Derriford Hospital, Plymouth. Monday 1st November. 9.00 am
Forester’s post-mortem was scheduled for first thing Monday morning but Savage lost no sleep over it. The jaunt on the moor on Thursday combined with Saturday night’s late shift had left her shattered. Not to mention that she had spent the whole of Sunday trying to keep Samantha and Jamie entertained. The day had been fun, but she hadn’t had any time to relax.
Doctor Nesbit emerged from his office in his green robes, bright eyes glinting as if he couldn’t wait to get started. He spotted Savage leaning against a wall and sent her and Enders away to fuel up on coffee and buns while he and his assistant prepared for the PM. The coffee came strong, black and acrid, but the iced buns tasted lovely and when she returned the combined caffeine and sugar rush had heightened her senses to beyond the point she had wished for. The stench from the morgue lingered in the air, despite the whirr of the extractors, and not for the first time in her life Savage remembered the fact that all odour was particulate based.
Nesbit greeted them in a contemplative mood.
‘I have hypothesised a direct correlation between the number of times I encounter you chaps each month and the state of British society. Recently I find myself wondering if things aren’t getting a little bit worse.’
Nesbit moved over to the body of David Forester, or rather the remains of Forester, for the heap of skin and bones didn’t resemble a man in any meaningful way. The body had been up on the rock for weeks and the sun, wind and rain had been hard at work. Not to mention the crows and other scavengers. Bits of flesh hung on bleached white bones and the grin on the face and the staring empty eye sockets looked like something from a zombie movie. Under the glare of the lights and before a small, select audience, Forester prepared to make his final performance.
After the discovery on Caglin Tor they’d had no time to contemplate the scene. The wind had picked up even more and the snow fell in large flakes. Campbell said they should head back before the weather got even worse. Savage had noted the state of the body and little else. Not until the next day, when John Layton called, had the full horror of what Forester had been through become apparent.
‘Chained round the neck to the rock. Handcuffs behind the back. Not a scrap of clothing on him. I’m not doing the pathologist’s job but I’d stake my pension on him having been alive up there at some point.’
Layton had said they had found faeces on the rock beneath the body and what appeared to be urine stains too.
‘So you think he starved to death? Or died of thirst?’ Savage had asked.
‘Luckily for him I reckon the exposure got him before he reached that point. Hypothermia, I’d say. Death would have been a relief.’
Looking at the body now, lying half-curled on the post-mortem table, hands still cuffed behind the back, Savage wondered if Forester had died in the same position. Alive a thug, but dying like a baby in the womb. She thought the tableau in front of her showed a sort of poetic justice, but she couldn’t quite figure how
Nesbit peered into the chest cavity and prodded about between the ribs with a long pair of forceps.
‘Not much of interest for us, Charlotte. All the internal organs are gone or virtually so. My job here is more like archaeology than pathology.’
‘No chance of testing if he had been drugged then?’
‘Not today, no. We’ll open up his skull in a moment and get a peek at what’s left. Not that there will be much I would think.’
Nesbit poked his forceps into the left eye socket and bent over to look right inside.
‘Hah! Something the crows didn’t get at least.’ He uttered a cry of delight and withdrew the forceps. Clasped in the end was a small, clear and shrivelled piece of plastic. ‘Contact lens.’
The lab assistant held out a dish and Nesbit dropped the lens in.
‘Not that it tells us anything, I am afraid.’
‘Except he was short-sighted,’ Enders said.
‘Does that help?’
‘In fact I suppose it could be helpful,’ Savage said. ‘The lens tells us he may have been out and about when he was kidnapped. He wouldn’t wear contacts while asleep and depending on his prescription he might not have worn them at home.’
‘Now then.’ Nesbit was making a second pass over the body. ‘What is this?’ He pointed down at the left leg where the flesh and muscle had rotted away to leave nothing but bone.
Savage moved closer than she wanted to and saw a line where the bone was broken.
‘Observe.’ Nesbit tapped his forceps on both sides of the leg. ‘Both tibia and fibula are fractured.’
‘RTC?’
‘Common when a pedestrian is hit by a vehicle, yes. As to whether the break is a result of a road traffic accident…’
Nesbit was now working his way up the body, examining the other bones one by one.
‘Ah, look at the shoulder.’ He used the forceps to peel back a piece of stringy muscle. ‘The left clavicle is badly broken, smashed even. I can’t see this amount of damage having come from a collision with a car though. If the pedestrian was walking across the road and was hit on the left hand side he would be thrown on the bonnet, or against the front of the car. This injury appears as if inflicted from above.’ Nesbit made a chopping movement down on his own shoulder to illustrate.
‘Something like a baseball bat or a sledgehammer handle?’ Savage asked.
‘Not out of the question. With this little flesh to examine I can’t say much, but he was probably hit from behind. If this had been a high speed collision with a car I think we would be looking at other fractures too.’
‘That wouldn’t be the cause of death?’
‘No. He’d be in a lot of pain though. An awful lot. From the leg too. Plus any other injuries we can no longer ascertain.’
Savage grimaced, imagining Forester chained in the cold and dark and shitting himself, literally, as he was dying.
‘So Forester crosses a road and is hit by a car. As he lies on the ground or as he rises someone attacks him with a baseball bat. They put him in the car and drive him up to Dartmoor where they chain him and leave him to die. Anything wrong with my hypothesis?’
‘Nothing at all, Charlotte.’
‘And if they had wanted to kill Forester they only needed to run him over with the car or batter him further while he lay on the road.’
‘Hitting him over the head would have finished him then and there and saved the attacker a lot of trouble.’
‘So the manner of Forester’s death was premeditated?’
‘That’s your job to determine, Charlotte, not mine.’
Savage considered the sad heap of bones, once a man, now an exhibit. Forester didn’t deserve much sympathy, but nobody should have to die like this she thought. Enders seemed to be reading her mind.
‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, ma’am,’ he said, as if his words provided some comfort.
Savage ignored him.
‘What about when he died?’ she asked.
‘Time of death is going to be difficult. We won’t find any entomological clues to help us after this period has elapsed. The body has been exposed and partially disturbed by animals; the wind, sun and rain have done their worst as well. My best guess is somewhere between two and four months. Possibly the faecal deposits might yield a more accurate span.’
‘The date is essential, ma’am, isn’t it?’ Enders asked.
‘Yes. If Forester died after Kelly Donal we can posit Forester killed Donal and was himself killed as an act of revenge.’
‘If he died at the same time then we are looking for just the one killer?’
‘And a very dangerous one at that.’
*
Back at Crownhill and Nesbit was on the phone barely a minute after Savage had sat down at her desk.
‘Something else about Forester you forgot to tell me?’ she asked.
‘No. I’ve got some toxicology results on Kelly Donal. Told the lab to fast-track them for you. Looks like they
