Beth watched as he directed the nozzle of the machine to the woman’s throat, placed an X-ray plate underneath her neck and then waved at Beth to join him behind a glass screen. He took images from three different positions, changing the plates after each one.
Once he’d taken the images, he peeled the metallic film from the plates and fed them into a lightbox attached to one wall.
‘Hmmm.’ Hewson pursed his lips and walked back to the table. ‘The hyoid bone is intact, but the bruising on the throat indicates asphyxiation as do her bloodshot eyes.’ He flicked his eyes towards Beth. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll be able to establish from testing her muscle tissue if she died of strangulation; although considering how the cancer has ravaged her body, it’s possible her heart gave out before she died from lack of oxygen.’
When Hewson opened a cabinet drawer and pulled out a speculum, Beth retreated to the head end of the table.
As much as she wanted to know whether or not the victim had been raped, she felt the woman was due some respect and consideration. She wouldn’t learn anything more by gawping over Hewson’s shoulder than she would from standing by the woman’s head.
Hewson bent to his task and Beth tried not think of what he was doing.
In this room, he was the solver of medical mysteries and the cracker of cases. His findings would implicate criminals and point the finger of blame at misdiagnoses. How the man kept a spring in his step and a general air of affable bonhomie had been beyond her until she realised that, like her, Hewson was driven to solve puzzles. For him the mystery would be everything, and as long as he had one to solve, he’d be able to disassociate himself from the horrific nature of his work.
‘DC Protégé, I think we have a problem.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘This woman wasn’t raped, as such. From what I can tell, she has been penetrated both vaginally and anally, but not by a human being.’
Beth didn’t follow what the doctor was getting at, so she raised an eyebrow and rolled her hand so he’d continue.
‘She has internal injuries that go deep inside her. She also has significant tearing which is synonymous with violent, forced intercourse, but it’s one of the worst I’ve ever seen. And I’m afraid it happened post-mortem.’
Beth nodded rather than spoke in case the anger that was washing over her was given a voice. All thoughts of the earlier jests she’d shared with Hewson had been driven away by the knowledge of what had happened to the woman on the table.
She had been strangled and had then had something pushed into her orifices to give the impression she had been raped. The object in question didn’t matter, but Hewson shared his opinion that it was most likely a sex toy of some description. If that wasn’t a terrible enough fate, she’d been dumped by the side of the lake as if her life had meant nothing.
Her life as she’d known it may have been over the moment the doctor had given her the news about her cancer, yet some cruel, vindictive pervert had stolen her last hours and then defiled her corpse.
A knock snapped Beth’s head towards the door as a man in a checked shirt and cords walked in and headed straight towards the table. ‘Morning. This your victim?’ The man stood at the side of the table and looked down at the woman. His eyes closed and his jaw set as he dealt with the death in front of him. ‘That is Felicia Evans. She was a patient of mine. If you need me to sign anything to verify her identification, you know where my office is.’
Felicia’s doctor strode to the door. Beth dashed after him. He’d known Felicia, dealt with her and seen her at what would have been her lowest moments.
‘Wait up, Doctor. I have a couple of questions for you.’
‘You’d better be quick. I have the parents of a six-year-old girl waiting for me to give them her biopsy results.’
Something in the doctor’s eyes told Beth the parents weren’t going to hear the news they’d surely have been praying for.
She understood what he was going through. As the bearer of bad news, you found yourself torn between wanting to procrastinate so you never had to say the words that don’t want to be heard, and wanting to get the horrible experience over with as soon as possible so that you can pass the terrible burden on to someone else.
‘You obviously knew Felicia Evans to some degree, what was she like as a person?’
The doctor pulled a face. ‘She was tough. She faced her diagnosis without shedding a tear.’
‘I sense there’s a “but” missing from what you’ve just said.’
‘Is it that obvious?’ He splayed his fingers as he spread his arms wide. ‘I don’t want to speak ill of the dead and all that. She was a difficult woman to deal with. Very forthright with her opinions, and her opinions were generally that there was only her way to do anything. She gave the nurses a rough time and when the hospital chaplain visited her she sent him away with a flea in his ear.’
‘Sounds like she was quite a character. Do you know if she had any visitors? Family members, or friends perhaps?’
‘Not a soul. I suggested she bring someone to accompany her when she had her chemo, but she told me she neither needed nor wanted anyone to hold her hand.’
Beth thanked the doctor and left him to his unenviable task of passing on the biopsy results to the girl’s family. Now that she had this information, the idea she’d had earlier was starting to develop into a more recognisable shape and it wasn’t pleasant whichever way she looked at it.
Beth bade Hewson goodbye and set off for Durranhill Station. Not only would O’Dowd want an update, but the mayor
