Frozen Charlotte

I hope he’s.. .

The missing word was ‘sober’.

In the end she said nothing except: ‘See you later then, Alex.’

As she drove to the hospital mortuary she worried about Mark Sullivan. It was no secret that Sullivan, one of the cleverest pathologists she’d ever worked with, had a drink problem. A serious drink problem which affected his work at times. She had watched him perform post-mortems with shaking hands, bloodshot eyes, an uneasy gait and seeming to exhale pure, neat alcohol. At those times she was glad that his subject was not a living person. And yet, when he was good, sober and alert, as a pathologist he was very, very good, like the girl with a curl in the middle of her forehead. He seemed to be one of those pathologists who could tease out information from seemingly invisible marks, find evidence deep inside the tissues, of trauma or an assault – or even sometimes the other way round when a death appeared suspicious and a suspect held, he had the talent to find a clot or a haemorrhage or some other natural cause of death. And as every law enforcer knows it is as important to free the innocent as to convict the guilty. For the sake of what would almost certainly prove to be a very delicate case she hoped that today Sullivan would be at his sober best.

Her wish was granted. Sullivan himself opened the key-padded door with a sweeping gesture and a wide grin.

‘Martha,’ he said. ‘A challenge ahead.’

‘Yes indeed.’

He looked bright and clean and – yes as she scrutinized him she knew he was – sober. Absolutely stone cold sober. He smelt of coffee and vaguely of a spicy aftershave. His teeth looked bright and white, his skin clear. Best of all he looked confident, sure of himself. Happy. She hadn’t seen him look this good for years. It was a puzzle. What had wrought this change? He bounced her scrutiny back with a mocking defiance and she was sure he knew exactly what she was thinking.

‘Alex will be here in a minute,’ he said.

She followed him down the corridor and Sullivan continued talking. ‘I have the poor little scrap ready and waiting. A newborn male infant. Superficially I’d say the child’s cord was cut but not properly ligatured and he bled to death.’

Something struck Martha. ‘Did you say he?’

‘That’s right.’ He made a face. ‘Even I can sex a child, Martha.’

She was sure Alex had mentioned something about a little girl in a pink blanket. But when Alex Randall arrived a few minutes later the sex of the baby wasn’t foremost in her mind. If Martha thought Mark Sullivan looked well Detective Inspector Alex Randall looked simply terrible, as though he had hardly slept for weeks. His eyes were puffy and he looked strained and exhausted. Whatever was going on in his life it must be something quite dreadful to have this awful effect on him. She’d never seen him look quite so bad. He avoided Martha’s searching, enquiring glance as though he knew he looked rough and was embarrassed for her to see it too, resenting both her cognizance and her concern. He passed a hand over his face wearily, pressing his fingers into his eyelids almost with pain. Something was patently very wrong. Martha felt concerned. She was fond of Alex. They were not only colleagues but friends – even though she could not say she had got to know him well. She had always suspected there was tragedy lurking somewhere in his life but he had never confided in her and she had never asked.

But now they had important work to do. It was not the time to tackle him.

They moved into the post-mortem room.

Even Martha could see that the child was a newborn, a neonate. Stripped naked this was easy to see. There was a stump of an umbilical cord. Blackened and shrivelled but quite unmistakable. Its head was still elongated from its birth. Its skin was dark and papery; the bones looked soft. They stood around and looked at it, the remains of a pathetic infant who had never had the chance to live either at all or for more than a few hours. And Sullivan was right. It was a little boy.

‘Well,’ Alex said. ‘Talith’s statement clearly says that Mrs Sedgewick called the child Poppy, and referred to her as a girl. Wrapped her in a pink blanket.’

The blanket was neatly folded to the side. In a forensic bag was another blanket, tattered and partly eaten by moths or rodents. They all glanced over at it.

‘Was it wearing any other clothes,’ Alex asked.

Sullivan answered. ‘No. Just that.’

‘No nappy, no Babygro?’

‘Nothing,’ Sullivan said again. ‘Which supports the theory that this is a neonate and died round about the time of birth. I’ve had a quick look at the blanket the baby was wrapped in. There’s some staining which I think is meconium.’

Alex looked puzzled. ‘Sorry? I wish you wouldn’t use these medical terms.’

‘When a baby is born the first motion it passes is meconium, the liquor or water it’s swallowed whilst still in the womb.’

‘Thanks,’ the detective said.

Mark Randall held his finger up. ‘And there’s something else,’ he said.

‘Our little boy wasn’t exactly perfect. He has a harelip.’

‘Really?’ Martha was again reminded of Precious Bane .

‘Yes. Look.’ He inserted a finger behind the shrunken lip of the infant so they could see a distinct gap.

‘Good gracious,’ Martha said then narrowed her eyes. ‘But you don’t die of a harelip, Alex.’

‘No. Nor of a cleft palate which he also had.’

‘So who is the mother?’ Alex asked.

Sullivan met his eyes. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is the million dollar question.’

The mortician measured the crown to heel length.

‘Obviously,’ Alex said a little stiffly, ‘the big question is whether the child was born dead or alive.’

‘Yes,’ the pathologist agreed.

Sullivan worked without speaking, examining the lungs in great detail, taking tiny pieces for analysis under the microscope and scraping samples.

Then he spoke. ‘The whole thing hinges,’ he said, ‘on whether the lungs ever inflated. It looks to me as though there has been some partial aeration. It’s very difficult as the body is in this state of decay. Suffice it to say that I can’t see any wadding down the larynx or any sign of suffocation. I can’t see any obvious trauma.’ He looked up, at Martha this time. ‘To be honest, Martha,’ he said, ‘because of the advanced decay of the child I couldn’t say with any certainty whether it was born alive or dead. I couldn’t swear what exactly happened in a court of law. All I can say for certain is that I see no evidence of infanticide.’

She glanced at the row of pots. ‘Would your tissue samples show whether the lungs had ever expanded?’

‘Possibly. I think the child probably lived for a few minutes. Its lungs are partially expanded. It looks as though the cord was cut but not properly ligatured and the baby could have bled and died, even from shock. The mother – or we assume the mother – tried to wrap it up in that shawl.’ He indicated the scrap of material. ‘Then she concealed it.’

‘Time scale?’ Alex asked delicately.

Mark Sullivan again looked dubious. ‘Again I can’t be absolutely certain – somewhere between five and ten years or thereabouts.’ He started peeling off his gloves. ‘And even then if someone said categorically that it was eleven years or even four years I couldn’t argue. Not with certainty. Was there any collaborative evidence,’ he asked hopefully, ‘newspaper wrapping or something?’

‘Not that’s been unearthed so far.’

‘And the lady herself, can she throw any light on this?’

‘I haven’t spoken to her yet but from what Sergeant Talith tells me she’s calling the child “Poppy” and seems to thinks it is her responsibility. I’m not even sure she’s quite sane.’ He hesitated. ‘Was the child moved at any point?’

‘No, I don’t think so. There’s no evidence of that.’ He glanced again at the pathetic remains of the child. ‘It probably stayed where it had initially been put, in the space behind the airing cupboard, somewhere warm and dry,