Not Dead Enough

noted details of each tooth on a chart, finishing by taking a soft clay impression of the upper and lower sets. Acting on instructions from the coroner, he would later send his detailed records to every dentist within a fifteen-mile radius of the city of Brighton and Hove. If that failed to produce results, he would gradually broaden the circulation list until, if necessary, every registered dentist in the UK was covered.
    There was as yet no international system of coordinated dental records. If no dentist in the UK could make an identification, and fingerprints and DNA failed to produce results, the woman would eventually end up in a grave paid for by the city of Brighton and Hove, recorded for posterity as one tiny fraction of a tragic statistic.

    Nigel Churchman had calculated recently that he had performed over seven thousand post-mortems in this mortuary during the past fifteen years. Yet he approached each cadaver with the same, almost boyish enthusiasm, as if it were his first. He was a man who genuinely loved his work, and believed that each person who came under his scrutiny deserved the very best from him.
    A handsome, fit man, with a passion for racing cars, he had a youthful face – much of it concealed at the moment behind his green mask as he peered down at the unknown female – making him seem much younger than his forty-nine years.
    He flapped away some bluebottles from around her brain, which was lying on the metal examining tray above her opened chest cavity, and began work. He sliced the brain carefully with a long-bladed carving knife, checking for foreign bodies, such as a bullet, or damage from a knife, or evidence of haemorrhaging which could indicate death by a heavy blow. But the brain seemed healthy, undamaged.
    Her eyes, which had been eaten almost entirely away, yielded no information. Her heart seemed robust, typical of a fit person, with no scaling in the arteries. He was not able to gauge her age very accurately at this stage. Judging from the condition and colour of her teeth, her general physique, the condition of her breasts, which were partly gone also, he was guessing mid-twenties to early forties.
    Darren carried the heart to the weigh scales and marked it up on the wall chart. Churchman nodded; it was within the correct range. He moved on to the lungs, cutting them free, then lifting them with both gloved hands on to the examining tray, dark fluid dripping from them as he set them down.
    Within a couple of minutes of starting to examine them, he stopped and turned to Cleo. ‘Interesting,’ he said. ‘She hasn’t drowned. There’s no water in the lungs.’
    ‘Meaning?’ Cleo asked. It was a stupid question, blurted out without thinking, the result of her distress after being with the dead girl’s parents, her hangover, her stress at the workload, and her worries about the spectre of Sandy clouding her relationship with Roy Grace. Of course she knew the answer, she knew exactly what it meant.
    ‘She was already dead when she went into the water. I’m going to have to stop this p-m, I’m afraid. You’ll need to inform the coroner.’
    A Home Office pathologist – probably Nadiuska De Sancha again – would have to take over the post-mortem. Unknown female was now elevated to the status of a suspicious death.

80
    Roy Grace made a mental note to never again find himself closeted with Norman Potting in a small room on a hot day. They were seated next to each other in front of a video monitor in the cubicle-sized viewing room that adjoined the Witness Interview Suite. The late-afternoon sun was beating mercilessly against the closed venetian blinds of the one window and the air conditioning was useless. Grace was dripping with perspiration. Potting, in a white short-sleeve shirt, with wide, damp patches in the armpits, smelled like the inside of an old hat.
    Further, the Detective Sergeant had eaten something heavily laced with garlic and his breath reeked of the stuff. Grace fished a pack of peppermint gum out of his jacket, on the back of his chair, and offered a piece to Potting in the hope he would chew it and spare him his death-breath.
    ‘Never touch it, Roy, thanks,’ he said. ‘Pulls my fillings out.’ He was fiddling with the controls, fast-rewinding a recording. Grace watched the screen, as Potting, Zafferone and a third man all walked backward out of the room, in speeded-up motion, disappearing through the door one at a time. Potting stopped the tape,