Page 12 of Maybe Tomorrow
‘Something’s wrong.’
Nash frowned as he stood up and followed his assistant into the post-mortem suite. He looked at the naked body of Alice Patterson and felt his stomach flip.
‘Alice here was brought in this morning,’ Sarah Clark began. ‘We removed her clothes, bagged them up and washed her, as we always do. However, it’s only when Jill was making a record of the clothes that she realised there was no underwear present. We’ve had a look, you know, down there, and there’s evidence of bruising and tearing.’
‘She was raped?’ Nash asked.
‘She could have just had a very energetic sex life.’
‘What does the paperwork say?’ Nash asked, not taking his eyes from Alice.
‘She was a victim of the storm. She was found in woodland with a branch covering her.’
‘Right, well, it’s the job of the police to find out if she was sexually active or not, not ours. We do the post-mortem in the usual way and inform the police of our findings.’ He stepped forward. ‘Scalpel.’ He held out his hand.
Nash leaned down to begin the standard Y-incision and stopped. Frowning, he turned Alice’s head to one side, then the other. He looked back to his assistant.
‘Call the police.’
‘Why?’
‘She’s been strangled.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I’m sure,’ he almost snapped. ‘And by cleaning her up, we’ve washed away all the fucking evidence.’ He kicked the table, sending the instruments flying. ‘Call the police and get them down here. I’m not doing anything to this girl until there’s someone here who can tell us what the hell is going on.’
Detective Inspector Henry Bishop was not happy about having his morning disrupted. His phone hadn’t stopped ringing with people asking bloody stupid questions about incidents caused by the storm. He’d been out twice already. Once to a body swept up onto a beach and once to a girl found in woods, both of whom had been victims of the bad weather. He was in CID, for crying out loud, which stood for Criminal Investigation Department. What was he supposed to do, charge Michael Fish with manslaughter? He slammed his office door behind him and slumped in the chair behind his desk. Another report had been added to the pile while he’d been out. He opened the cover, read the first sentence which mentioned a known sex offender not contacting the local police station for the past three weeks, and closed it again. More trivial bollocks. He opened his top drawer and removed a screwed-up packet of Benson and Hedges. He promised his doctor he’d cut down, but you couldn’t be a detective and not smoke, especially with the idiots he had on his team.
There was a knock on his door.
‘Someone had better be fucking dead,’ he bellowed.
The door opened. ‘There’s a problem,’ DC Edward Ritter said, popping his head through the small gap.
‘Like I said, someone had better be dead.’
Ritter coughed as the cloud of smoke from Bishop’s cigarette hit the back of his throat.
‘Girl found in the woods this morning we thought was killed by a falling tree.’
‘Thought?’
‘Dr Nash reckons she was strangled.’
‘What?’
‘Dr Nash has found evidence that she was strangled. He’s abandoned the post-mortem. He says he wants someone from CID to attend. He also wants to know why it wasn’t noticed at the scene.’
Bishop thought for a moment. ‘Who was first attending?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, fucking find out!’ he shouted. He stood up and grabbed for his jacket hanging on the back of his chair. ‘Get a car. You can drive me to the hospital. And whoever missed this, I want them sitting in this chair when I get back,’ he said, pointing to the empty seat opposite his desk.
The argument between Dr Paul Nash and DI Henry Bishop could be heard throughout the building. Bishop, in his usual bully-boy tactics, stormed into the post-mortem suite and criticised Nash’s staff for washing the body and destroying any evidence they may have been able to get from the victim. Nash, in return, criticised Bishop and his team for not properly investigating the scene.
Nash pushed Bishop into the exhibits room and closed the door behind them for a little privacy.
