“Please, doctor,” Speed intervened, “you’ve been doing this a very long time, and you’re highly respected. Any observations you make would be gratefully received.”
“Are you playing to my vanity, Inspector?” Mackintosh asked with a raised eyebrow.
Speed shrugged, “I’m just asking for some help.”
Mackintosh sighed. “I’m not sure how valid any opinion I express here is, but if you really think it could help then the least I can do is indulge you.” Squatting down beside the dead girl, he carried out a visual examination in silence. When he was satisfied he had seen all that he needed to, he gestured towards the lifeless figure with an open hand. “I’d say that she was in her early to mid-twenties. I can tell from the needle marks in her arms that she had a substantial drug problem.” Mackintosh turned the girls left arm a fraction for them to see. Track marks ran the length of it. “If you look very closely you will see the walls of the veins in this section of her arm have collapsed, undoubtedly caused by over injecting. I’d expect to find similar track marks along the upper legs and in the groin.”
Speed winced. As a man with a needle phobia, he could never understand how people did that to themselves.
Gently lowering the arm, as if wishing to spare the dead girl any more pain, Andrew Mackintosh continued with his clinical observations. His voice was calm, professional, and both officers found themselves hanging onto his every word. “The injuries are truly horrific. I’ve seldom seen worse. Look at her neck. The wound appears to have been caused by a single, powerful, cut. The incision goes clean through to the vertebrae and has severed the carotid. There are bruise marks around the jaw area. One assumes these were caused by finger pressure, where the killer held his victim during the act of slitting her throat.” He pantomimed the action for them. “Whoever did this is either very strong or very mad.” His eyes locked with Speed’s.
“Maybe both,” Speed suggested.
Mackintosh nodded slowly. “Aye, maybe,” he agreed.
“I take it that’s the cause of death, doctor?” Murray asked, making rapid notes in his blue day book. There were other injuries on the body, but he figured they were all inflicted post-mortem.
“Not for me to speculate,” Mackintosh said firmly.
“What about the other injuries, Mack?” Speed asked, thinking this was all so surreal, the gruesome tableau before him could easily have been a waxwork scene depicting Whitechapel circa 1888 lifted straight from The London Dungeons.
“They are interesting,” the doctor allowed. “The main abdominal wound appears to be a single incision that runs from just below the sternum at the top to the pubis at the bottom, although there are at least two additional transverse cuts. The cutting appears anything but random, and I can’t help wondering why the killer did this unless he wanted to access the organs inside.”
“My God,” Murray exclaimed, “Do you think this girl was killed so they could steal her organs to sell on the black market?” He’d read about cases where this had actually happened but didn’t know anyone who had ever dealt with one.
“Highly unlikely,” Mackintosh said. “I think anyone harvesting organs to sell would be much better organised. For starters, they would want to operate in a secure, sterile, location, not in the open like this.”
“I take it those are her intestines?” Speed asked, pointing at the loops of bowel protruding from her lower abdomen.
Mackintosh nodded sombrely. “They are, yes.”
“What’s the story with all the blood and gore coming out of her fanny?” Murray asked, oblivious to the look of disgust that appeared on the two older men’s faces. “I mean, it’s obviously not just a case of having the decorators in, is it?”
“Having the decorators in?” Mackintosh asked, and his voice was acid.
“You know, on blob. Having her period,” Murray explained.
“I would suggest that the haemorrhaging was caused by a large bladed instrument being rammed into her vagina with tremendous force,” Mackintosh said, slamming his fist into his open hand several times to demonstrate.
“Jesus,” Murray said, now regretting his earlier flippancy.
Mackintosh, who was still kneeling down beside the dead girl, stood up. After dusting his clothes down, he turned to face Speed. “I hope you catch the bloody swine that did this.” The outrage in his voice was evident.
“I know it’s asking a lot, but can you estimate a time of death for us?” Murray asked.
Mackintosh shook his head slowly. He adjusted his tortoiseshell glasses and sighed.
“Sorry laddie. They don’t provide us with crystal balls on the NHS. We’ve asked for them, but, apparently, the budget just won’t stretch.”
“Just your best guess,” Speed cajoled. “We won’t hold you to it if you’re wrong.”
Mackintosh pulled a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. “You know, I’m not even supposed to be on-call until this afternoon,” he complained. “But Dr Sadler is indisposed this morning and he somehow conned me into swapping shifts with him.”
“I bet Dr Sadler would have been willing to give us a rough time of death,” Murray said, raising an eyebrow and staring pointedly at the cantankerous FME.
The Scotsman snorted derisively. “Trust me, laddie, Dr Sadler wouldn’t have given you the time of day.”
“Which is why we’re really glad we got you instead,” Ray Speed said quickly.
Mackintosh gave each of the officers a long, hard, stare. They were persistent, he’d give them that, but he couldn’t blame them for trying to do their job. Perhaps a guess wouldn’t hurt.
“Sometime between midnight and three o’clock at a guess, and that’s all it is, sorry.” He shrugged, waved farewell, and turned to leave.
A devout Christian, this was one aspect of his work that Andrew Mackintosh didn’t enjoy. Even after all the years he’d worked as a police Forensic Medical Examiner, he still felt shock and anger at the sight of such needless and brutal death, drained by the knowledge that his fellow man, made in God’s own image, could inflict such terrible
