Chapter 18
They break for coffee. Matthew’s relieved to get up, stretch his legs.
He gulps down as much black coffee as he can get his hands on in the time allowed, shaking his head when asked if he wants to go out with the smokers.
The worst of the hangover has passed but one whiff of a cigarette and he might still barf.
He sits down at one of the tables, phone in hand, but he doesn’t switch it on.
Russell McLean and Michael Reid are chatting at the other end – they’re both in their mid-thirties, both wearing North Face fleeces in different colours of sludge green.
Kindred spirits. They certainly seem united in their dislike of the teacher who’s just given evidence.
‘She didn’t like Christian at all, I don’t reckon. Did you see the way she flinched when the photo came up?’ Michael says.
‘Well, yeah, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It might just have reminded her of identifying the body. It can’t have been fun,’ Russell says.
‘Nah. It was more than that. She looked disgusted when she saw the girl’s face.’
Emma joins in at this point. ‘Fair enough too. Far too young to be wearing all that make-up. All those piercings, too. She did not look like a nice little girl.’
Matthew has been trying his best not to engage with this dreadful woman, but this tips him over the edge. ‘I don’t think you can say that at all. She had very nice eyes.’
‘How could you tell? They were totally obscured. She looked like an angry panda.’
‘I like pandas,’ Russell says. ‘We should remember the girl’s dead.’
‘Not that we have any real idea how,’ Emma says. ‘I wish they’d get on with it. I really want the details.’
Matthew bites his lip. He’s damned if he’ll agree with her. She’s right, though. He’s desperate to know the specifics. All this stuff about scared expressions, outstretched hands, arguments with friends. Nothing’s adding up yet, and he’s getting impatient.
To Matthew’s relief, the next witness turns out to be the pathologist who carried out the post-mortem.
Some science will add clarity. He’s a lugubrious man in late middle-age, eyebags on him to rival a basset hound.
His delivery is slow and methodical. If Matthew had been given lectures by him at university, he’d have quit the course.
He controls the temptation to go over and shake the man, tell him to get on with it.
First up, a picture appears on everyone’s screens.
Not the body on the slab – it would probably be too much for everyone – but a line drawing on which some marks are shown on hands and knees.
No other injuries to be seen. Matthew can picture the corpse, though.
The Y-shaped incision, the ribs sheared straight through.
When Matthew cuts open someone’s chest for heart surgery he must employ as much delicacy as is possible, to aid healing.
It’s brutal though, whatever his best attempts.
But in a post-mortem, they’re not going to bother with any delicacy at all, no part left unstudied; unsullied.
They’ll have sewn her up after, that’s something. But he’ll bet that they kept her body wrapped when they finally showed the girl to her parents.
So what killed her? Word by tortuous word, the story emerges.
First the technical terms. Sudden and fatal cardiac arrest caused by dilated cardiomyopathy – Matthew knows exactly what that is, though he’ll bet none of the other jurors will.
Heart muscle damaged, replaced by fat or fibrous tissue, unable to pump blood properly.
Boom. Given the right circumstances, sudden death from an abnormal heartbeat can happen.
Lopped off with time’s scythe just like that.
Matthew had a case like that once. Fifteen-year-old boy, fit as a fiddle, but he collapsed one day on the football pitch.
Only quick first-aid action on the part of the referee kept him alive, and the restrictions he was placed under from that point onwards in terms of any strenuous exercise pissed the boy off so much he said he wished he’d died.
Matthew knew the boy would come to terms with it eventually, but the anger depressed him, just the same.
Did the girl know she had a dodgy heart? Often kids didn’t, only finding out when they dropped down dead. So to speak.
‘I was given medical records that laid out a history of a childhood infection leading to myocarditis. This in turn led to the cardiomyopathy that was behind the cardiac arrest. She was on medication – beta blockers – which will have controlled her heartbeat, but of course it’s not possible to tell if she was taking these regularly,’ the pathologist says.
‘I believe there may be evidence coming from her doctor?’
Mr Alexander nods. ‘That’s correct.’
‘He will give the court a more detailed account of the health of the deceased. But as an overview, in these cases, very often the first sign of trouble is sadly also the last. In this case, it is clear that the deceased’s cardiomyopathy was more advanced than had been realised.’
Mr Alexander nods again. ‘Could you explain the term to the court?’
‘It’s an inflammation of the heart muscle, which reduces the heart’s ability to pump blood properly.’
‘So, if someone is suffering from these conditions, what external occurrence could cause sudden death by cardiac arrest as you’ve stated is the cause of death here?’
‘Given the situation was being managed, it would need to have been a considerable shock to her system. Something totally out of the normal way. There’s medical evidence to say that she was involved in school sports, that she did cross-country.
’ The pathologist pauses, takes a breath.
‘Over-exertion would have played a part. I note the body was found in a position that could indicate she had been running. But that would not have been enough on its own. Not in my opinion. My professional view is that this cardiac arrest was brought on by extreme stress. The expression on her face indicates this. You’ll note the rictus in which her mouth was stuck, almost like a scream. ’
‘Is there anything else to indicate that this might have been the case?’
The pathologist clears his throat. ‘You’ll notice the abrasions that are shown as these marks on her knees.
’ He points to the marks on the large screen beside him.
‘These were fresh grazes, bits of gravel in them, still oozing with blood. One explanation is that she was running, fell over and hurt herself but still got up again and kept running. As if she was running away from something. Or someone.’ There’s a tone of defiance in his voice.
Miss Brodie snorts, shakes her head. It’s the first time she’s shown irritation, normally motionless as the witnesses give evidence. Not surprising. That sort of speculation seems well out of line for a pathologist. Post-mortem reports are usually dry as a bone.
‘Returning to your findings with regard to the girl’s heart, what else can you tell us about that?’
Maybe that’s why the man feels more involved.
The pathologist will have plucked Christian’s heart from her chest. It’ll have lain heavy in his hand there, all quarter of a kilo of it, half a pound of flesh.
Matthew knows how that feels. The omnipotence of it.
When someone’s alive, that is. The muscle gleaming, quivering red in the bright lights of the theatre.
After death, though, a different matter. Drained of blood. White.
A ghost heart.
An image appears on the jurors’ screens, a photograph from the post-mortem.
It’s the heart itself, lying pale, flat and lifeless on a stainless-steel tray.
Other photographs follow, cross-sections of the heart.
Matthew’s transfixed – he never normally gets to see the organ presented in this way, past any working order.
The ones he handles are still pink, glistening.
The images in front of him show the heart as grey, but as he stares at them, his eyes flicking from one picture to the next, colour starts to grow in them, a bleeding in, not a bleeding out.
The heart that was lying still and misshapen on the tray is red now, monstrously distended, blown up like a balloon of flesh, a pulse beating through it so hard it looks as if it’s going to explode.
The pathologist is pointing out various features that support his findings, the words thinned, deformed, asymmetric falling from his lips, but they aren’t sinking in, a meaningless sound.
Blood is rushing through Matthew’s own head now, too, the thrum of it matching the thrum of the heart on the screen that’s moving now, pulsating, possessed by something Matthew can’t explain but which is causing his own head to pound and if it doesn’t stop soon something’s going to burst, Matthew knows it, the pain behind his left eye growing and growing until suddenly it ends.
He leans back in his seat, winded, his hands ice-cold.
The heart lies still again in the photograph in front of him.
The pain in Matthew’s head has gone. The pathologist is still speaking and slowly Matthew tunes back in.
No other physical abnormalities. Nothing untoward in the toxicology report – all standard tests carried out as Matthew would expect.
No opioids, no cocaine, all normal. Matthew inhales, exhales, grounding himself back into the courtroom.
More hung-over than he realised, clearly.
Miss Brodie. Contempt radiating off her, the ends of her hair crackling with it. They must have had run-ins before, she and the pathologist.
‘It’s your job to comment on the medical findings, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘To avoid any subjective interpretation of the evidence that’s in front of you?’
‘Yes.’
‘So, it’s entirely out of your remit as pathologist to speculate on whether it’s a scream on the girl’s face?’
‘I am merely describing what I saw.’
‘In emotive terms though, professor. Yes?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘To suggest that the grazes on the girl’s knee meant that she was running away from something or someone just before her death is also pure speculation, is it not?’
‘I—’
‘No further questions.’
She returns to her seat. Matthew shuts his eyes, the image of the heart beating there still.