Page 25 of Their Burning Graves
‘I think it looks nice.’ Ben was still getting over the shock.
Susie laughed. ‘Well then if it looks nice, I think I need to go neon pink, Ben,niceis not the kind of reaction I’m after. I quite enjoy shocking people. Hey, enough about me, what books have you read since I last saw you?’
‘I haven’t had time to read any.’
Morgan smiled, she knew that Susie was a major bookworm who loved to tease and put Ben on the spot.
‘Ask him what his favourite film is instead.’ she asked.
‘What’s your favourite film?’
Ben glared at Morgan, then shook his head. ‘Erm,Fast and Furious.’
This set Morgan off into a fit of giggles. ‘He’s fibbing, it’s not.’
‘Why is it you three are like a bunch of naughty school kids, while the rest of us are ready and waiting? In your own time please, Brookes and Matthews. Susie, for the love of God, stop corrupting our officers of the law.’
Declan was standing with his arms folded across his chest. Susie scurried off towards the mortuary, and Morgan headed into the ladies’ changing room to escape Declan’s glare. She loved him to bits, and he was as funny as any comedian, but when it came down to his job he was deadly serious in more ways than one.
As Morgan walked into the mortuary, she realised that the strong, chlorine-like disinfectant smell hadn’t bothered her as much as usual, and she took this as a bad sign, that she was getting far too used to being in here. Ben was the last to enter the room, his face much paler than it had been minutes before, and she felt bad for him. It wasn’t that long ago that they’d been in here to watch Shea Wilkinson’s autopsy. That had been a tough one for them all, God love her.
Susie had already got Tim’s body out of the fridge, and he was lying wrapped tight inside the black body bag on the steel table in front of them. Wendy was there with Claire; they were such a good team Morgan wondered why they didn’t work together all the time. Declan had Rock FM playing in the background, which was quite a change from usual, but she knew he would have a reason. The music was such a lovely distraction, at least it was for her anyway, she could look down at her boots and forget where they were momentarily when a great song came on.
Declan cut the tag sealing the bag and began to unzip it. There was no awful decomposition smell yet because Tim had been found less than a couple of hours after his murder. She steeled herself as Declan and Susie expertly rolled Tim out of the bag then unwrapped the white sheet from around him. She’d flinched at the plastic bag, still cable tied around his head. She’d forgot about that part. Her eyes were drawn down to his missing right hand, the red bloodied stump looked so wrong. All of this was wrong. She noticed he was wearing an Iron Maiden T-shirt, and nodded appreciatively at Declan’s choice of music. He was such a sweetheart; he must have noted it at the house before the bodies were moved. This single, kind attention to his victim’s details made the corner of her eyes pool with tears.
They weighed, measured and X-rayed Tim’s body before Declan began his external observations. Susie took fingernail clippings from his left hand, then they began to remove his clothes for Wendy to bag up.
‘I think it’s pretty clear what Tim’s cause of death was, but we still need to go through the motions. Tim, bear with me please, this isn’t nice and I’m sorry, but we will look after you in the best way possible, mate. It will be over soon, no one else can hurt you now.’
This time it was Wendy who let out a loud sniff. No one looked her way, they had all been there at some point. Declan was so lovely; his care of his patients as he did this final thing for them was always so poignant and fitting. Morgan hadn’t worked with any other pathologists, but she thought that they probably were the luckiest coppers in England to have him working on their team.
He cut the tie sealing the plastic bag and passed it to Wendy to bag up and be tested for any DNA evidence, then he removed the bag. Tim’s blond hair was stuck to his forehead, his eyes bulged from the lack of oxygen, his tongue protruded from his mouth.
‘What a cruel way to kill someone, watching them struggling to gulp in air that isn’t there. Horrid, it really is, I’d like to get my hands on whoever did this. Tim should be watchingStranger Thingsand practising his guitar riffs right now.’
No one disagreed with Declan, they were all thinking the same thing.
Ben finally found his voice. ‘What about the hand, can you tell if it was done before or after?’
‘Clearly after, same as his dad’s, no visible clotting. At least that’s some small token of comfort. Unlike his poor mum, who suffered the pain of watching her dead family whilst her hand was chopped off before she suffocated to death. Same cut marks too, so it’s the same instrument.’
‘Can you tell who died first?’
‘Pretty difficult to determine. If I had the knife or whatever that might help to determine, if the blood is on there in layers.’
Morgan tore her eyes away from Tim’s body to look at Ben. ‘Wouldn’t Tim have been home first? School finished no later than four. If the killer was waiting, he might have killed him when he arrived, then David must have come home next, and we know for sure Sally was the last one, killed only minutes after she arrived home. It would be far easier to pick them off one by one than to try and take out both of them at the same time.’
Ben nodded. ‘Declan, are there any defence wounds on any of them?’
‘None whatsoever, this was a quick, efficient method of disposal, although I’m praying that one of them managed to scratch our man’s hand and we get lucky with some DNA under their fingernails that will lead you straight to your killer’s front door. We’ve got scrapings from all of them now anyway, and we’ll let you know as soon as we get results from the lab.’
Morgan hoped they had, that Sally had done her best to leave them with something to find the monster who took out her entire family, and lead them to him.
EIGHTEEN
Once they were back at the station, they made their way to the small room where Cathy and another PCSO, Sam, were sitting at two separate monitors viewing the CCTV footage they had seized.
‘How’s it going?’ he asked.
