Chapter 19
‘Is everything all right?’ Ramouter asked as they stopped at the wrought iron gates that blocked the public from entering the ironically named Greenwich Public Mortuary. ‘You just don’t seem like yourself.’
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Henley lied. She focused on entering the security code but could feel the strain from the lack of sleep pulling at the skin around her eyes.
She’d lain restless beside a snoring Rob, replaying Ezra’s revelations about Rhimes like a record stuck on repeat in her head.
She was now second guessing every interaction and trying to find double meaning in every word that Rhimes had said to her in the twelve months before he died.
She was also performing mental gymnastics in order to justify her decision to keep Stanford and Eastwood in the dark.
She’d written and deleted three text messages, explaining to them both what Eloise had asked her to do.
I’ll them when I have evidence is what she’d told herself, but her words sounded hollow and did nothing to erase her shame.
‘I’m sorry that I’m bringing you out here on a Saturday,’ Henley said. The hum from the axial fans in the refrigeration storage units drifted in the air as they walked towards the mortuary.
‘No, it’s fine. Ethan is on half term and Michelle has taken him to Bradford for a few days. All you’re doing is interrupting a day of me on the sofa eating crisps and waiting for Netflix to ask me if I’m still watching.’
Henley smiled. ‘Did they get there ok?’
‘Yeah, they did,’ Ramouter replied with a touch of sadness staining his voice.
‘The doctor put Michelle on a new medication. Memantine. It helps her to deal with the normal daily stuff. She’s doing so well that it’s easy to forget that she’s got dementia.
’ Ramouter stopped, puffed out his cheeks and shook his head.
‘Sorry. It’s just that word “forget”. It has a heavier meaning now. ’
‘You don’t have to carry all this weight on your own. You know we’re all here for you,’ said Henley, stopping outside the examination room. ‘And don’t punish yourself for worrying.’
‘Easier said than done,’ said Ramouter. ‘I keep telling myself that this is our new normal, but it’s anything but normal.
I try and focus on what we have now and those happy moments we have as a family, watching Ethan play football or just me and Michelle watching an awful Christmas movie in the middle of October, but—’ Ramouter exhaled sharply.
‘Then I’ll catch Michelle standing in the middle of the bedroom and I’ll have all these questions running in my mind.
Is she standing there because she’s having one of those moments that we all have?
You’ve forgotten what you went into a room for.
Or is it something more? Is her dementia advancing? Am I losing her already?’
Henley put a hand on Ramouter’s shoulder as he turned his back to her.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
‘Ramouter. Don’t ever apologise. Not for this.
’ Henley walked around and faced him. ‘What you’re going through is shit.
I’m sorry I can’t dress it up for you, but that’s all I’ve got.
It’s a horrible situation and no way to live but, right now, you’ve got to find a way to focus on the positive.
Celebrate the small wins. Take up something new with Michelle. ’
‘She wants to try indoor climbing. She’s been going on about it ever since she watched it in the Olympics.’
‘I take it that you have no interest in indoor climbing.’
‘Absolutely not.’
‘Ramouter if you can climb a collapsing pier over the river, then you can climb a wall,’ Henley said.
‘Yes, boss.’
‘Good. Let’s go in and if Linh asks why your eyes are red, tell her it’s hay fever.’
‘Hay fever. In October?’ Ramouter asked opening the door into the mortuary.
‘It’s either that or you can tell her that you became overcome with emotion at the thought of seeing her.’
‘I’ll tell her that it’s hay fever.’
‘I was thinking about the strange circularity of this case,’ said Dr Linh Choi as she removed the sterile surgical drape that covered the body of Sian Fox-Carnell. ‘I completed the post-mortem on her first two victims and now look, here she is on my examination table.’
‘You sound as though you’re having an existential crisis,’ said Ramouter.
‘Nah, I had one of those way back in medical school but this? This is what I would call karma.’
The harsh fluorescent light placed a luminous sheen on the naked body of Sian Fox-Carnell which, from her forehead to her feet, was a patchwork of bruises, cuts and grazes.
Henley had long trained herself not to have an emotional reaction to the bodies that ended up on Linh’s table, but the crescent shaped caesarean scar on Fox-Carnell’s body violently triggered her maternal instincts.
She tried to rationalise the feelings by reminding herself that Fox-Carnell had been separated from her children due to her murderous actions and that she’d been a threat to Henley’s own daughter, but the sympathy and regret swam strongly through her.
‘It’s such a quick turnaround, isn’t it?’ said Henley in an effort to cut off the unwarranted emotions that she was feeling. ‘Monday morning, she was sitting in a cell in Bronzefield Prison and five days later she was hanging from a rope over the River Thames.’
‘And now she’s here on my table,’ Linh said.
‘So, what happened to her?’ asked Ramouter. ‘She wasn’t killed by the hanging?’
‘No, she was already dead before she was hanged,’ Linh replied as she placed her hands under Fox-Carnell’s chin and gently raised it. ‘All of this abrasion around her neck was caused post-mortem.’
‘When exactly did she die?’ asked Henley.
‘I’ve estimated time of death to be between 10 p.m. and midnight, Thursday night.
’ Linh replied. ‘And she took a lot of hits before she died. She has significant bruising along the left side of her torso, left buttock and her left thigh which was all caused pre-mortem. You can see the cut on her right shin. I removed grass and soil from the wound.’
‘What happened to her face?’ Ramouter asked, stepping closer to the body.
‘Blunt force impact,’ said Linh. ‘She has a broken nose, jaw and several of her teeth are broken. She was either hit hard in the face or fell onto something hard like a floor but an interesting thing about the bruises is that they’re a good time map.’
‘What do you mean?’ Henley asked.
‘You can split her last, let’s say last thirty hours to three significant events,’ said Linh as she picked up Fox-Carnell’s right hand and turned it over to reveal two cuts on her palm.
‘Event one: I removed debris and glass from the wounds. The shards were deeply embedded which suggests to me that she must have pressed her hand down on the ground and if we look at her jaw.’ Linh ran her finger along the blue and purple bruising.
‘This colouring is consistent with a bruise that’s one to two days old.
And if you look at the top of her arms.’
Henley and Ramouter stood on opposite sides of the examination table.
Ramouter pointed at the four circular bruises on Fox-Carnell’s biceps. ‘Are those finger marks?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ replied Linh. ‘She was grabbed tightly.’
‘Restrained,’ Henley said.
‘Agreed and then when we turn her over,’ Linh placed her hand on top of Fox-Carnell’s torso, pulled her towards her and turned the body on its front.
‘She has significant bruising on her lower back and a row of small circular bruising on her buttocks. Same purple colouring, suggesting to me that she’s been thrown or landed heavily onto something sharp. ’
‘Fox-Carnell never made it home, which means that between 5.45 p.m. and 9 p.m. she’s taken off the street. She’s punched, falls to the ground and is then restrained and maybe thrown into a van,’ said Henley.
Ramouter nodded in agreement.
‘Event two,’ said Linh as she moved to the top of the body and pulled apart the remaining hair on Fox-Carnell’s head revealing a rectangular patch of missing scalp.
Scrape marks left behind by the knife could be seen on the exposed skull.
The edges of the wound were uneven and jagged as though a piece of material had been ripped in two.
‘Bloody hell. Was she alive when this happened?’ asked Ramouter.
‘Very much alive,’ said Linh. ‘The cuts and bruising to her right shin, restraint bruising around her wrists and ankles are reddish in colour. That suggests that the injuries were sustained in the twenty-four hours before she was found; so, between the hours of 6 a.m. on Thursday and 6 a.m. Friday. Finally, event three.’
Linh dragged her finger along the bruising around Fox-Carnell’s neck. ‘This is caused post-mortem. She was already dead when hung.’
Henley stepped back from the table and scanned Fox-Carnell’s body as she recalled the elements of all three events. ‘What killed her, Linh?’ she asked.
‘Asphyxiation and organ failure, but it was due to an overdose and not because she had a rope around her neck. There are signs of a pulmonary edema which is where fluid leaks into the lungs. There was bloody phlegm and vomit in her oesophagus, nose and throat. Also, her veins showed signs of collapse and there’s evidence of a cardiac arrest. There are no track marks in her forearms or any of the usual places that a drug user would inject, but if you look at her neck. ’
Linh reached for the magnifying lamp and placed it above Fox-Carnell’s neck. She then lifted her head and turned the neck to the right. Swelling and a reddish hue surrounded a small puncture wound.
‘Didn’t Fox-Carnell kill and attempt to kill her patients by injecting them with poison?’ Ramouter asked Henley.
Henley nodded. ‘She used strychnine. It’s a poison that was banned in 2006, but they still use it as a pesticide in the States. Is that what killed her?’