There were too many people. In Claudine’s view there always were at crime scenes and their arrival – the FBI forensic team with Harding, Rosetti and Blake with Claudine – added to the congestion. Poncellet had come on ahead, after alerting them, and established some order but Claudine wished there had been more. A protective evidence tent had been erected over the body and a generator manhandled alongside for floodlights that not only illuminated the body within the tent but lit an area of about three square metres outside.
The body was ten metres along a rutted, dry stone-and-dirt track running into the forest from a minor metalled road. What tyre imprints there might have been in the dirt had been trampled underfoot by the bald- headed man who’d discovered the body while walking his dog and now stood trembling beside the police car that had answered his call so urgently the further obliterating skid marks still stretched from where it had come to a halt. As they approached, the dog, a mongrel, was completing the damage by scratching dirt over its urine puddle.
They’d all been approaching in a single, minimally destructive line along the edge of the track. Over his shoulder the leading forensic officer said: ‘Why the fuck are we bothering?’
The forensic team were already suited. Harding and Blake stood back for Rosetti and Claudine to put on their coveralls and plastic galoshes. Poncellet was standing ashen-faced away from the tent, a handkerchief against his mouth and nose. ‘He’s been dead a long time.’
Claudine said: ‘We know.’
The sickly sweet smell of decomposing flesh engulfed them as they went into the tent. Already inside were a Belgian pathologist and a police photographer. There were greetings in French but no handshakes: the Belgians were already contaminated. They wore nose clamps and their upper lips were smeared with camphor unguent. Rosetti and Claudine both applied cream and clips beneath their totally encompassing masks.
The boy was face down and partially on his left side. The left shoulder was humped and the left arm and hand hidden beneath it. The body was grotesquely ballooned by decomposition gases, the skin split in places and the major lesions moving with maggots. It was on the edge of a sheet of hessian, glued to it in places by congealed body fluid. The anal entry was greatly distended and on both shoulders and the neck were bite marks difficult at first to identify because of the bloated flesh. The eye sockets were wide open and writhed with maggots that had already destroyed the eyes themselves. There was no visible cause of death. The two pathologists stood side by side to heave the body over on to its back. As they did so the stomach split, spilling choking fluid and gas. Rosetti used a magnifying glass to examine what was left of the penis and had photographs taken of it. Maggots had attacked the stump of the missing toe, making it impossible to recognize a professional amputation.
‘Anything extra you want?’ asked Rosetti, his voice muffled and adenoidal.
Claudine shook her head, holding her hand up against any approach from either Harding or Blake as she and Rosetti emerged. Both men had been driven back by the smell from inside the tent.
They took off their masks and nose clips and Rosetti said: ‘We’re badly contaminated. Infectious.’
The Belgian pathologist and photographer had already stripped off their forensic suits, head coverings and shoes and piled them in the middle of the path. Claudine and Rosetti added to the pyre and stood back for the mortuary attendant to soak the bundle in petrol. It exploded into flame at the thrown match, melting plastic adding a new smell.
‘You want to go into the tent?’ Rosetti asked Harding and Blake. Both investigators remained some way away.
Harding said: ‘We’ll take your word for it.’
‘You going to do the autopsy straight away or wait until it’s properly morning?’ called Blake. ‘It’s still only four thirty.’
‘I’ll do it as soon as we get back to Brussels,’ said Rosetti.
‘You want to attend?’ invited Claudine. ‘I’m going to.’ She went towards the two men, away from the stink. Rosetti followed.
‘We’ll leave that to you, too,’ said Blake. ‘And we’ve seen all we want here.’ He shook his head ruefully. ‘Or rather not enough. There’s not a tyre tread to be seen and a herd of elephants couldn’t have trodden the side track and undergrowth any flatter.’
‘And the guy who found the body heard nothing, saw nothing and knows nothing,’ added Harding. ‘It was the dog, obviously, who found it: smelled it.’
‘Maybe there’ll be something from the autopsy,’ said the disappointed Poncellet.
The mortuary attendants emerged from the tent with the remains sealed inside a body bag, leaving it on the ambulance gunney while they added their overalls to the dying bonfire.
Claudine and Rosetti, both long inured to the horror of violent death, returned to the city separately from the others, their bodies cramped together in the front of the ambulance, each aware of the closeness of the other but not acknowledging it. It was, thought Claudine, a bizarre surrounding in which to come physically closer to the man than she ever had before.
There were changing facilities at the mortuary and Claudine stripped and showered with strongly disinfected emulsion before re-suiting and re-masking herself, sprinkling the inside of the protective clothing with disinfecting powder. She only bothered with bra and pants beneath.
The body was already on the metal dissecting table when she entered the examination room, Rosetti, the Belgian pathologist and the photographer about to start. Three of the American forensic scientists were in the side laboratory in which Claudine and Rosetti had earlier examined the amputated toe. One was already working on the hessian. The other two were waiting to test samples from the body.
Rosetti led the dissection but in consultation with the other surgeon. Their masks, as well as Claudine’s, were electronically linked, enabling them to communicate with each other. Everything said was automatically recorded. Rosetti dictated quietly, in French, and formally, according to the accepted medical format. He identified himself, the Belgian and the mortuary and stipulated the date and the time. He also named Claudine as an official observer.
He worked quickly but methodically, removing facial skin scrapings, body fluid, head and pubic hair and finger and toenail samples for the waiting forensic experts. He had to break the jaw to carry out the dental examination. When he sawed into the chest cavity – carrying the opening up to the humped left shoulder – they were all covered in a fine spray of bone and body fluid and had to stop to sponge clean each other’s visors. At Rosetti’s urging, as soon as the chest had been opened, the Belgian pathologist sectioned several lung samples for the side laboratory, first having each photographed. Rosetti also had several pictures taken of the anal distension before carrying out an internal examination. To do so he had to turn the collapsing body on to its front. Having done so he shaved the back of the head up to the crown, pointing out to the other man the patterned discoloration that became visible.
Until that moment Rosetti had completed ignored Claudine. Now he turned, although keeping strictly to medical protocol, declaring for the recording that he was interrupting the autopsy for preliminary discussion. And gave the time – 5.45 a.m. – of the break.
It was, literally, like an alarm clock awakening Claudine. Her first impulse was to excuse herself and leave at once but just as quickly she realized she had more than enough time to listen to what Rosetti had stopped to tell her. There was just the possibility there would be something she could use in what he said, although for what she wanted to achieve she doubted it.
Rosetti did not come to her immediately. From the side laboratory he collected the clipboard log, flicking through the several attached notes as he approached.
‘A professional male prostitute,’ declared Rosetti. There was a metallic playback to his voice through the headset. ‘Very active. I wouldn’t put him older than seventeen but I found tunnelling during the internal anal examination. The epithelium is thick, too, indicating constant intercourse…’ Rosetti went to the clipboard. ‘There were traces of make-up on the facial skin.’ He paused. ‘Also of a glue that quite heavily impregnated the hessian in which the body was wrapped…’
The clock on the autopsy wall registered 6.05 a.m. Claudine saw, impatiently. Why hadn’t she thought of it before! Why! Why! Why!
‘There was also the same varnish on the nails that we found on the severed toe,’ continued Rosetti.
‘How long has he been dead?’ asked Claudine, forcing the calmness. Six eight.
‘Sometime during the last fortnight,’ said Rosetti. ‘I can’t be more definite than that. There is still some residual rigor: that’s why the shoulder snapped when the body was thrown down. It was just picked up, obviously from a vehicle, and tossed aside, landing on the shoulder. That’s why it had rolled almost completely free of the
