Dead Like You

woman who lay on the stainless-steel table, in the centre of the newly refurbished main post-mortem room, at 5.30 p.m. this Sunday afternoon.
    Even after half an hour in here, Grace had not got used to the horrendous smell and breathing though his mouth only helped a little. He could understand why almost all pathologists used to smoke and carry out their work on corpses with a cigarette between their lips. Those who didn’t put a blob of Vicks just above their upper lips. But that tradition appeared to have stopped along with the smoking ban a few years back. He could have sure done with something now.
    Was he the only one in here who was affected?
    Present in the room, and all gowned, masked and rubber-booted, were the Coroner’s Officer, the forensic archaeologist, Joan Major, the SOCO photographer, James Gartrell, who was busy alternately videoing and photographing every stage of the examination, Cleo and her assistant, Darren Wallace, and, centre stage, Nadiuska De Sancha. Spanish born and of Russian descent, the Home Office pathologist was a statuesque beauty almost every male police officer in Sussex lusted after – and liked to work with, as she was fast and good-humoured.
    Also present was Glenn Branson – not that it was necessary for him to be here, but, Grace had decided, it was better to keep him occupied, rather than leaving him on his own to mope about his calamitous separation.
    It was always strange attending a post-mortem when Cleo was at work. She was almost a stranger to him, bustling around, efficient and impersonal. Apart from the occasional smiling glance at him.
    Since the start of the post-mortem, Nadiuska had painstakingly taped every inch of the dead woman’s skin, bagging each strip of tape separately, in the hope that it might contain an errant skin or semen cell invisible to the naked eye, or a hair or clothing fibre.
    Grace stared down at the body, mesmerized. The skin was almost black from desiccation, in a virtual mummified state. Her long brown hair was well preserved. Her breasts, although shrunken, were still clearly visible, as were her pubic hairs and her pelvis.
    There was an indent in the rear of her skull, consistent with a heavy blow or fall. Before going into a detailed examination, just from what she could see, Nadiuska said that would be enough, in that part of the skull, to kill a normal person.
    Joan said that her teeth indicated the woman was between late teens and mid-twenties.
    Rachael Ryan’s age.
    Is that how Rachael Ryan would look now?
    Dead like you? If you are not her.
    In an attempt to ascertain her age more accurately, Nadiuska was now removing some of the skin around the corpse’s neck to expose her collar bone. As she did so, Joan Major watched intently.
    The forensic archaeologist suddenly became increasingly animated.
    ‘Yes, look! Look at the clavicle, see? There’s no sign of fusion on the medial clavicle, or even the beginning of it. That normally occurs around the age of thirty. So we can say pretty much for certain she was well below thirty – in her early twenties, I would estimate. I’ll be able to get a more accurate age estimate when we’ve exposed more of the skeleton.’
    Grace stared at the dead woman’s face, feeling desperately sad for her.
    Rachael Ryan, is that who you are?
    He was feeling increasingly certain that it was.
    He remembered so vividly talking to her distraught parents on those terrible days following her disappearance at Christmas 1997. He could recall her face, every detail of it, despite all that had happened in the intervening years. That smiling, happy, pretty face; such a young face, so full of life.
    Have I found you at last, Rachael? Too late, I know. I’m sorry it’s much too late. I apologize. I tried my best.
    A DNA test would tell him if he was right and there was going to be no problem getting a good sample. Both the pathologist and the forensic archaeologist were profoundly impressed with the condition of the corpse. Nadiuska declared that it was better preserved than some bodies that were only weeks old, and attributed it to the fact that she had been wrapped in the two layers of plastic sheeting, and buried in a dry place.
    At this moment, Nadiuska was conducting vaginal scrapings, carefully bagging and tagging each separate sample as she worked her way deeper up inside it.
    Grace continued to stare at the body, the twelve years slipping away. And suddenly he wondered if, one day, he’d be in a