10
Foster was back at the morgue. I should get myself a bed here, he thought. A visit to the Gents and a quick glance in the mirror showed it to be an appropriate place to be -- his skin was the colour of ashes, deep gashes of black under his eyes. Some of those on the slab looked better than he did.
He got there as Carlisle was finishing the autopsy on the tramp.
'Anything new?' he asked.
'He wasn't hanged to death, that's for sure,' Carlisle said. He pointed to the neck. 'There's no fracture of the vertebrae. But then, if a drunken tramp were to commit suicide, one would hardly expect an expert job. But there is no mark from the rope around his neck, which there would have been if the noose had been applied before death, and no sign of bruising either. No signs of any capillary damage in the heart, lungs or eyes -- or anything else that indicates asphyxiation.
The only visible marks on the body are quite severe pressure sores on his buttocks and shoulder blades, congruent with spending a lot of time on his back.'
'Bed sores?'
'Yes.'
Foster knew that a lot of those who slept rough, and fell ill and became more immobile, suffered these sores. Pavements, cardboard boxes, tended to do that to damaged bodies. Though this guy did not look like the sort who'd been outstaying his welcome at death's door.
'So what killed him?'
'Heart failure.'
'You sure?'
'Almost certain. What caused it is less clear. All the internal organs were in good condition, including the heart. It seems as if it just failed. We've sent some specimens out to toxicology. That may give us more of a clue.'
Foster looked at the body, the well-tended hands and feet, the clear skin. 'Doesn't that strike you as odd? A derelict from the street in good working condition? No enlarged heart, no cirrhosis of the liver, no blood thicker than porridge? What did he drink on the streets? Wheatgrass juice?'
Carlisle pulled a face. 'I can only tell you based on what I see: his body is in good condition, exactly what you would expect of a healthy man in his forties. Though there are signs of drug use, specifically a few marks on the arm. He could be diabetic, of course . . .' His voice tailed off; he moved to the arm and picked it up. 'The reference was scratched on with a smaller implement than the one used on Darbyshire.'
'Like a Stanley knife?'
'It's consistent with the use of that, yes.'
'So there was a reference, but no stab wound and no mutilation?'
Carlisle shook his head. 'I've checked the entire body. He possesses every fingernail, eyelash and tooth he should.'
Why stage the hanging, Foster thought? There was no reason to cover the murder up, not when you've carved a message on one part of the body. Had something gone wrong?
Carlisle removed his gloves with an urgent snap.
'I need a cup of coffee,' he said. 'Then I have another body to look at. Care to join me?'
'Yes to the coffee, no to the body. Not until you've finished, anyway.'
The two men turned to walk to the door. Foster stopped.
'You've done with this guy?'
'Not sure there's much more I can do. Not until we get the results from toxicology.'
'Good. If it's all right with you, I've got someone outside who's here to clean him up.'
Carlisle bristled. 'He's been washed thoroughly,'
he said, defensively.
Foster shook his head. 'No, I mean a different kind of clean-up.'
The embalmer worked with great care and gentleness.
She was a dowdy, motherly woman with a round, cheerful face that seemed at odds with her profession.
'Sometimes I like to speak to them as I work,' she had warned Foster when she arrived.
'Feel free,' he replied. 'Not sure you'll get much conversation.'
She stroked the dead man's tangled, bedraggled hair. 'Let yourself get in a bit of state, didn't you?'
she said in a sing-song voice.
She brought over the tap used to hose down the tables. Shielding the dead man's face with her hand, she carefully wet the hair with a few gentle squirts.
Then she applied shampoo, working it into the scalp with her fingers in circular motions, rinsing it off with the tap. She produced a comb from her bag and straightened the hair, breaking up knots with a few stern strokes. With a pair of barber's scissors she started to trim away.
'Can't say I've ever had to just cut someone's hair and give them a shave before,' she said, without looking at Foster. 'Usually the last thing I do after they've been prepped. If they need it, of course.'
'Sorry,' he said.
'No, it's quite nice, to be honest. I used to do this a lot back in the days when it was common to have an open casket or viewings and you had to make the deceased look the best you could. But less and less now. People don't want to see their relatives or friends once they've passed over. They cut themselves off from death.'
For a fleeting second, Foster recalled standing over the body of his dead father. In his professional life he had seen countless dead bodies, hundreds, but nothing had prepared him for the effect of seeing the lifeless body of the man he had loved and idolized.
'Who is he?' the embalmer asked, stepping back to admire her work between snips.
'We don't know,' Foster said, back in the present.
'That's why I asked you to come and do this. We hope it'll help.'
In less than five minutes the hair was neatly cut.
Then she produced a bar of shaving soap and a brush and with some hot water lathered up the man's beard.
With a few gentle strokes of a razor, she began to remove it.
'Why not just use an electric shaver?' Foster asked, marvelling at the almost tender way she cupped the man's chin in her hand as she shaved him, a world away from the clinical way that bodies were usually dealt with in the morgue.
'Never shaves as close,' she added, the serene smile still on her face. Soon the beard was gone. 'There you go,' she said.
Foster said goodbye, showing her out.
He returned and stood at the end of the table, by the man's feet. He looked at his face. The jawline was firm, the cheekbones prominent, not sunken. He was looking at the face of a dark-haired man in his mid-forties. The state of the hands and feet, his teeth - yellow-tinged but well-maintained - the shape of his face, all indicated a man who had taken care of himself before he fell into disrepair. Foster guessed a white-collar worker of some sort - a man who, until recently, lived in comfort.
At the incident room Foster pinned two pictures of the tramp - one unkempt, one groomed - and one of the unknown dead woman to the whiteboard. The room was quiet, most of the team out pounding the streets around the previous night's crime scene in search of a break. The morning had brought nothing new: no witnesses, though Drinkwater had brought in the garage owner and Foster was waiting for news on his interview.
After fetching a coffee, he went to his desk and sat down at his computer. He called up the missing persons database. Beside his keyboard he laid out a freshly printed picture of the groomed corpse. He narrowed the search by entering what he knew of the body: male, Caucasian, aged between forty and fifty, black-grey hair, five feet ten inches in height, brown eyes, average build. Under distinguishing features he mentioned the birthmark on his back, thankful for the latter detail because it would take thousands off the search results.
There were fifteen hits.
He called them up. All but one carried photos.
