If it wasn’t we’d know soon enough.
As I removed the cleaned bones, I was tempted to spend longer examining the multiple fractures the skeleton had sustained, especially to the right leg. But they could wait. If what I’d seen in the X-rays was borne out, there was no question of what I needed to pay attention to first.
The real story lay in the cranium.
Useful as X-rays are, they’re only two-dimensional. Where there’s extensive trauma, damage caused by one injury can overlie another on the film, making it difficult to get a clear picture of what has happened. That was the case here. The day before, I’d removed the already loose and badly damaged mandible before putting the skull in to soak. Even before the jawbone had been properly cleaned, I could see the deep bifurcation in its centre that in life would have given the owner a well-dimpled chin. Setting it aside, I’d cut between the second and third vertebrae with a fine-bladed scalpel to sever the vertebral column. Then I’d put the cranium to macerate in a pan by itself. I didn’t want any small bone fragments that detached from it to become mixed up with those from anywhere else.
Now, rinsing it off, I noted that the CSI hadn’t been far off the mark when he’d said the injuries were caused by a boat propeller. Some kind of fast-moving rotary blade had gone through the delicate facial bones like balsa. Fast moving because the kerf – the cut to the bone left by the blade – was clean-edged, with very little splintering. And rotary because of the shape of the cuts: shallower at either end but deepening in the middle, suggestive of a circular motion.
The wounds ran parallel to each other, more or less horizontally across the face. One several inches long had sliced across the upper arch of the eye orbits and what’s known as the nasion, the recessed section of the nasal bridge that sits between them. Another cut ran just below it, bisecting the zygomatic bones of both cheeks. Below this the cuts ran much closer together, in places merging so it was hard to distinguish individual wounds. Most of the lower nasal area had broken into several pieces, while the maxilla – the upper jawbone that would have housed the front teeth – had fragmented completely below the nose. Looking at pieces of this now, I could see the bone had an unusual porosity about it, giving it almost the appearance of pumice.
It would take painstaking reconstruction to determine what had happened. A lot of bone was missing, loose shards falling away or picked off by aquatic scavengers. Very few teeth remained in their sockets, and none that did were intact, sheared through by the spinning blade’s passage.
But it was the cuts themselves I wanted to examine. I mixed up a batch of silicon putty and carefully spread it into the two most distinct cuts. Once it had dried, each cast would show the kerf in detail, revealing what sort of pattern the blade had left on the bone. Leaving the putty to set, I turned my attention to an object that had sunk to the bottom of the vat. This was what I’d first noticed on the X-rays, almost hidden among the black-and-white jumble of overlying injuries. It was a thin, leaf-like bone, one edge rough where it had been snapped off from the skull.
I was still studying it when the door opened and Frears breezed in.
‘Afternoon, Hunter. Wasn’t sure if you’d be here today.’
I set the wafer of bone down, wondering if Clarke had said something about taking me off the case. ‘Why not?’
‘Don’t look so serious! I meant after all the drama last night. You’re a glutton for punishment, I’ll give you that.’
I relaxed, telling myself not to be so jumpy. ‘Have you done the post-mortem?’
‘On the girl? Finished it before lunch.’ The pathologist seemed in a better humour today. ‘You can probably guess most of it. Bruising on the throat, crushed windpipe and broken hyoid, all consistent with strangulation. The other injuries were in keeping with a car accident. Cracked ribs, abrasions, bruising. There was a hairline fracture to the skull but no internal bleeding. She’d have had a nasty concussion but it wouldn’t have proved fatal.’
‘Would she have been conscious?’
‘Hard to say. I doubt she’d have been in any condition to get herself out of the car. But if you mean was she conscious when she was strangled, that’s anyone’s guess. No signs of a struggle, though, which suggests not.’ He took a pair of surgical gloves from a box and began pulling them on. ‘In fact that was the only odd thing about it. Rather surprising given her state of undress, but there was no evidence of sexual assault. Nothing suggestive of rape or even recent sexual activity. It seems our boy looked but didn’t touch.’
That was something, although it would be cold comfort to Stacey Coker’s family. I thought about the pathetic wretch huddled in the back of the Land Rover the night before, the terrified way he’d skittered away from us in the road. How Rachel had soothed him, like a child or frightened animal. Don’t worry, he’s harmless.
Frears snapped the tight nitrile gloves into place and went over to where the cranium sat in a metal tray. ‘So, how are you getting on with our friend from the barbed wire? Been taking casts of the propeller wounds, I see?’
‘They weren’t made by a propeller.’
That got his attention. ‘Really?’
‘They were made by something spinning very fast, but they’re more like grooves than cuts,’ I told him. Wounds from a boat propeller are made by each of the individual blades repeatedly striking the bone. That wasn’t what I’d seen here. ‘It looks like they were caused by some sort of solid disc.’
‘Curiouser and curiouser. How long till the casts are set?’
‘They should be ready now.’
I went to the skull and gently tapped the silicon putty. It was solid, so I carefully eased out the rubbery impressions. In cross-section the kerf was square, the sides meeting the flat bottom at right angles. The inside surfaces of the wounds were rough, showing clear signs of abrasion.
I took a pair of calipers to measure the width of one cast while Frears examined another. He gave a grunt of surprise. ‘I see what you mean. I’d expect the kerf from a propeller to be smooth, but this is rough as a bear’s arse. Almost like it’s been sandpapered. Some sort of power tool, do you think? Circular saw, perhaps.’
‘I was thinking more of an angle grinder,’ I said, putting down the calipers. ‘The cutting discs are abrasive and flat-edged, and seven millimetres is a standard width. That’s the same as these wounds.’
‘Being doing your homework, I see.’ Frears nodded thoughtfully. ‘Yes, that’d do the trick. The wounds would superficially resemble those caused by a boat prop, so if the body was found it wouldn’t automatically be flagged as suspicious. Although that begs the question of how our man came by his broken bones. And if we’re ruling out a boat accident, we have to consider the possibility that he might have been alive when someone took an angle grinder to his face. Now there’s a cheery thought.’
It had occurred to me as well. Post-mortem bone is dry and brittle, and reacts differently to trauma compared to bone that’s still living. The fractures and cuts here looked to have been inflicted when the bone still had some elasticity, which meant the trauma was peri-mortem, or from around the time of death.
Unfortunately, it could be difficult to determine if that meant just before the victim died, or just after. I’d no illusions about the cruelty some people are capable of, and grim as the possibility raised by Frears might be, I’d seen worse. But I didn’t think that was the case here.
‘I doubt it,’ I said. ‘I’ve not had a chance to examine them properly yet, but the breaks to the tibia and fibula don’t look like they were caused by him being struck with anything. I’d say they were the result of a shearing force. Something kept the lower leg immobile while the rest of it was wrenched sideways, hard enough to dislocate the hip as well as snap the bones. Then there’s the broken neck. Two of the vertebrae are fractured, but the skull isn’t. How could he have been hit hard enough to break his neck without trauma to the cranium?’
The pathologist picked up the skull. ‘You’re thinking i
t was a fall?’
‘I can’t see what else it could be. Coming off a motorbike at speed or being hit by a car might cause similar injuries, but there was no sign of any abrasions to the body or clothing,’ I said. ‘A fall’s more likely, and if the lower leg hit something or got caught on the way down the momentum would have snapped it. The rest of the fractures are all consistent with an impact. My guess is his skull was cushioned by an arm or shoulder when he landed, but the sudden whiplash snapped his neck.’
Frears was nodding. ‘And then someone took an angle grinder to his face to try to conceal his identity and make it look like he was hit by a boat.’
‘I think there might be more to it than that.’ I picked up the fragile, leaf-shaped piece of bone. ‘What do you make of this?’
Frowning, Frears took it from me. ‘It’s part of the vomer. What of it?’
‘It was pushed up into the cranium.’
‘I don’t … Oh.’ Still holding the bone, he hurried to where the X-rays were clipped to the light board. He stared at it for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Well, bugger me. That’s something you don’t see every day.’
The vomer is a thin, vertical blade of bone that sits at the rear of the nose and divides the nasal opening in half. On the X-rays it had been obscured by the more obvious facial trauma, hidden behind the jumbled mosaic of damaged bones. But it could just be made out, a ghostly white shape with its tip still embedded in the frontal lobe of the decomposed brain.
‘When I first saw it I assumed it must have been forced up by a spinning blade or disc,’ I told him. ‘But that would have sliced straight through the vomer as well, not pushed it inwards. And certainly not at an upward angle like that.’
‘Quite.’ Frears sounded annoyed with himself. ‘Can’t see it happening in a fall, either.’
Neither could I. The body would have to have landed face-first, which would have caused extensive trauma in itself. I’d seen no sign of that. And it would have taken a powerful blow at exactly the right angle to drive the vomer up into the frontal lobe like this. Which made this either a freakish accident …
Or an execution.
23
‘PALM STRIKE.’
Lundy paused to blow his nose. It was late afternoon, the sun breaking out fitfully from behind dark clouds. The DI sat in the passenger seat of my car, still looking a little drowsy from his endoscopy. I’d called him to brief him on the day’s findings, forgetting he’d told me he was due to have it today. I’d begun outlining what I’d found when he’d apologetically told me he was still at the hospital and couldn’t talk freely. He’d been given a sedative for the procedure and told not to drive for the rest of the day, he said. His wife, who was supposed to be picking him up, had been delayed collecting their granddaughter from an after-school class.
The hospital was close to the mortuary, and I’d done as much as I was going to for the day. The cleaned bones of the barbed wire victim had been rinsed and left to dry. I’d taken a preliminary look at the most significant of them, especially those with fractures or damage, but I’d decided against carrying on with the reassembly until the morning. Lack of sleep and the events of the previous night were beginning to catch up with me. It was better to leave it until I was rested than miss anything through a lapse of concentration.
So I told Lundy I’d drive him home. I was glad of the company, and the distraction. I hadn’t heard anything from Rachel. I’d tried calling her again but she still wasn’t picking up. I didn’t want to crowd her, knowing she’d have enough to deal with in the aftermath of Stacey Coker’s murder. Even so, her silence was preying on my mind.
Lundy looked tired when I picked him up outside the hospital entrance. When I asked how it had gone he’d just said, ‘Oh, fine,’ with the air of someone not wanting to talk about it. Instead he’d asked if I’d found out anything else from the remains.
He’d perked up noticeably when I told him about the vomer, and explained how only either a very precise or a very lucky blow could have caused an injury like that.
‘Palm strike?’ I queried.
‘It’s the sort of thing you pick up if you’re taught hand-to-hand combat or some types of martial arts. Instead of breaking your fingers punching someone, you ram the heel of your hand into their face.’ He raised his own hand to demonstrate: palm thrust out, fingers curled back in a vague claw shape. ‘Nasty, but if you want to stop someone getting frisky it’ll do the job. An ex-para showed me when I was in the TA, along with a few other dirty tricks.’
‘You were in the Territorial Army?’
He chuckled. ‘There was less of me back then. You want the third exit at the roundabout.’
Lundy had assured me I wouldn’t need the satnav. He didn’t live far out of my way, but traffic was heavy.
‘So a palm strike could cause an injury like that?’ I asked once I’d negotiated the roundabout.
‘Theoretically, but I’ve never come across it myself. You’re sure someone didn’t just stave it in with a club or something?’
I couldn’t say for sure what the dead man had been hit with, but I doubted it was a weapon of any sort. Although the damage to the lower face made it hard to be certain, anything hard-edged like a brick or hammer would have been more likely to leave depression fractures bearing its shape.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Then if we’re talking bare hands, a palm strike sounds most likely,’ Lundy said. ‘But you’d have to hit someone bloody hard, and at exactly the right angle to manage that. Ordinarily, you’re more likely to wind up with a bloody nose or broken front teeth.’
‘This did more than break his teeth. It looks like the jawbone immediately below his nose actually caved in,’ I told him, slowing as a lorry pulled into my lane without indicating. ‘A lot of the bone from there is missing, and what’s left looks spongier than it should.’
‘Spongier?’
‘It was full of tiny holes, like cinder toffee. Could be a genetic bone defect, or perhaps he’d had some sort of infection in it. Either way, something weakened the structure enough for a palm strike – assuming that’s what it was – to make it collapse and push the vomer up into his brain.’
Lundy nodded thoughtfully. ‘So we’re looking at that as probable cause of death?’
I’d discussed that with Frears, without reaching any conclusion. ‘Hard to say. It’s not a survivable injury, but it doesn’t mean that’s what actually killed him. If I’m right about the fractures, the fall would have been fatal by itself. My guess is the blow to the face came first, followed by the fall, because there’d be no point hitting anyone if they had those sorts of injuries. But I can’t tell you how much time there was between one and the other.’
‘At least it means he was dead or unconscious before someone ground half his face off,’ Lundy said with a grimace. ‘Still, you can see the thinking behind it. You kill someone in a fight, accidentally or otherwise, so you camouflage the evidence behind other injuries. Try to make the death look like a run-in with a boat and destroy any identifying features in one go. Then tangle the body in barbed wire and sink it in a deep section of the Backwaters, hoping if it is found that it’ll look like an accident.’
‘It was never going to work,’ I said. ‘Not once the body was given a proper examination.’
‘No, but you’ve got to hand it to them for trying. Next left here.’
I took the turning he’d indicated. We were into a residential area now, pleasant semi-detached houses with cherry trees lining the grass verges. The pink blossom gave the street a celebratory look, like the setting for a wedding.
Lundy was stroking his moustache, a sign I’d come to recognize meant he was thinking. ‘What else have you been able to find out?’
‘Not much. He was tall, an inch or two over six foot, and between thirty and forty years old. But that’s as much as I can say for now.’
‘Any thoughts on how long the body had been in the water?’
‘Prob
ably several months, but without knowing if it was drifting or submerged on the barbed wire the whole time that’s not much more than a guess.’
‘For the sake of argument let’s assume it was on the barbed wire. How long would you say then?’
I thought for a while before answering. ‘Bearing in mind it’s been winter and then a cold spring, somewhere between six and eight months.’
Lundy nodded. ‘Emma Derby went missing just under seven months ago.’
That fact hadn’t escaped me.
‘Any luck tracing her ex-boyfriend?’ I asked, knowing where this was leading.
‘Not yet. I put someone on to it but then I had to go and have that bloody tube shoved down my throat. I haven’t even had chance to look at this photograph of the motorbike you told me about.’
‘But you’re thinking Villiers might have killed Mark Chapel as well as Emma Derby.’
‘I’m thinking the stars certainly seem to be aligning that way. Obviously, if Chapel turns out to be alive we’re back at square one. But adding Emma Derby’s old boyfriend into the mix could explain a few things. I can’t see Villiers reacting well to having a rival, so you’ve got a potential motive for murder right there. And a palm strike’s the sort of thing he could have picked up from his military background. You don’t have to like playing at soldiers to remember what you’ve been taught.’
He pointed at a house on the other side of the road.
‘This is us. You can pull in by the driveway.’
I drew up to the kerb. Keeping the indicator on, I left the engine running, ready to set off again. The scent of cherry blossom and wet grass drifted into the car when Lundy opened the door, but he didn’t get out.