The knock makes me jump. The door opens, and I spring up, grateful to stop sitting, to stop trying not to look.
‘Catriona,’ says Rafiq. ‘This is Dr Claire MacDuff.’
Dr Claire MacDuff is about mid-fifties, and five feet if she’s lucky. Her sandy hair is short but thick, her glasses green-rimmed, her smile solicitous. She’s wearing jeans and a jumper, which is the thing I find most disconcerting of all. I’d been expecting scrubs, shower cap, gloves, gumboots, the works.
I accept her offered hand, and halfway through a very vigorous shake, she tells me, ‘Hello. I was the lead doctor on your sister’s post-mortem.’
‘Oh,’ I say, swallowing the ridiculous great that wants to follow it.
She finally lets me go. ‘I understand why you’re here, but I’m afraid that I’ve recommended no relatives view the body in this case. As SIO, DI Rafiq was also in attendance at the PM, and so is aware of the reasons for my objections.’ She holds up a palm before I can speak. ‘However. She has also explained the circumstances, and I’m not unsympathetic. But you’ll hear me out before I agree to anything, okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘Ordinarily, when we find a body in the Forth, it’s because decomposition gases bring it up to the surface after a few days. But your sister was in the Forth for thirteen days. That means that in addition to normal decomposition, the body has been subjected to many other changes and traumas. It’s important that you know that, and it’s important that you know what before I’m happy for you to see her, okay?’
For the first time since phoning Logan, it occurs to me that what I’m about to see might be just about the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Even though I’ve been shaking since I woke up – since probably before I woke up – I suddenly go still.
‘When a body has been in water for some time, it can undergo a natural preservation process known as saponification. This process forms something called adipocere, which means that much of Ellice’s body tissue has become waxy, brittle, and deformed.’ She looks at me. ‘Think of a well-used candle or soap on a rope.’
‘Aye, okay.’ Rafiq bristles, laying the flat of her hand between my shoulder blades. ‘Is it necessary for you to be quite so—’
‘She needs to know what she’s asking for,’ says Dr MacDuff. She turns her steady gaze back to me. ‘The head, more specifically, the face, is always the most disfigured part of a submerged body. It’s why we almost always rely on DNA for ID. Ellice’s lips, ears, nose, and larynx have been colonised and partially eaten away by comestible marine predators. There has been significant damage.’
I have no clue what comestible marine predators are, though I’m not about to ask. ‘Okay.’
‘Cat,’ Rafiq says, now rubbing slow shallow circles across my back. Her eyes are so black I can’t see their pupils. There are two deep lines between her eyebrows. ‘Are you hearing this? Seeing her isn’t going to help. She’ll not be recognisable as your sister any more. I’d strongly advise – we’d both strongly advise – that you don’t do this.’
I step away from her, and out of reach of her hands, her concerned gaze. I preferred it when she was a cold and efficient robot who called me Catriona; I can’t bear this strange kindness.
‘I want to see her.’
‘Okay,’ Dr MacDuff says. ‘If you wait here, I’ll have the technicians move her from the bier room.’
I wait until she’s gone to take in an unsteady breath.
‘Cat—’
‘I’m sure,’ I say, and wish that my voice wasn’t wavering.
Rafiq squeezes my shoulder, moves towards the curtain. A small green light comes on in a switch panel close to the door.
I’m holding my breath. And even when I realise it, I can’t stop. I can’t let it go and breathe in another. Shivers are trickling down from my scalp, pressing my shoulder blades together, cricking my neck. My bottom lip throbs when I bite down on it again, and I taste old blood, new blood. ‘I’m sure.’
Rafiq’s nod is short. She pulls back the curtain, exposing the well-lit room beyond in slow increments. I close my eyes. Open them.
I need to know. That’s all there is.
And then. There it is.
It has no hair. Its scalp is completely bald. Shiny, creamy, and rippled thick – and the first thing I do think of is a well-used altar candle, its wax melted and remelted into asymmetric waves. Its nose is just a hole, a black maze of sinus passages. It has no eyelids. No eyes. Its teeth are fixed in a lipless grin. Beneath its waxy grey neck and a blue drape, I can just about see the thick black closing stiches of Dr MacDuff’s Y incision at the wide end of each collarbone. I try to imagine the body underneath the drape, so still and flat on top of the metal stretcher. I stop.
When I back away from the window, Rafiq is there to help turn me towards the door, and this time I don’t resent those hands against my back. My legs give way as soon as I reach the corridor, and when she pulls me close, when she comes down to the tiled floor with me, I don’t resent her strange kindness any more either. I reach for it instead, just as hard as I reach for her, and I let all that silvery horror and shame spill out of me in sobs and cries and retches against her neat black suit jacket.
*
‘Here you are.’
I take the mug from Rafiq’s hands. The tea is too hot, too sugary, but I drink it anyway.
