“I hope so. Before you go, may I ask another question?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why the hat?”
He smiled. “I’ll tell you another time.”
As Gardener left, Jacqueline couldn’t help but think he had been distracted in her company. She suspected part of the problem was David’s funeral.
Once again, village life in the close-knit community of Churchaven had been rocked to its foundations. David had been the third child to disappear.
After the first – a girl – had gone missing, parents had been unsettled by the possibility their child could be next. For a while, they had closely monitored the security of the children.
Their guard eventually slipped, despite the culprit still being at large.
A second child disappeared, another girl. Her school bag had been found on wasteland a week later, her purse inside still containing her dinner money.
The Residents’ Association called an emergency meeting in the village hall, which had been chaired by a volatile member of the community. He was intent on inciting the gathering to take the law into their own hands.
Jacqueline had observed the tumultuous emotions of her fear-stricken neighbours see-saw out of control. She envisaged the birth of a vigilante force set on hunting down the depraved killer. She remembered seeing a police presence. At least half a dozen officers had shown up to answer questions, offer advice, and generally bolster the confidence of the parents that they were doing everything they could to find their missing children.
Jacqueline thought about the harrowing trauma David must have been subjected to in the kidnapper’s hands. What kind of a person was capable of such a despicable act?
Could it be someone from her own parish?
Chapter Twelve
By the time Gardener and Reilly arrived at the mortuary, they had been on duty for twelve hours with no sleep and little in the way of breaks. Navigating the weekend lunchtime traffic through the centre of Leeds had been a nightmare. Their patience wearing thin, they made their way through the empty building, their footsteps echoing loudly down the corridors.
They found Fitz in Theatre 1, which was long and low-ceilinged with bright strip lighting. Four steel gurneys, each occupied, lined the walls. Fitz stood at the sink removing his gloves and mask.
“I thought I might have seen you two before now.”
Gardener noted the pathologist’s agitation. He liked that in Fitz, his no-nonsense attitude.
He always told you what he thought, despite your rank. Gardener recalled the first time they’d met. On being introduced, George Fitzgerald had asked the young, fresh-faced Gardener to go to the boot of his car and collect a brown paper parcel. When Fitz opened the package, it contained a human heart. Gardener had felt nauseous for the rest of the day.
“Such a long day when you have nothing to do,” Reilly joked.
“Nothing to do? I think I’ve been on my feet as long as you two. And I reckon I’ve put more constructive hours in.”
“In that case, you should have plenty for us.”
Fitz hesitated – a bad sign. The pathologist put on a fresh set of gloves. “You’d better follow me.”
The two detectives followed Fitz down the hall to another examining room. The decaying corpse had been sectioned to solitary confinement.
“I’ve never seen anything like it. Whatever attacked the body is still eating away at it.” Fitz removed the sheet and pointed at what was left.
To Gardener’s horror, the body had deteriorated since the previous evening. He struggled to convince himself that, only twenty-four hours earlier, it had been a living human being.
A few strands of hair dangled helplessly on the skull. Lingering remnants of once healthy tissue clung to the bones, no longer pink but brown, almost black. An eye gawked accusingly at the two detectives from the base of the cranium. A pair of false teeth perched precariously between the mandibles. Gardener leaned over for a closer examination and caught sight of a finger bone floating within the liquefied area where a hand used to be. The foul smell assaulted his nostrils.
“Fuck me!” said Reilly.
“I told you.”
Gardener wondered what could have caused such complete destruction. He turned to Fitz. The man was tired. His normally tall, lean frame stooped. Fitz’s wrinkled complexion, combined with the exhaustion in his face, easily gave away his sixty years. The pathologist’s half-lens glasses, still speckled with blood, perched lower down his nose than they should be, on the verge of falling off.
“Can you tell me anything?” asked Gardener.
“The only fact I have at the moment is the skeleton belongs to an elderly male, approximately sixty years of age. I can’t do a normal post-mortem. As you can see, there’s nothing left. All the major organs had been completely destroyed before I could make an inspection. His brain, heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, all gone. There’s nothing but bones and mush. Extensive degradation due to proteolysis.”
“Which means what?”
“All the proteins have broken down. I’ve taken tissue samples for analysis.”
“You’ve no idea what caused it?”
“None. Because of the advanced putrefaction, I had to work pretty quickly. I’ve taken hair samples, which can be tested for drugs, and I managed to acquire some urine. Hopefully, toxicology will tell us something. I would have liked at least one major organ to work with for histology.”
“What about acid?” Reilly asked.
“It’s possible, but acid usually leaves a residue on the bones. Most acids leave something of themselves behind. For example, if sulphuric acid had been used, the bones wouldn’t have dissolved. There would have been an insoluble coating of calcium sulphate, which would show on the bones as a strange, off-white, almost yellow colour. But acid doesn’t usually leave bones. I
