “Fish-tailing,” he murmured then smiled at the policeman and Martha knew he relished this Sherlock Holmes touch.

  “So, Alex,” Sullivan said. “You’re looking for a single-edged instrument, with a blade narrower than two centimetres.”

  “Well we haven’t found it yet,” Alex answered grumpily, as though he imagined the pathologist thought he was handing him a solution on a plate. “But we’ll get a team to search the area – as well as we can,” he said. “The cellar’s still half underwater.” His eyes clouded. They all fell silent and Martha knew what they were thinking. The Severn, snaking round the town, no more than four steps from the front door of Marine Terrace. Expected to peak some time on Thursday and they would all have to wait.

  “We may never find it,” the policeman finished. It could be washing along the bottom of the river. Embedding in the mud or shifting with the ebb and flow of the water.

  But at least they had a description of a knife and the width of a blade. Which led to the next question: how long was that blade? Knife wounds could be surprisingly deceptive. On the surface there might be little to see. But even a wound of two centimetres wide could be lethal. If it had penetrated a vital part of a vital organ. Such as one of the two ventricles of the heart.

  Now they were all curious to know what else Sullivan would discover. But he was acting cautious and slow, still studying the skin. Once he had investigated the wound he would have destroyed this untouched witness. Again the police photographer flashed some close-ups.

  “There’s no damage on the skin,” he mused. “No marks of a hilt – which makes me think it didn’t go all the way in. Although the clothes would have protected it to some extent.”

  Already Martha was hearing a defence. Accident. Fell against the knife. No clear intent. From her point of view this was still not a clear case of homicide. It was possible that Humphreys had fallen down the cellar steps, a knife in his hand. Nothing but an unfortunate and terrible accident. The lights had been off because of the flooding. There had been intermittent interruption of the supply for some of Sunday and most of Monday before it had been completely switched off on Tuesday as the water level had risen. Humphreys was in a strange house – not his own. He may well have been drinking. Sullivan would certainly be sending serum samples for blood alcohol as well as other mind-altering substances. If such a knife was found in the cellar accidental death was still a possible verdict.

  Sullivan gently threaded a blunt-ended probe into the wound and when it met resistance he read the mark. “And the blade was round about fourteen centimetres long.” His eyes found those of Randall. He knew how important all these details were to the policeman. “Give or take,” he said. “I’d be inclined to look for a slightly longer blade. Two or three centimetres longer.” A pause. “I’d like to look at his clothes again.”

  He crossed the mortuary floor and stood, staring at the suit, then at the shirt, his gloved fingers quickly finding the slash wound in the jacket which corresponded to Humphreys’ injury. When he studied the shirt they could
all see a small amount of bloodstaining.

  “I thought there would have been more blood.” Martha spoke for all of them.

  Sullivan’s lips tightened. “Not if my suspicion proves correct.”

  She did not question him. When he was ready he would tell her. But, like most pathologists she had worked with, he liked to distil the facts before suggesting a theory.

  Alex Randall was still looking at the suit. “Nice,” he said.

  One of the SOCOs spoke up. “People who flog Jags for a living tend to know their suits, Sir.”

  “Is it English or foreign?” She didn’t even know why she asked the question.

  PC Coleman answered, his face pinking up a bit. “Italian by the labels. But you can probably buy them over here. In London. Or Slough. For a price.” He cast a critical eye over the fabric. “Not a good fit though. Trousers a bit loose and long.” He shrugged. “Maybe he’d lost weight. Or maybe the material lost its shape in the water.” Who could know except the missing wife?

  They laid the suit to one side. It had told them what they had already known. Humphreys breathed money.

  And now Mark Sullivan moved on to perform the vital part of the operation – the delicate investigation of the fatal wound. And although the subject was gruesome, Martha enjoyed watching the pathologist work.

  The more absorbed Mark Sullivan became in his work the more she forgot what he looked like and saw only a sober, methodical, professional man. She had heard whispers, mainly from Jericho, of marital disharmony, of alcohol abuse, of domestic violence and police involvement, of nights spent at the mortuary because he could not or would not go home. Jericho could be quite a malicious gossip. But when she had faced her assistant with the indisputable fact that unhappy couples could easily separate he had had no answer to give. So Mark Sullivan remained an enigma and she was left with her curiosity. Every time she looked at him she wondered.

  His fingers probed beneath the skin and fished out some white eggs, something like cod roe, from the mouth of the wound. “Calliphora,” he announced, as though introducing a friend.

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Bluebottle eggs.” He decanted a couple into a white-topped specimen pot. “I said the fly. With my little eye. Can’t be too careful. We’ll get an entymologist to positively identify but it may help with the time of death.”

  She raised her eyebrows and Sullivan continued explaining.

  “If I am right and this really is Calliphora they like their corpses fresh. The open wound in the chest plus the fact that the temperatures have been high for the time of year proved too tempting for a marauding bluebottle.”

  It was hard not to feel repulsed.

  He continued his scrutiny of the chest, standing back for the police photographer to record the proceedings before sawing through the sternum with a wire, examining some notches on the ribs then carefully probing further. Martha peered over his shoulder but did not interrupt him. He was absorbed, muttering to himself, using his gloved index finger delicately to explore the penetration of the weapon. She knew exactly what he was doing. Once, in an unguarded moment, he had confessed to her that while investigating cases like this he built up an almost fey picture of intent, assault, events. He was doing this now and she did not want to break the spell so stood still, making observations of her own. His face was composed. He glanced up and she flushed. He knew she’d been watching him.

  He had reached the heart now, pushing aside the major vessels and immediately the explanation for Humphreys’ death was apparent, also the reason for the lack of blood-staining on the shirt and other clothes. The organ lay in a sack of blood which had leaked from a small puncture wound. The tip of the knife had reached the left ventricle and blood must have spurted out yet been contained in the pericardial sac. Sullivan made a guttural noise, almost feral. He had found what he had searched for. The cause of death. He looked up and there was the gleam of discovery on his face. Of knowledge. For him the picture was complete. But turning around to look at Randall she could see he did not understand. And Martha knew better than to quiz.

  Almost losing interest, Sullivan turned his attention across to the lungs and found some blood-stained frothing in the larger tubes – the bronchi. And all the time Martha could tell his interest was waning because he had found what he was looking for. “No sign of disease,” he muttered into the tape recorder… “Healthy and muscular. Really good strong heart. No sign of atheroma.” He looked up at the rim of faces. “My guess is he was quite an athlete.”

  She nodded her agreement.

  His examination of the abdomen and lower limbs was much more cursory. The stomach was empty, all other organs healthy and intact. He filled a couple of bottles with blood samples. They would be sent for toxicology and alcohol and drugs levels. Some would be merely saved. In case … Finally he swabbed the sex organs for semen, but she could tell his interest had gone. The puzzle was solved. She waited until he was sewing up the thorax with big, untidy stitches before speaking. “So?”

  “Someone stuck a knife through his heart.”

  “Yet there was little blood on his clothes?”

  Sullivan agreed. “Very little blood loss at all.”

  “Strange.” She was fishing for information.

  “What did you think of the lungs?”

  “He didn’t drown. Some frothing blood in the trachea. He aspirated.”

  “So the cause of death was …?”

  “Pericardial tamponade. Quite rare. Invariably fatal.”

  Sullivan began to wash his hands.

  Randall cleared his throat. “Is it a homicide?”

  “Ninety-nine per cent yes. If you’d found the knife still in the wound I’d say it was a very unusual way to commit suicide or a very unlucky accident. If the knife isn’t in the cellar.” He turned from the sink. “What am I saying?” He grinned. “I’m being overcautious. Of course it’s a homicide. Quick and professional. He was a strong man. His killer must have been even stronger. Or lucky. Just the one stab wound. But what a hit. The knife had a single-edged blade of a maximum of two centimetres wide and a minimum of fourteen centimetres long give or take a centimetre. Long and slim like a carving knife. Not serrated. No untidiness. It was sharp. The wound is clean and not ragged. If you forced me to make a comment on this I would suggest that he was very shocked by what happened. The knife penetrated the left ventricle and was driven right in. There is some compression of the material around the jacket pocket which corresponds with the wound on Humphreys’ body.”

  “Would that have taken a lot of force?”

  Mark Sullivan gave her a strange, sad smile as though he had woken from a dream. “You’re expecting me to say something about ‘extreme force’ or someone with ‘arms like a chimpanzee’, Martha. But the truth is once you’ve penetrated the skin the rest is a piece of cake. It’s even possible a woman could have done this – if she was reasonably fit and was in a position to assault Humphreys without him first being able to fend her off.”

  A vision of a woman? A lover? Someone near but not to be trusted? Humphreys’ wife?

  “Could it have been an accident?”

  “I’d take an awful lot of convincing but the usual defence is that the deceased ‘fell’ against the knife thus causing his own injury.”

  “It’s possible?”

  “Like I said, I’d take an awful lot of convincing. If he hadn’t taken a while to die.”

  She stared at him.

  “Think of it, Martha,” he urged. “The blood doesn’t gush out but leaks slowly into a bag to leave the circulation. The pericardial sac acts as a staunch.”

  “How long?”

  “That no one knows.” He grinned. “It’s something pathologists like to argue about over their late-night drinks at medical conferences. Who knows? Now I might be able to join them. The truth is it depends on how fast the blood leaked out. The wound was only small. The tip penetrated – not the full two centimetres maximum width of the knife blade. Po
ssibly 500 mls. loss would be sufficient to cause death when combined with a penetrating wound to the heart. There is even some argument that the wound itself is enough to put the ventricle into fatal arrhythmia but generally the accepted estimates are between ten or so minutes and an hour or two.”

  “Would he have been conscious?”

  “We don’t know. At least we can’t say with certainty.”

  The police officers were standing back, unfamiliar with medical terminology. Alex Randall spoke for all of them. “So – for the benefit of the uninitiated, in words of less than ten syllables – can you explain, doctor?”

  Mark gave him one of his lop-sided smiles. “Yes. Sure. Sorry, Alex – and the rest of you. The knife entered the heart, in this case the left ventricle. There was a lot of bleeding into the pericardial sac – the bag the heart lives in. This caused a lethal condition known as cardiac tamponade when, because of the increased pressure and loss of blood, the cardiac output falls – eventually causing death.” He put a friendly hand on Randall’s shoulder. “You don’t need to know all the details, Alex,” he said, “except that the stab wound was the direct cause of this man’s death.”

  The officers were silent. Martha could almost see the cogs of Alex Randall’s mind start to turn, almost hear the metallic grind. A stab wound to a police officer’s mind is homicide. This would spark off a major police investigation. And discount the theory that Humphreys had caused the wound himself.

  Mark gave a short laugh. “I think I’d like two questions answered at this stage,” he said. “The first is – why no ID?”

  Coleman was the one to answer. “He might have been one of these guys who empties their suit pockets,” he said. “Keeps their shape.”

  “So did you find his wallet, cheque book, credit cards and mobile phone anywhere in the house?”

  Coleman shook his head.

  “Or in the car?”

  “No.”