Now it was first thing in the morning and he’d returned to Menham. Meaning the smell of dead flesh was fully back since the original source of that smell was somewhere in this room, still emanating.
There was no delay, no build up. A pathologist called Bochenski, who looked like a male model – and creepily symmetrical too – took him and Larry to the centre of the room. Then he rolled a metal trolley which was covered with a sheet and he grabbed the edges of the material. Then with his gloved fingertips he yanked it completely off her, wafting it up like some hideous Voilà!
oh …
oh shit …
Larry tutted and shook his head while disgust instantly raced from the table and ran at Matt, full peg. It punched him hard in the heart, making him want to gag. He hid the retch and just groaned. But he refused to look away, despite every nerve ending in his brain insisting he do exactly that.
When you see a building that’s burnt to the ground, you can still see smoke rising from it the next day, or even the day after next. This wasn’t quite like that. After all, there were obviously no flames on her any more. No fire burning deep in the embers of her body, but Matt was sure he saw a certain amount of steam rise from her as the sheet rose in the air and he thought if he was to put his hand on her (though he would never do that in a thousand years), his fingertips would feel a horrible, latent warmth.
At least her eyes were closed.
Last night, when Matt had knelt on the grass by Jo’s side there had been way too much smoke to see her properly. Too much pumping residual heat to fuzz his vision, and all that glare in his eyes made her little more than a blurred meteorite fresh through the atmosphere. But under the fluorescents, without the heat and smoke, she was a high-definition monstrosity.
‘She looks even worse,’ Matt said, convinced the room felt hotter now the sheet was off.
Bochenski started tucking the sheet into the end bar of the metal table. ‘They often look worse in here. It’s the lights.’
There was no sack across her head now, no clothes at all, in fact, though there were parts where it was hard to tell if material had fused with skin. Either way, Matt could now see her fully naked and complete. The hair, which had hung so pretty across Jo’s shoulders, was almost all gone, save for a random clump of short frayed strands up above her right ear. Otherwise she was bald. Mostly the skin was black, with areas of furious-looking red and pink near the top of her body. On the curve of her shoulder, he saw a rare patch that was untouched by the flames. It still showed half a small tattoo that she’d had in life. The head of a blue sparrow, tail lost in black, like the bird was desperately trying to peel itself away and escape her.
Running his rapidly depressed gaze across the top of her chest, breasts, groin and legs brought Matt his most honest and accurate thought. That in places she looked almost identical to a sausage left on the barbecue for far too long, caked with hard black crust which, if you were to peel it away, would tear the skin off and leave something glistening underneath.
Jo Finch: a husk.
‘Why is her stance so … odd?’ Matt drew out a slow breath. ‘She looks … bow-legged.’
Bochenski nodded. ‘That’s normal. The extreme temperature sometimes makes the body form what’s called a pugilist position. Basically, the heat plays havoc with the muscles and the protein, so they dehydrate and contract. Makes the cadavers look like boxers, starting a fight. Pretty kooky, really.’
Matt rubbed his eyes, like a man desperate for sleep.
‘So there’s general fire damage, as you’d expect,’ Bochenski said. ‘Some of it’s caused holes to break out around the fattier tissue. Like the left breast.’
‘Holes?’
‘Well … it looks like holes. But I’m putting that down to the start of skin splits. That’s where the heat makes the soft tissue contract, so it starts to rupture.’ Bochenski popped his lips. ‘Anyway, the neck’s broken, obviously. From the noose.’
He was right. It was obvious. Jo’s neck was bent at an almost jaunty angle, which had an unnerving ring of familiarity about it. He thought of Joyce at the dining table last night, with her head cocked horribly to the side during the weird throes of the seance. Thankfully, Jo’s eyes and a large part of her left cheek seemed untouched by the flames, except for one horrible fact. There was a ragged hole in it. A tattered little circle revealed a partial line of grey teeth inside. It looked like she was cackling to the side. A private joke that only the dead understood. He had the absurd notion that if he was to lean in close, those teeth would still be chattering together.
‘She was a cleaner,’ Matt suddenly said randomly. ‘Her house was tidy and she liked candles.’
‘Er …’ Bochenski shrugged. ‘Okay.’
‘This is horrible.’
‘Yeah … gotta admit …’ Bochenski said. ‘This is one of the grottier ones.’
Matt looked up at Larry, the acids in his gut rejoicing at the new view. ‘So what about the boyfriend, Lee? Have you tracked him down yet?’
‘No sign of him at all, which obviously doesn’t put him in a very
