Dead Tomorrow

of the inquisitive eyes of the Coroner’s Officer and Glenn Branson.
    ‘Well,’ she said, andwaved her scalpel down his opened midriff. ‘This is the kind of incision a surgeon would make if he was harvesting organs from a donor. All the internal organs have been surgically excised, by someone experienced. Consistent with this is the fact that the blood vessels have all been tied off with sutures before being cut through to remove the organs.’ She pointed. ‘The perinephric fat that would have been around the kidneys–the suet , if you are a cook–has been opened with a blade.’
    Grace reminded himself not to eat suet for a long time to come.
    ‘So,’ Nadiuska continued, ‘all this would indicate that he was an organ donor. Now, what directs me even more towards this possibility is the presence of these external indications of medical intervention.’ She pointed again. ‘A needle mark in the back of the hand.’ She gestured at the neck. ‘A puncture mark.’ Then she pointed at the right elbow. ‘Another puncture mark in the antecubital fosse. These are consistent with the insertion of cannulae for drips and drugs.’
    Then, taking a small torch, she gently levered open the dead man’s mouth with her gloved fingers and shone the beam in. ‘If you look closely you can see reddening and ulceration to the inside of the windpipe, just below the voice box, which would have been caused by the balloon inflated on the end of the endotracheal ventilator tube.’
    Grace nodded. ‘But he ate a meal of solids–he couldn’t have done that with an endotracheal tube, right?’
    ‘Absolutely right, Roy,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand this.’
    ‘Perhaps he was an organ donor who was subsequently buried at sea, and then carried by currents away from the burial zone?’ Glenn Branson suggested.
    The pathologist pursedher lips. ‘It’s a possibility. Yes,’ she concurred. ‘But the majority of organ donors tend to be on life support for a period of time, during which they would be intubated and on intravenous drip feeds. It is odd to me that there is undigested food in his stomach. When I do the tox screen, that may show up muscle relaxants and other drugs that would be used for the removal of organs for transplant.’
    ‘Can you give me an approximation of how many hours from when he had eaten until he died?
    ‘From the state of the food, four to six at maximum.’
    ‘Couldn’t he have died suddenly?’ Grace asked. ‘A heart attack, or a car–or maybe motorbike–accident?’
    ‘He doesn’t have injuries consistent with a serious accident, Roy. He has no head or brain trauma. A heart attack or an asthma attack is a possibility, but considering his age–late teens–both, I would say, are a little improbable. I think we could be looking for some other cause.’
    ‘Such as?’ Grace scribbled a sudden note on his pad, thinking of something that would need following up.
    ‘I can’t speculate at this stage. Hopefully lab tests will tell us something. If we could get his identity, that might help us also.’
    ‘We’re working on that,’ he said.
    ‘I’m sure it is the lab tests that will provide the key. I think it is very unlikely that the tapings are going to produce anything, as he wasn’t in waterproof wrapping,’ the pathologist went on. Then she paused briefly, before adding, ‘There is one other thought. This food in the stomach. In the UK, because there is no automatic organ harvesting without consent, it does often take many hours from brain death for consent to be obtained from next of kin. But in countries where there is just an opt-out, like Austria and Spain, then the process can be much quicker. So it is possible that this man is from one of those countries.’
    Grace thought about this. ‘OK, but if he died in Spain or Austria, what is he doing ten miles off the coast of England?’
    There was a shrillring on the doorbell. Darren, the Assistant Mortuary Technician, hurried out of the room. A couple of minutes later he returned with Sergeant Tania Whitlock, from the Specialist Search Unit, gowned and in protective boots.
    Roy Grace brought her up to speed. She asked to see the plastic sheeting and weights in which the body had been found, and Cleo took her out into the storage area to show her. Then they returned to the post-mortem room. The Home Office pathologist was busy dictating notes into her machine. Grace, Glenn Branson and Michael Forman were standing near the