by Mark Romain
Sarah shook her head. “It’s not a name that I’m familiar with, but I’m flattered your colleague thinks that highly of us.” Sitting with her hands clasped on her lap, she studied him carefully. “So, what do you know about the work we do here?” she asked.
Bull smiled guiltily. “To be honest, I know absolutely nothing.”
“Let me enlighten you, then,” she offered.
Inwardly, Steve Bull groaned. He didn’t care what they did. He just wanted their help to win over the sex workers so that he could get justice for Tracey Philips. “Please do,” he said, trying to sound interested.
“At the Sutton Mission, we firmly believe that everyone who comes through our doors deserves a second chance, regardless of their background or offending history,” Sarah Pritchard said with the pride and passion of a zealot.
Bull smiled diplomatically. Experience had taught him that some people were rotten to the core and really didn’t deserve a second chance, but, as he was trying to get her onboard, he refrained from saying so.
“We hold wellbeing classes and provide basic office skills training and career advice for those trying to re-enter the workforce. We’ve developed a specialist support scheme for individuals with complex needs, encouraging them to address the issues that caused their homelessness, prostitution or addiction. We’re helping them to acquire the skills and confidence necessary to make life-changing decisions and re-integrate into society.”
Bull gave an appreciative nod to demonstrate that he was paying attention, but in truth, he was only half listening. Tyler had certainly been right when he’d said it wasn’t a good idea to send Tony Dillon along.
“The Mission has several full-time members of staff and a wonderful team of volunteers who are all dedicated to eradicating the root cause of homelessness in Whitechapel. Our volunteers don’t just distribute clothing and other donated items; they work one-on-one with people who are homeless or trying to cope with addiction. Every morning we lay on a breakfast club for the homeless, and every evening we send out a mini-bus to round up those most in need of support and find overnight placements for them in local hostels.”
“You clearly do a lot of very good work,” Steve said,” hoping she had finished and they could get back on topic.
She hadn’t.
“This Mission is open three-hundred-sixty-five days a year,” Sarah continued. “It’s not unheard of for as many as one-hundred people to pass through our doors in a single day. We provide help and support without judgment or ridicule.”
“Very commendable,” Bull said, resisting the urge to glance down at his watch. “How do you survive without public funding?” He didn’t actually care, but he sensed she expected him to ask the question.
She shrugged. “We rely on donations and volunteers; just as most other charities do. My husband, Simon, acts as our finance manager and chief fundraiser. My inheritance left me rather wealthy, so neither of us needs to draw a wage.”
“I’m very impressed,” Steve said, hoping he sounded sincere. “I really hope that we can rely on your support in this matter.”
Sarah Pritchard nodded. “I’ll speak to my husband and some of our senior volunteers at the team meeting this afternoon. Hopefully, we can allocate some resources to accompany you the next time you canvas the girls.”
“That would be marvellous.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” she warned. “I can’t promise anything.”
“I understand.”
“And you also have to understand that our priority will always be to act in the best interest of the girls. We won’t encourage them to say or do anything they are uncomfortable with. After all, we have to continue working with these people long after you have moved on to the next case.”
Steve nodded. “I get that,” he said, and he genuinely did. “All we want your people to do is introduce us and explain that we are not looking to cause them any trouble. We just need their help to get justice for Tracey. Even if they won’t talk to us in person, it might be a case that they will be willing to pass information to us via your volunteers.”
“That might work,” Sarah said, “but you have to accept that, if a girl tells us she wants you to have information but not know who provided it, we won’t disclose that person’s identity to you.”
Bull frowned. He had half expected her to stipulate a condition of this nature. “Okay,” he said, guardedly. If any of the street workers provided general information or intelligence there would be no issue with them withholding their personal details. It wouldn’t be that simple if any of them turned out to have direct evidence relating to the murder. If that happened, there would be an expectation that the girl’s details would be disclosed. He hoped Sarah realised this. “I’m sure you can appreciate how time critical this is,” he said. “We were hoping to get something in place within a day or two if at all possible.”
“Leave it with me,” she said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
As Bull was standing up to leave, the office door opened and a stylish looking man in his mid-forties breezed in. He had a full head of brown hair, which was greying at the temples. Intelligent hazel eyes, an aquiline nose, and paper-thin lips combined to give him a distinguished countenance. The newcomer stopped in his tracks and glanced from Bull to Sarah, startled. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, Sarah, I didn’t realise you had company.” The voice was public school posh.
“It’s quite alright,” she said. “DS Bull, allow me to introduce my husband, Simon.”
“How do you do, Mr Pritchard,” Steve said, moving towards the other man and extending his hand.
“It’s Dr Pritchard,” the newcomer corrected him with a smile. Simon Pritchard had soft skin and a handshake like a wet lettuce, Bull thought, resisting the urge to wipe his hand on his trouser leg after it was released.
“To what do we owe the pleasure of your visit?” Dr Pritchard asked.
Bull opened his mouth to formulate an answer, but Sarah got in first.
“The police need our help.”
“Do they?” her husband said, suspicion creeping into his voice. Marvellous! Bull thought, picking up on Pritchard’s tone. This bloke is a Lay Advisor and he doesn’t even trust our intentions.
“Yes, they’re hoping our relationship with the area’s street workers might persuade a few of the girls to come forward if they have any information about the young girl who was murdered yesterday.”
Dr Pritchard frowned. “Well, dealing with the working girls is your area of expertise, not mine.” Something about the way this was said made Bull wonder if Simon Pritchard didn’t fully approve of the Mission devoting its precious time and resources to that particular brand of clientele.
“I heard about the murder, of course,” the doctor said, turning to face Bull. “Terrible. Quite terrible. How’s the investigation going? Do you have any leads yet?”
“We’re pursuing a number of lines of enquiry,” Bull said, giving a stock in trade answer that roughly translated to: ‘I’m not telling you anything.’
Dr Pritchard raised an amused eyebrow. “I see,” he said.
“I’ll see myself out,” Bull told Sarah Pritchard. “Thank you for your time. I hope to hear from you soon.”
“I’ll be in touch once we’ve discussed the matter further,” she told him.
Charise was still filling her nails when Steve Bull passed back through reception. He gave her a little wave. “Bye Charise.”
“Bye, hon,” she called back.
He left the shop as he’d arrived; to the accompaniment of the most irritating ‘Bing-bong’ he had ever heard.
◆◆◆
The refrigerated drawers at Poplar mortuary were kept at a constant temperature of 2 degrees centigrade to ward off decomposition in the bodies, some of which were retained for weeks on end until they were properly identified and the cause of death was established, allowing the Coroner to release them for burial or cremation.
The pathologist’s assistant, or th
e Anatomical Pathology Technician to use her full grandiose title, was a pretty woman in her mid-twenties called Emma Drew. When everyone was ready, she removed the drawer containing Tracey Phillips, and they all crowded around it, Dillon, Copeland, Sam Calvin, a nerdy looking photographer called Ned, and the Home Office Forensic Pathologist assigned to carry out the SPM. The visitors all wore compulsory green gowns and overshoes, but Emma and the pathologist wore surgical pyjamas and wellington boots. Both wore surgical caps, and they had masks hanging loosely under their chins.
Dillon stared down at the cadaver, which was still in the plastic body bag it had been wrapped in at the scene, and wondered why a good-looking, bubbly girl like Emma would want to spend her working day surrounded by death.
“I hear this girl was pretty badly cut up,” Emma said.
Dillon nodded. “You could say that.” Under normal circumstances, he might have asked Emma out for a drink, but the idea of getting intimate with someone who spent her days cutting open corpses and handling dismembered or decaying body parts was a total turn off.
When the Home Office Pathologist, Dr Ben Claxton, signalled that he was ready to begin the procedure, Tracey’s body was hoisted onto a sterile metal trolley and wheeled over to an autopsy table connected to a large drainage sink. George Copeland helped Emma to remove the body bag. It would be sent off to the lab with all the other samples, to be checked for microscopic traces of skin, and for soil and fibres.
Tracey was weighed and measured and then photographed front and back. Ned took a few frames of Tracey in her clothing.
Calvin then removed Tracey’s clothing and passed it all to Copeland, who bagged and sealed each garment methodically.
Next, Calvin carefully removed the head and hand bags and passed them to Copeland. Like the body bag, they were destined for the lab.
Before handing over to the pathologist, Calvin swabbed her lips, it was not uncommon in cases like this to find the killer’s DNA on them. When he had finished, he stepped back and made a ‘she’s all yours’ gesture to Claxton.
Claxton turned on a small recording device and stated the date and time, the location and persons present, and the details of the deceased. He announced that he would be making verbal notes from which he would compile his final report at a later date, and asked that there be no unnecessary talking as this was likely to interfere with the recording and distract him.
Claxton started with a superficial check of the skull for indentations and lacerations, but found none. “I’ll come back to the head when it’s time to examine the brain,” he promised.
“I can’t wait,” Dillon muttered under his breath. When he had first walked through the mortuary door twenty minutes earlier, the bitter-sweet blend of death and Trigene had struck him as overpowering; now it barely seemed noticeable.
Dillon had made his first visit to a mortuary as a fresh-faced probationer, two weeks into his street duties course. He had thrown up as the mortician prepped an old lady – who had died in a road traffic accident – for the pathologist, and had spent the rest of the procedure with his head tucked between his knees trying to stop the world from spinning.
He didn’t throw up anymore, but the smell still affected him just as badly as it always had, and he knew that by the time he left the mortuary every pore of his skin, every follicle of his hair and every fibre of his clothes would be impregnated by the foul stench. Another very sound reason not to ask Emma out, he decided. He knew that every time he put an arm around her, he would find himself surreptitiously sniffing her, to see if she still reeked of death. He could imagine them being locked in the throes of passion and catching a sudden unexpected whiff of Trigene in her hair. Well, it would be an incredibly effective method of birth control, if nothing else.
As the others clustered around the pathologist to watch him work, Dillon kept as far away as he could, wishing he could wait outside and avoid the unpleasantness altogether.
The photographer was asked to take some preliminary record photography of the victim before the special post mortem commenced. He would then take further photographs as directed by the pathologist at various stages of the autopsy. “Sure thing,” Ned said, clicking away enthusiastically.
The SPM began in earnest with the pathologist logging the dimensions of the bruising around Tracey’s jawline. Apart from that, her face was completely untouched. By the time the mortician applied a dab of makeup and tidied up her hair, she would look quite presentable when her family came to make the formal identification; as long as they didn’t look at the carnage being concealed by the clean white sheet that would be drawn right up to her chin.
The pathologist moved down to the neck injury. He carefully examined and measured the gaping wound, and then called the photographer forward to take shots from different angles. A ruler was incorporated into each frame to show the angle and depth of the cut.
Claxton dissected and removed some layers of tissue from the neck, which Copeland packaged for him. He left the tongue in place as there was no specific reason for doing otherwise. The voice box and trachea injuries were noted, as was the damage to the carotid and jugular arteries, and the grooves the killer’s knife had made on the vertebrae.
Much of what the pathologist said into his little recording device was technical mumbo jumbo to Dillon, but in between all the medical terms, he basically stated that the killer, who had held the blade in his left hand, had grabbed Tracey from behind. He had slit her throat in one powerful and fluid motion, cutting from right to left. The marks on her face, which Jack had noticed at the scene, were grip marks from his right hand. She fell to the floor – there were impact marks on her knees – and rapidly bled out. Although she would have lost consciousness fairly quickly, it could have taken several minutes for her to die.
Claxton carried out a visual examination of the torso, concluding that the killer had probably used a surgical scalpel to make the incisions.
“So, he slit her throat with a knife but opened her torso up using a scalpel?” Copeland asked.
“That’s correct,” Claxton said.
He explained that a midline laparotomy – a vertical incision that follows the linea alba – had been made, extending from the xiphoid process to the pubic symphysis. Claxton drew their attention to the smooth curve around the umbilicus and noted the precision used to cut through the skin and subcutaneous tissue. “I hate to say this, but in my opinion, the killer’s technique suggests that he – or she – has some rudimental surgical knowledge,” he said.
“Under what circumstances would a surgeon normally make an incision like that, Ben?” Calvin asked.
“In my experience, incisions like this are most often seen in trauma cases, where the site of the internal injuries is unclear and immediate access is required to the whole abdominal cavity.”
In addition to the main midline incision, there were three transverse incisions, each differing in length and depth. These were measured and photographed. As with the other incisions, a ruler was used to demonstrate the angle of the blade’s entry.
“I think,” Claxton said, and Dillon was unsure if he was addressing them or merely thinking out loud, “that the blighter made these transverse incisions for his own convenience so that he could peel her skin back and make it easier for himself to rummage around inside.”
“Why would he want to do that?” Dillon asked, knowing that he was not going to like the answer.
“Well, I should be able to confirm what he was looking for when I start cutting her open, but even at this early stage I can see that our killer has cut out sections of her upper and lower intestines.”
“Good God,” Dillon said, starting to feel sick. “Why would anyone do that?”
“My dear Inspector,” Claxton said, looking up from the corpse, and reminding Dillon of Peter Cushing’s maniacal portrayal of Victor Frankenstein in the Hammer Horror films, “while I can tell you what he did, from a pathological point of view, I’m afraid I’m as baffled as you are as to
why anyone would ever want or need to do something like this.”
As the examination continued, the pathologist formed the opinion that the girl was already dead by the time these incisions were made, and he highlighted a lack of blood loss and an absence of bruising as supporting indicators.
Claxton commentated on the loops of bowel that were sticking out, speculating that the killer had deliberately arranged them like that for effect; he could offer no other logical explanation. He asked if the missing intestinal segments had been found at the scene, and was told that they had not.
“There are elasticised marks around her waist but I note she wasn’t wearing underwear. Was this recovered at the scene?”
Sam Calvin shook his head.” No. It remains unaccounted for.”
“So, he’s a trophy taker?” Claxton asked, raising an eyebrow.
