Chapter 2
Chapter Two
My flatmate appeared in our kitchen when I was rinsing out the shaker from my liquid breakfast. I’d learned a while ago that eating solid food before a post-mortem was a sure way for me to re-evaluate my nutritional choices.
Time hadn’t improved matters, contrary to what I’d been promised, so I’d become wiser at what I ingested beforehand.
“You were in late.”
Lucy pressed a series of buttons on the coffee machine she’d spent almost one month’s salary on, the whirr of the grinder serving as a second alarm.
“Got a call out.” I put the shaker on the side to drain.
“I might not be around much.” I’d been flatmates with Lucy for about eighteen months.
She’d had a room she was letting out at her apartment in Didsbury, which I’d found out about from a mutual acquaintance.
The house I’d been renting was being sold and I had a short timeframe to find somewhere else.
Ideally, I’d wanted to buy somewhere permanent, but my landlord’s news had landed at the same time as I’d gotten involved in a new murder enquiry, so I knew it wasn’t going to work out as planned.
“Remember we’re having that party a week on Friday. I can cancel it if you want though.” She heated the milk for her coffee in a pretty jug with some implement from the machine.
“No need. If I desperately need sleep I’ll crash somewhere else for the night, but I don’t think we’re going to have overtime authorised for this.” I wiped my hands on my trousers, something Lucy would never do.
She looked interested. “Why? When that girl went missing you worked like forty hours straight.”
“We have zero leads. We don’t know the victim’s identity, and the early hours in an investigation are crucial, but as of one-thirty this morning, we don’t have anything to go off.
Things can change though.” Which they’d done before, but then, they’d also not changed.
Some murders went unsolved, freezing into cold cases with a killer who’d gotten away with it.
Lucy sighed and sat down at the kitchen table with her perfectly made coffee, her hair looking like she’d stepped out of a salon rather than having just gotten out of bed.
“Your job is so much more interesting than mine. I’ve got bottom set year nines for history period one and that’s probably the highlight of the day. ”
“I’m starting the day by watching someone weigh organs. I’d rather have bottom set year nine.” I’d rather have anything than watching Dr Miz and her saw.
“You win. At least I only have today and tomorrow and then it’s the holidays. I saw Cavan yesterday. He said he was booking that restaurant in Didsbury for Friday for you.” She sipped delicately at her coffee.
Lucy was half a foot taller than me, and even though I had a background in gymnastics from being a kid, she was the epitome of grace.
I was always rushing, forgetting to do something with my hair which was why it was in a bob, and forever wearing clothes that weren’t quite ironed properly because I never had the time.
“Crap. I forgot about that. I should be able to get there.” I hoped.
It was something to look forward to, a date with the man who was meant to be my boyfriend.
Cavan worked at the same school, Moorbridge High, as Lucy, one of the assistant heads.
I’d met him when Lucy and I’d had a night out in Manchester, and she’d semi arranged to meet some colleagues.
He was far more of a pretty boy than my usual, but I liked him.
He was fun and not interested in my work, which was useful.
There’d been boyfriends who’d been too keen to know about my job, their fascination with true crime and knowing things other people didn’t what they were really interested in sometimes.
“I think he’s really looking forward to it. He was talking about it in the staffroom yesterday.” She stretched and yawned. “Better get a shower. I need to fix the screen in my classroom, or find someone to fix the screen, which will probably be harder than you finding your murderer.”
Nick turned up with a takeaway coffee for Dr Miz as well, both of us having learned that she was less likely to go into too much detail if she was well-caffeinated.
We arrived at the Greater Manchester Forensics Unit almost at the same time, Nick looking like he was here to undergo a procedure usually reserved for the dead rather than observe one.
“Did you sleep?” I asked him, once we’d been robbed of the coffees.
“I have a four-month-old. I no longer know what sleep is.” He gave me a satisfied grin. “She’s cute when she’s not crying though.”
I followed him through to the viewing gallery, the hum of the florescent lights like a distant engine. I’d worked with some cops who tried to get as close as possible mainly so they could impart their wisdom on the pathologist.
I stayed as far away as possible.
The body of the woman lay on the mortuary slab, covered to her chin, preserving what dignity we could afford her. I took one glance and then looked anywhere but her.
“Not your favourite thing, this, is it, Mac?” Nick grinned at my expense.
I knew any colour had left my face.
“I’d rather read the report.”
“Funny. You usually don’t trust things unless you see them first-hand.”
“Apart from Dr Miz. I trust her.” I concentrated on breathing and not throwing up my protein shake.
Dr Miz swept into the room and smiled at us like she was about to receive an Oscar.
“I’m so glad it’s the two of you. If it was Detective Sergeant Vinny Leigh his member would shortly be occupying a sample jar.” She snapped on gloves. “Please let him know that and also pass on that it wouldn’t have needed a big jar. A small one would suffice.”
“Did you know about this?” Nick whispered to me.
“I found out at the scene. I don’t think she’s happy with Vinny.”
He made some sort of curious noise and focused back on what Dr Miz was doing.
I focused on breathing again, the smell of antiseptic, stale coffee, and something iron-rich and clinical that even the filters couldn't quite erase pervading my senses. Too familiar. So strange.
On the table beyond the glass lay the woman who would be the centre of our focus until we’d found who’d killed her.
Now with the body cleaned, hair combed and wounds mapped with forensic markers, she didn’t look at peace.
In the elements last night, she hadn’t looked real.
Now, with us about to find out about every nook and cranny of her physical life, she looked wrong.
The angle of her jaw. The mess of violence where her stomach used to be.
The joke ended. A careful silence settled over the room, waiting for someone’s whole story to be unpacked by a stranger with a scalpel.
Dr Miz stood with practiced stillness, dictating into a recorder. I’d missed the start. I didn’t regret it.
“...skin maceration moderate, consistent with submersion for approximately forty-eight hours in water. Hands and feet display epidermal slippage. No insect activity present. Early bloating of face and torso. No evidence of decomposition inconsistent with the estimated time since death...”
My brain kicked in, ignoring the tag of my stomach as I tried not to watch what Dr Miz was doing. The body hadn’t been in the water that long, but long enough to change her. I tapped my fingers against my shoulders, my arms hugging my body.
Dr Miz looked up, pulling down her mask. “You okay?”
“As well as I can be while I’m in here. Just ignore me.”
She continued, drawing gloved fingers along the map of bruises and cuts already photographed in high resolution.
“Primary fatal wound is here,” she said, indicating the gaping stab to the woman’s upper left abdomen. “I’ll be able to confirm when I’ve opened her up. She would have bled out rapidly. Death within minutes. But not instantly.”
My stomach clenched. Ferociously this time.
“There are seventeen other wounds,” Dr Miz went on, her voice almost serene. “All consistent with the same blade. Blade width approximately two and a half centimetres, single-edged. Serrated section did extra tearing on re-entry.”
“Re-entry?” Nick asked. It was as if he was watching a thriller at the cinema.
“Some of the wounds show repeated penetration of the same spot. Frenzied in the end. But controlled, initially. Whoever did this knew how to kill with a blade. That first wound—that was deliberate and meant to kill. The rest?” She tipped her head to one side. “Someone had big feelings.”
I moved closer towards the screen displaying the full-body overlay. “No defensive injuries? I know you said that last night, but it wasn’t the best conditions.”
“None. Which suggests surprise, or that she was restrained, unconscious, or trusting.”
“Or high.”
Dr Miz shook her head. “Toxicology so far says no - I put the first round of tests in last night. Slight alcohol trace, but nothing else. And no sexual assault, at least nothing that suggests it. Her being submerged in water will have cleared anything left behind but there’s no bruising to her thighs or wrists, and no tearing.
He didn’t linger. He didn’t touch her afterward. Just moved her into the canal.”
I tried not to watch as the Y-incision was made by Saira’s careful hands. This was her language now, created to help dead bodies speak.
“If he moved her straight after killing her,” I said, “he’d have blood transfer. Lots of it.”
“Unless he was covered. Prepared. He took her clothes, remember. Could’ve used them to wrap her.” Nick folded his arms, watching intently. “There’s a patch of trees not far from where her body turned up – he must’ve killed her close to where he dumped her in the canal.”
I nodded, already thinking: a trailer. A tarp. Gloves. But still—risk. Visibility. A woman’s body in broad daylight—or just after dusk. And no one saw? “This is either someone who’s gotten very lucky – an opportunist – or this has been planned.”
Dr Miz looked over to us. “Or the Manchester Pusher’s back and targeting women now. Maybe he’s become an incel.”
“The Manchester Pusher was a myth.” Nick didn’t look impressed at this. “That was the media joining dots where there were none.”
“The Manchester Pusher, whether he existed or not, didn’t stab his victims first, which is definitely what’s happened here.
I’ve counted seventeen stab wounds apart from the one that would’ve been fatal, which is to the left upper quadrant of the abdomen, measuring eight point three centimetres horizontally, with a depth of approximately eleven centimetres, penetrating the peritoneal cavity, lacerating the spleen and descending abdominal aorta.
She would’ve exsanguinated due to rapid internal bleeding and died between one and three minutes after that particular incision.
” Dr Miz carried on, describing the last few minutes of our Jane Doe’s life in acute detail according to what her body told us.
Nick took notes. I tried to focus on the words, almost closing my eyes to picture what was happening in an illustrated, less realist way, hoping my stomach would stop feeling as if I was in the middle of the Irish Sea in a storm.
I managed to make it to my car before I vomited on the ground next to, checking around to make sure no one had seen me.
I already got enough stick, just like every other female copper did in what was still a man’s world, so I didn’t need another story of Mia loses her breakfast going round the canteen.
Taking a swig of water from the bottle in my car, I turned on the engine and pulled myself together.
With any luck, Wrigley would take pity on me and that would be my last trip to the morgue for a while.