‘Totally. This needs to be kept contained for now. I’ll make a statement to the press, but will omit any references to our inner thoughts, or indeed the professor’s involvement.’
Chapter 9
Bradford
Dr Fergus McGuire was glad of the face mask that covered his beard. He was even happier to don the goggles that he normally complained about because they left a red mark round his eyes and gave him a headache. Not today, though. Today, those goggles would serve to hide the worry that he’d seen reflected on his face earlier as he scrubbed his hands in front of the mirror in the mortuary scrub room. Today, there would be no quips, no laughter, no humorous asides. His heart was too heavy for that. He had a lot to digest, and he was glad that Angus wouldn’t be present for this post-mortem. His son was too finely attuned to his parents’ moods, and he’d already been concerned by his dad’s reaction at the crime scene. No, Fergus needed to talk to Corrine before either of them spoke to their son and that was a conversation he wasn’t looking forward to. Corrine would be devastated; she’d blame herself and that was the last thing Fergus wanted. Besides which, neither of them knew how Angus would respond to the news, but the option of delaying their revelation was now well and truly out of their hands.
As he waited for the morgue assistant to prepare Miranda Brookes for her post-mortem, Fergus raised a hand to Taffy, who was eagerly watching from the newly installed viewing suite. Even the lad’s bright smile couldn’t bring a returning one to Fergus’s lips, but thankfully, he’d already pulled his mask over his nose. Although he could do without Taffy’s finger constantly on the intercom, allowing him to question every move the pathologist made, Fergus preferred that to having to deal with his own son right now. Truth was, he wanted to get this post-mortem over and done with so he could go home and talk to his wife. He really needed to talk to his wife … but first, it was time to get the show on the road.
With his usual care, Fergus made a detailed external examination of Miranda Brooke’s body. The very slight swell of her stomach, the only external clue to her early pregnancy, made him pause. Exhaling, McGuire shook his head. Tragic! No matter how often he came across this sort of thing, he always took a moment to consider the impact of the death on the living. This poor woman had every expectation of bringing her child into the world and now she and her husband had been robbed of that in the cruellest of ways.
Moving on, he examined her neck where the rope had been removed by the CSIs for forensic investigation. At the crime scene he’d noted that it appeared to be a bog-standard rope, no doubt, found in many DIY shops across the country. He paused, frowning. His initial examination of Miranda Brooke’s body had been cursory and awkward. Hanging from the pulley system in the minute landing at the top of the stairs, had meant space was limited. As expected, he’d observed the signs of lividity forming in her lower extremities, which indicated that although she’d been hanging there for some time, it hadn’t been long enough for complete lividity to occur.
What puzzled him was that now he could see her neck much more clearly, the markings around it made no sense. While the rope had broken through the skin and petechia were present around her eyes, he now noticed the presence of manual strangulation around the front of her neck. Bruising from fingers was clear, and although there were cuts and abrasions where the rope had tightened around her neck, there appeared to be no bruising caused by the rope itself and this put an entirely new perspective on things. He suspected that Miranda Brookes had been manually strangled prior to being hung from the banister and that in itself added to the clenching certainty that squeezed Fergus McGuire’s heart that there was more to this than met the eye. Much more – and the thought of what it might mean terrified him.
The most notable evidence was that the rope knot, which was placed in an anterior position at the back of the neck, had left a slight indentation in the skin which again corroborated Fergus’s theory that Miranda had been dead before she was hanged. This was further confirmed by the broken hyoid bone, which was much more likely to be the result of manual strangulation rather than hanging. Angus would be very interested in that fact, he was sure. From the positioning of the prints around the neck, Dr McGuire determined that Miranda had been strangled from the front, with the killer’s thumbs resulting in bruising to the front of her neck. Although he doubted they’d discover any fingerprints – this killer was too smart for a silly mistake like that – Dr McGuire, nevertheless, instructed the necessary tests be made.
Speaking into his recorder, his voice wobbled a little. ‘Evidence of manual strangulation prior to hanging confirmed by bruising and fingerprint marks around the neck under the rope markings. The absence of bruising indicates that cause of death is manual strangulation.’ Sweat beaded across Fergus’s brow and he paused to mop it away, before continuing. ‘Although the marks of the fingers are obvious, it’s clear the strangler wore gloves, because under microscopic inspection,
