by Nathan Sayer
They shuffled down the magnolia painted corridor and turned into the changing room. The automatic lights pinged on to reveal five lockers, a shower, a sink and a toilet cubicle. The changing area was similar to those that you found at a swimming pool, clothes pegs included.
All the permanent staff used a separate changing room. Reed had been in there a few times and the only major difference was a TV and old leather sofa to help pass away their break times.
“I hate attending these.” Reed said, as the pair stepped into their suits.
“I don’t think anyone really enjoys it.”
“I wouldn’t necessarily agree with that. Steed seems to love it.”
“Yeah, but dead bodies are only a part of his job. He gets to piece together the scientific truth and he doesn’t have to meet the creeps face to face who try and fob you off.”
“When you put it like that, a career change might be in order. Ready?”
“Yep.” Tyler replied a little too cheerily.
Reed pressed the buzzer next to the door and Steed’s assistant, Lucy Mack, buzzed them through. Lucy had frizzy brown hair, spectacles and a stick-thin frame. She looked like a stereotypical scientist even at the grand old age of 30.
Mike Steed was already hovering over Carmella’s body. He was wearing his white lab coat, white trousers and blue paper booties covering his own shoes. He also wore a hat which looked like a novelty shower cap as it was so colourful.
“Whoever put her in those bushes covered her body in bleach before leaving.” Steed said without even looking up.
“Bleach?” Tyler asked.
“Yes, it’s a new one to me. As I was telling DI Reed at the scene, something distorted the overall picture a little.”
“Bleach.” Tyler said again to nobody in particular.
“Her whole body was covered with it.”
“Interesting.” Tyler said, again, to no one in particular.
Turning to Reed, Steed continued, “It’s what gave the skin its appearance of older decomposition, but it also managed to keep the bugs away. I’ve sent a sample for testing, but I’m fairly sure.”
Reed thought the most likely reason someone would pour bleach over a murdered body was to hide evidence.
Tyler was studying Carmella’s body. This beautiful young girl was lying naked on a cold metal slab. It struck Tyler that you spent your whole life covering yourself up with clothes, only sharing your naked body with people that you cared for and trusted the most. Now, this poor girl with no say in the matter was laid out for strangers to look at and examine intimately.
“Time of death was around midnight on Saturday night.” Steed said in a matter of fact manner, then without any hesitation he picked up a scalpel and started to make the Y-incision on Carmella’s torso, cutting through human skin with the same emotion as if it were a sandwich. The Y-incision was the common procedure to expose the internal organs. These would be removed, studied, dissected and have various tests run on them. The tests would reveal what Carmella’s last meal was, when it was eaten, if she was drunk and how drunk, and whether she had drugs in her system.
While Steed executed this procedure with creepy expertise, he explained his initial findings on the outside of her body. The head injury that had likely killed her was the same one that had caused the blood to congeal in her hair. There wasn’t enough blood at the scene to suggest that the blow had occurred where her body had been found. There were no obvious defence marks, although fingernail scrapings had been taken. There was no evidence of any recent sexual activity.
He was almost certain her skull had been fractured by the blow. He had done a light finger examination and could feel fragments of skull moving freely underneath the surface. Blood would have seeped into the brain cavity causing massive pressure to build up, eventually starving the brain of oxygen. What parts of her brain it had starved would be revealed later when he removed it from her skull. No matter what areas were affected, it would go down in his report as massive trauma to the head.
Reed was grateful Steed was explaining what he had found so far. It gave him something else to focus on other than the greyish pink organs being cut from Carmella’s body. They seemed to glisten in the high watt light coming from above.
Each organ was cut at, pulled at a little, then cut at a little more until it was free. All this was done with great care and respect by Steed. This didn’t stop the images, textures and sounds of cutting a steak with scissors appearing in and out of Reed’s mind. He thought back to when he had struggled through bits of tough gristle, almost sawing at it with his knife. Reed’s graphic imagination was making him feel sick. He shook all this from his head as he tried to refocus on the words being spoken and hoped Tyler had heard the ones he had missed whilst he had been imagining things more graphic than what was in front of him.
There were cuts and grazes on the backs and fronts of Carmella’s hands as well as her elbows and knees. There was another considerable bruise to the front of her head indicating she could have been attacked from behind and then fallen forwards. According to Steed, most of these had happened after her death explaining that because her heart had stopped, the wounds showed signs of seepage blood loss only and had not been forced out by blood pressure created by the heart.
He continued to remove various organs as he explained this. One by one he handed them to Lucy who was weighing them and noting it all down on a chart. She then put them individually into polystyrene boxes before labelling them and putting them into chilled storage. The only break in this routine came with the stomach. It was weighed twice, once with its contents and once without. The contents were then put in a separate container to be examined later.
Steed very gently moved Carmella’s head so she was facing to her left so that the wound she had received when she was hit was pointing up towards the ceiling. He picked up a scalpel and prepared to cut into her scalp. Reed wanted to make his excuses and leave; he wanted to avoid the part of the autopsy where the brain was removed. He could read all about that in the pathologists report. He hated the way the face drooped after the skin at the top of the head had been cut, completely changing the appearance of a human face before your eyes. It made the person look like a good argument for the theory of evolution, from ape to man but in reverse order. He also hated it when they cut the skull itself. If you weren’t wearing a protective mask, the smell of bone dust stayed in your nostrils for days.
“I’m going to do this a little differently today. I can’t just remove the brain in the normal way. The blow to the head which I suspect to be the fatal one is right on the line of which we would normally cut the skull. So, I’m just going to lift a flap of skin to examine the skull beneath it.” Steed wasn’t only saying this for Reed’s and Tyler’s benefit, he was saying it for the in-house recording system. It was used as an audible back up if anyone wanted to question the procedures used in the autopsy.
“Will you leave the brain in then?” Tyler asked like the keen student she was.
“No, I will remove it. I’ll have to. But if I cut the skull now, the vibrations could extend any fractures. This would distort the power of the blow or even the shape of the weapon.”
Tyler seemed satisfied.
Steed then made three straight cuts, just behind Carmella’s ear. Each one was 10 centimetres long and together they made a rectangular flap which was lifted and clipped to her hair so it didn’t keep falling down.
“Yes. As expected, the wound would suggest blunt trauma,” Steed confirmed his initial diagnosis. Tyler was leaning in over Steed’s shoulder, taking in all the details. Reed stood back a little and waited for the oral report while Lucy was waiting for Tyler to get out of her way so she could take photos. “It looks much like a chip in a windscreen, with the central hole fairly circular and no bigger than four millimetres. The shape of the fracture suggests that although the weapon could be described as heavy and blunt, it would have had at least one deformity, some sort of sharp point. My guess would
be a large stone, something like that.”
Reed thought about this and considered a spontaneous attack. He didn’t think anyone would plan an attack using a stone when there were so many varieties of weapon designed for the sole purpose of hurting people.
“The cracks leading away from the centre of impact are in various shapes and sizes, but no bigger than 35mm and no smaller than 10mm.”
Lucy now forced her camera in front of Tyler giving her a polite ‘get out of the way’ smile. She took several photos in quick succession. Tyler moved away reluctantly.
“Could she have fallen onto the stone or whatever it was?” Tyler asked, not giving up.
“In my opinion, no. Let’s say for arguments sake that she fainted and fell to the ground, landing on the exact same thing that done this, the fractures would be more evenly spread. On this particular wound, the lines are longer leading down towards the neck, suggesting she was hit from behind with the trajectory coming from slightly above her.
“Your opinion?” Reed asked.
“Yes, I’m no expert. I could well imagine a good solicitor arguing it was an accident in court, but I’m confident a fracture specialist would confirm my somewhat humble opinion.”
Reed didn’t doubt it. He also didn’t doubt that the next procedure was to remove the brain. He had the cause of death- trauma to the head causing massive bleeding to the brain, starving it of oxygen. No obvious defence marks. The weapon used was heavy and blunt with a sharp point on it somewhere, probably a large stone or rock, which didn’t exactly narrow down the possible locations that the murder took place considering where her body had been found.
Much to Tyler’s disappointment, he made their excuses to leave, getting out just in time. Reed could hear the mini circular saw that was used to cut the skull being started as he shut the changing room door. It would be tomorrow before the final report was ready. They now knew that Carmella’s body had probably been moved after she had died. There wasn’t enough blood consistent with her wound where they had found her and the superficial cuts and grazes she had received after her heart had stopped indicated that she had been dragged, or possibly rolled, into the pit where she had been found.
Reed and Tyler put their protective clothing back into the plastic bags from which they were removed. These would be given an identification number by Ms Edward and put in storage as evidence. The pair of them had been to the area where Carmella was found and could have easily transferred trace evidence to the autopsy room that shouldn’t have been there, especially with how close Tyler liked to get. By logging who wore what, they could look back and either include or exclude certain evidence.
When they got outside, Reed was grateful to breathe in the warm, natural air- air that didn’t smell of cleaning products. Or flesh. He stopped outside the building enjoying the heat and, like a reptile basking in the sun, he let it invigorate him. It slowly removed the chill that he had got whilst watching Carmella’s autopsy. He wasn’t sure if it was the autopsy or the temperature of the room which had chilled him.
They got in the car, Tyler driving, and joined the A11 to Wymondham. If you carried on past the police headquarters in Wymondham, the A11 took you directly to Thetford where Carmella had lived. Carry on further still and you came to Newmarket where she had been at a club the night she was killed.
“So do you think we’re dealing with someone who panicked and used the bleach as an afterthought or someone who had planned it, thought it through and had the bleach ready to try and cover their tracks?” Reed asked.
“I find it hard to believe somebody planned to kill a normal 18 year old girl with a rock.”
“You should know by now that normal is a fairly small bracket. She might fit the description ‘normal’ but it doesn’t mean her killer does. I agree though, I don’t think this was a pre-planned attack. The bleach might be another matter; had the person just been shopping? Did they leave the scene to fetch it and then come back?”
“At least it looks like the poor girl didn’t suffer under the circumstances. No torture; she wasn’t raped. According to Steed there was no recent sexual activity.”
“Was that his politically correct way of saying that she wasn’t a virgin?” Reed asked.
“Yes.” Tyler smiled.
“So there could be a boyfriend we don’t know about?”
“I don’t think so. We checked all that with her friends when she went missing, none of them knew of anybody. Lee Gulliver had taken a fancy to her and she trusted him enough to get a lift home, like she had done on a few occasions. Her friends don’t think they were, and I quote, ‘together-together.’ Before that evening no harm had come to her.”
“Did he always drop her off at the end of the road like he suggested he did on Saturday?” Reed asked.
“Yes. He has one of those. . . What do they call them, revved-up cars with the big exhausts?”
“Revved-up cars?” Reed smiled.
“Well, whatever they’re called? I don’t know, do I?”
Back at headquarters, the over-sized whiteboard had been changed. Suspects had been changed to Murder Suspects, with just one name listed: Lee Gulliver. Reed pondered if he was really running this investigation. Whitehead had felt the need to update the board in his absence. It was a small annoyance, but still an annoyance. The room had barely a scattering of people so Reed couldn’t blend in with the crowd and he was soon motioned over by Whitehead when he was spotted.
“Sir?”
“Everyone is going over what we’ve got, making sure it all adds up. As you no doubt spotted, we’ve got one main suspect so far, Lee Gulliver. DC Plumridge is seeing what the speed cameras turn up in the area. There is a team gathering information on the known criminals in the area and any links to old cases, solved or otherwise.”
“Should I stick my feet up then, sir?” Reed asked sarcastically.
“If you want to,” Reed watched as a crimson colour took over Whitehead’s face. “Or you could go and interview Lee Gulliver?”
Reed felt a small sense of satisfaction at his superior’s reaction before it was swept away by the realisation that Whitehead was right. He should go and interview Gulliver.
Chapter 5
“See? Revved up.” Tyler said with excitement. The Vauxhall Corsa could not be described any other way. It was lagoon blue with over-the-top graphics on the bonnet which Reed thought looked like an eagle that was just about to land. Down the sides of the car there were white go-faster stripes. The exhaust was about four inches in diameter and looked capable of waking any household within a three mile radius. There was a spoiler on the back, skirts on the sides and front which nearly touched the floor and Reed thought that any decent sized pot hole would surely see the end of them.
During the journey to Gulliver’s flat they had stopped at the road where Carmella had allegedly been dropped off, not just the night she went missing but on a few occasions previously. After leaving the A11, they had driven for a further two miles towards Thetford before stopping at the end of Bridgeham Road. It was here that Carmella should have then made the short walk home. There was a large Tesco store that was open for twenty four hours a day located on the same road and Reed would have been amazed if Carmella had been snatched from here without any witnesses present. Even in the small hours, there would have been plenty of traffic passing the end of the road or heading in and out of the supermarket. On the opposite side to the Tesco entrance was a thin strip of wasteland that backed onto a crop field. The whole area had been searched by specialist police teams when she had first been reported missing and turned up nothing.
Reed spent a few minutes getting a feel for the place, picturing various scenarios in his mind’s eye, trying to play out what could have happened. Whichever way he looked at it, he couldn’t see Carmella being taken from here. It was only a hundred metres to the end of her driveway, leaving a very small window of opportunity for somebody to take her, and the chances of not being spotted doing it were very slim. He
started to sway towards the theory that she knew her killer.
From Bridgeham Road they headed towards the town centre. After half a mile they turned left onto Diss Road before looping around behind the shops on the high street. The back of Gulliver’s flat looked out over a pay and display car park and Tyler had pointed out the ‘revved up’ vehicle whilst trying to park her own.
Reed took the short walk to the ticket machine and put the change in to cover the minimum two hours stay, skillfully avoiding the sticky patches on the buttons as he did so. Making his way back to the car, he noticed Tyler was perched on the edge of the car bonnet with her face pointing directly at the sun, greedily soaking up the warmth. When he got near enough she took the ticket from him and placed it neatly on the dashboard. They walked silently across the tarmac and stepped onto the pavement getting stuck behind an overweight woman whose body had to rock from side to side to allow her to walk. She was joined by two children who used her considerable bulk as an island to chase around and hide behind. Reed had to slow his walk to match the waddle pace in front of him; there were several opportunities to pass her but he was worried Tyler would get blocked by the rotating youngsters. He decided to wait and hoped she was heading to the shops and not the block of flats, otherwise he might need to get an extension on the parking ticket.
Luckily she turned left, allowing Reed’s blood pressure to return to something near normal as he and Tyler took the right hand option down a short pathway to a block of eight flats. Gulliver lived at number seven on the first floor, meaning they had to take the stairs which smelt of a mixture of urine and damp cigarette butts. Once at the top, they stepped out onto the balcony and Reed noticed that a resident of one of the flats near to the open stairwell had turned their portion of the walkway into a miniature version of The Chelsea Flower Show. There were planters on the floor that stretched the length of the property and windowsill boxes overflowed from the balcony wall. Reed wondered if their sole purpose was to improve the aroma coming from the stairwell.
