Morse told the four men standing there to shield him from the silent onlookers as he pulled back the tarpaulin and – after only a few seconds – replaced it. His cheeks had grown ashen pale, and his eyes seemed stunned with horror. He managed only two hoarsely spoken words: ‘My God!”
He was still standing there, speechless and shaken, when a big, battered old Ford braked sharply beside the ambulance, from it emerging a mournful, humpbacked man who looked as though he should have taken late retirement ten years earlier. He greeted Morse with a voice that matched his lean, lugubrious mien.
‘I thought I’d find you in the bar, Morse.’
‘They’re closed.’
‘You don’t sound very cheerful, old man?’
Morse pointed vaguely behind him, towards the sheet, and the police surgeon immediately knelt to his calling.
‘Phew!
Morse, his back still turned on the corpse, heard himself mutter something that vaguely concurred with such a finding, and thereafter left his sanguine colleague utterly in peace.
Slowly and carefully the surgeon examined the body, methodically entering notes into a black pocket-book. Much of what he wrote would be unintelligible to one unversed in forensic medicine. Yet the first few lines were phrased with frightening simplicity:
First appearances: male (60-65?); Caucasian; torso well nourished (bit too well?); head (missing) severed from shoulders (amateurishly?) at roughly the fourth cervical vertebra; hands 1. & r. missing, the wrists cut across the medial ligaments; legs l. & r. also missing, severed from torso about 5-6 inches below hip-joint (more professionally done?); skin – ‘washerwoman effect’…
Finally, and with some difficulty, the surgeon rose to his feet and stood beside Morse, holding his lumbar regions with both hands as though in chronic agony.
‘Know a cure for lumbago, Morse?’
‘I thought
‘Me? I’m just a poorly paid pathologist.’
‘You get lumbago in
‘Mid-
‘They say a drop of Scotch is good for most things.’
‘I thought you said they’re closed.’
‘Emergency, isn’t it?’ Morse was beginning to feel slightly better’.
One of the ambulance men came up to him. ‘All right to take it away?’
‘Might as well.’
‘No!’ It was the surgeon who spoke. ‘Not for the moment. I want to have a few words with the chief inspector here first.’
The ambulance man moved away and the surgeon sounded unwontedly sombre. ‘You’ve got a nasty case on your hands here, Morse, and-well, I reckon you ought to have a look at one or two things while we’re
‘I don’t think there’s much point in that, Max. You just give him a good going-over-that’ll be fine!’
In kindly fashion, Max put a hand on his old friend’s shoulder. ‘I know! Pretty dreadful sight, isn’t it? But I’ve missed things in the past-you know that! And if-’
‘All right. But I need a drink first, Max.’
‘So do I,’ said Morse.
‘OK, then?’
‘OK!’
But, as the surgeon drew back the tarpaulin once more, Morse found himself quite incapable of looking a second time at that crudely jagged neck. Instead he concentrated his narrowed eyes upon the only limbs that someone –
‘You want the trousers too?-what’s left of ‘em?’
Morse shook his head. ‘Anything in the pockets?’
The surgeon inserted his hands roughly into the left and right pockets; but his fingers showed through the bottom of each, and Morse felt as sick as some sensitively palated patient in the dentist’s chair having a wax impression taken of his upper jaw.
‘Back pocket?’ he suggested weakly.
‘Ah!’ The surgeon withdrew a sodden sheet of paper, folded over several times, and handed it to Morse. ‘See what I mean? Good job we-’
‘You’d have found it, anyway.’
‘Think so? Who’s the criminologist here, Morse? They pay
Morse managed to raise a feeble grin, but he wanted the job over.
‘Nothing else?’
Max shook his head; and as Morse (there being nothing less nauseating to contemplate) looked vaguely down along the outstretched arms, the surgeon interrupted his thoughts.
‘Not much good, arms, you know. Now if you’ve got teeth -which in our case we have not got-or-’
But Morse was no longer listening to his colleague’s idle commentary. ‘Will you pull his shirt-sleeves up for me, Max?’
‘Might take a bit of skin with ‘em. Depends how long-’
‘Shut up!’
The surgeon carefully unfastened the cuff-links and pushed the sleeves slowly up the slender arms. ‘Not exactly a weight-lifter, was he?’
‘No.’
The surgeon looked at Morse curiously. ‘You expecting to find a tattoo or something, with the fellow’s name stuck next to his sweetheart’s?’
‘You never know your luck, Max. There might even be a name-tape on his suit somewhere.’
‘Somehow I don’t reckon you’re going to have too much luck in this case,’ said the surgeon.
‘Perhaps not…’ But Morse was hardly listening. He felt the sickness rising to the top of his gullet, but not before he’d noticed the slight contusion on the inner hollow between the left biceps and the forearm. Then he suddenly turned away from the body and retched up violently on the grass.
Sergeant Lewis looked on with a sad and vulnerable concern. Morse was his hero, and always would be. But even heroes had their momentary weaknesses, as Lewis had so often learned.
CHAPTER NINE
