Dead fall, p.1
Dead Fall, page 1
For Luca
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Flyte
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Flyte
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
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Chapter Sixteen
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Chapter Seventeen
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Chapter Eighteen
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Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
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Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
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Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
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Chapter Twenty-Seven
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Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
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Chapter Thirty
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Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
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Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
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Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
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Chapter Thirty-Seven
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Chapter Thirty-Eight
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Chapter Thirty-Nine
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Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
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Chapter Forty-Four
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Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
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Chapter Forty-Seven
Chapter Forty-Eight
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Extract for BODY LANGUAGE
Copyright
Chapter One
The sky was just starting to lighten the inky surface of the canal, the peep and quack of the dawn chorus subsiding. Cassie Raven had been walking fast, head bent, eyes on the towpath, replaying the row she’d just had with her boyfriend. Which was how she almost crashed into it.
What the . . .?
A steel barrier blocked the towpath. And a few strides beyond it, a dark red puddle on the ground, the precise shape of a cartoon speech bubble, and instantly recognisable.
Blood, a good litre of it. Going by the colour and viscosity, it had been shed four or five hours earlier, the exposure to air already making the haemoglobin morph into iron oxide – the same compound as rust. Reminding her how the human body was fundamentally just a fancy chemistry set.
A female cop was striding towards her now, shaking her head. ‘You can’t go through here, you’ll have to find another route.’
‘What happened?’ asked Cassie, lifting her chin towards the stain. A knife wound? Stabbings weren’t exactly uncommon in Camden, usually drug-dealing related.
‘I’m not at liberty to say,’ said the cop, eyeing Cassie’s tattoos.
Fair enough. The family might not know yet that someone they loved was seriously injured – or more likely dead.
The pool of blood looked too neat and unsmudged to be a knife wound. Squinting up at the building that overlooked the canal – a huge Victorian warehouse, converted into upmarket apartments – she caught a flash of something. A man in what looked like police uniform peering over the balustrade of a narrow balcony.
Nine, maybe ten, storeys up.
An accidental fall? Or a jumper. Either way, from that height, she’d almost certainly be meeting them later at the mortuary. For sudden deaths in the community the cops had arrangements with local undertakers to deliver bodies out of hours.
Cassie treated all her guests with care and respect but having experienced her own moments of bottomless despair she had always felt a special bond with suicides. Before retracing her steps she told the cop, ‘If I were you I’d cover up the blood until the cleaners arrive? Just in case the family come by.’
Left the cop looking puzzled at the authoritative way the girl with the punk haircut had spoken.
*
Losing her rag with Archie had unsettled her. They’d only been living together on her narrowboat for nine or ten weeks but already she was getting that claustrophobic feeling, all too familiar from her one and only previous – failed – experiment in living with a lover.
On the upside, they both worked with the dead – Archie as a pathologist, Cassie as an anatomical pathology technician, aka APT – which meant they could talk about work without the constant self-censorship needed with civilians. She had taken against him at first, pigeonholing him as the entitled posh boy medic, but they’d gradually fallen for each other across the bodies of the dead, and after dating for a few months, she’d finally taken the leap in agreeing to live with him.
He was easy-going, fun company – and the regular sex was a definite plus. On the downside, the narrowboat wasn’t exactly spacious and the headroom in the main cabin was only six foot two at the highest point – the same height as Archie – so he was constantly banging his head on the ceiling. It made her wince in sympathy but also irritated the hell out of her, which she knew was desperately unfair. That morning when he’d got up too fast from their bed and cracked his head she had snapped at him, ‘For Chrissake, Archie! Every single morning?!’ Worse, he hadn’t snapped back – just sent her his (increasingly familiar) wounded look.
It occurred to her that maybe she was feeling the same way as he was – that she no longer had enough headroom.
*
At the mortuary, Cassie took a shower in the ladies’ changing room – her regular routine since Archie had moved onto the boat. When the two of them had to get ready for work at the same time it was like a complex dance routine – or a clown act. After donning a clean set of blue scrubs, she put in her lip and eyebrow piercings and scraped her hair up into its topknot, her reflection telling her it was time to re-dye her hair its usual batwing black and get her undercut reclipped. Making a face in the mirror, she pulled out her phone and tapped out a message to Archie.
Sorry I was an arse this AM. I’ll buy us a curry later. C xxx
She’d got into work early, to enjoy a few moments of solitude before everyone else arrived. Going into the tranquil chill of the body store where the only sound was the low hum of the giant fridge, she started checking her inventory – or guest list, as she preferred to think of it. Moving along the wall of polished steel, she opened each of the drawers to check the occupant’s name, d.o.b. and identification number on the tag of their body bag against the paperwork, chatting softly to the white-shrouded bodies within as though they could still hear her.
‘Morning, Mr H, Doctor Curzon will be examining you today, to try to find out why you died, get your family some answers’ . . . ‘Hello, Mrs V, you’re leaving us this morning. I hear the service is going to be at your church where you and Mr V got married. That’s lovely’ . . . a few murmured words for each of her ladies and gents, down the line of drawers.
Cassie had always talked to the dead in her care just as if they were still alive. She had always seen the mortuary as a shadowland where the recently dead hung suspended between life and burial or cremation – an interlude in which they might still have some awareness of their surroundings. Irrational nonsense, of course, and at odds with her otherwise scientific outlook. But it was a belief that gave her work meaning, and made her feel responsible for these souls while she was looking after them.
Drawer number eight housed her latest arrival, delivered by the undertakers during the night. Finding the entry in the check-in log she recognised the address of the canal-side apartment block where she’d seen the cops that morning. It read, ‘Adult female, d.o.b. TBF, thought to be S. J. Angopoulis’. So the person who’d fallen – or jumped – was a woman.
She pulled out the drawer on its runners and started to unzip the body bag – always liking to greet her new charges in person. But at the sight of the face a violent shiver went through her – and not from the perma-chill of the body store. Her autonomous nervous system was sounding a klaxon. The young woman had a depressed skull fracture that had mashed the left-hand side of her head, her face was a livid purple from temple to jaw, but she was still totally recognisable.
Her name wasn’t ‘Angopoulis’. It was Angelopoulos.
Sophia Angelopoulos. Better known as Bronte.
Chapter Two
Pulling herself together, Cassie tried to speak normally as she would to any of her guests. ‘Hello, Sophia,’ she said softly. ‘Long time no see. You’re in the general mortuary in Camden and I’ll be looking after you. We’ll be trying to find out what happened.’
The last time they’d laid eyes on each other they’d been fourteen-year-old schoolgirls, classmates at Camden High. Classmates but not friends. Feeling a surge of guilt, Cassie leaned closer and spoke with feeling. ‘I am so sorry to see you here, Sophia. I promise we’ll do our very best for you, and your family’ – wondering whether she might pick up some clue to her last thoughts, as she sometimes did from the bodies in her care.
The first time had been just a few months into the job. She’d bee n checking in a Mrs M, an elderly lady who’d died of a skull fracture after falling on her front step one icy morning. Cassie had been overcome by a weird sensation – a feeling of slippage into a space between dream and reality, before hearing the single word, Bugger! Nothing dramatic or mysterious, just an expression of the old lady’s shock, which of course she knew could simply have been a product of her imagination. And yet . . .
Now, setting an awkward hand on Sophia’s chilly shoulder, Cassie scrunched her eyes closed, and waited, but the only sound was the soft burble of the fridge.
What did you expect? scolded Cassie’s internal voice. Why would she speak to you, of all people?
Cassie had actually seen the adult Sophia, albeit from a distance, once since school: at Dingwalls, one of Camden’s music venues a couple of years back. Sophia had been up on stage singing – transformed from the dumpy little girl into a beautiful and slender woman with a cloud of near-black curly hair, sleeve tattoos inked up both her arms.
Although she’d only been the support act to another band – this was before the media started calling her ‘a rising star’ – it was clear she had serious talent. Despite her tiny frame, no more than five foot three, her jazz-inflected contralto had an intensity that gave Cassie the shivers, and a bouzouki player among the backing musicians added a spine-tingling roots depth to some of the numbers. She hadn’t known who it was when a friend had dragged her to the gig, because this new incarnation of the girl she’d known as Sophia Angelopoulos went by the name of Bronte – the Greek goddess of thunder.
The door to the corridor opened to admit her fellow technician Jason.
‘What’s on the menu today then?’ he asked, sounding bored. ‘Jumper?’
‘No idea until we see the coroner’s report.’ Cassie hesitated. ‘I knew her – kind of – at school.’ Hoping to head off any off-colour comments Jason might be tempted to make: she’d had to tell him off before for calling the bodies ‘stiffs’, or making comments about the size of a woman’s breasts. Like Sophia, Cassie was only twenty-seven – almost half Jason’s age – but she was the senior technician and in her mortuary the dead were treated with dignity and respect.
No need to mention that Sophia – Bronte – was a celebrity, appearing regularly in the tabloids, if not always for the right reason. Cassie held her breath, half expecting him to recognise her, but luckily he just shrugged and turned to go, saying, ‘Just popping out for a ciggie.’
Cassie fired up the computer. Nothing from the coroner’s office yet to say whether Sophia was down for a routine post-mortem – the kind you got when death was unnatural or unexpected but not suspicious – or the full-on forensic version where the police had reason to suspect foul play. It was only just 9 a.m. – aka half an hour since they’d opened but she was impatient to find out more.
‘Dorothy? Hi, it’s Cassie.’
The warm reassuring tones of Dorothy, the admin assistant, came down the line. ‘I expect you’re calling about that poor girl by the canal.’ A pause as she consulted her computer . . . ‘Sophia Angelopoulos?’
So at least her surname had been corrected. ‘Does the police report mention her performing name, Bronte?’
A pause as Dorothy checked through the notes. ‘Not that I can see.’
So it sounded like the cops had yet to realise they were dealing with a celeb death. Surprise surprise.
‘What’s the deal?’ asked Cassie. ‘Does the coroner want a routine or a forensic?’
‘Just a routine. The police officer who attended – Sergeant Hickey – reported no suspicious circumstances. Apparently she left a suicide note – well, a text.’
*
Half an hour later Cassie had peeled the clothes from Sophia’s stiffening limbs, and laid her out on her workstation. Taking a blank female body chart – the basic outline of a woman, front and back view – she started marking the location of any visible injuries, scars, and so on, with crosses. ‘We do this to alert the pathologist to anything that might need investigating further,’ she told Sophia quietly.
A cross for the head injury, obviously. Rocking Sophia’s head gently side to side, she found it as floppy as a puppet’s. C1-C2 cervical fracture. Another cross for the neck. Working her way down the body, she marked up several contusions and grazes – no doubt the result of the impact – before turning Sophia’s arms palm upwards. Seeing the cut marks sliced into the delicate skin inside the upper arm she flinched. The place to self-harm without being discovered. They were silver-white, long faded, might even date from her school days – their school days. She marked them up, knowing that they’d go down as evidence for a history of mental health issues.
Sophia’s left forearm was floppy too, with complex and multiple fractures of the radius and ulna – probably as a result of flinging her arm out reflexively before she hit the ground. The palm of the right hand and the underside of the fingers were also badly grazed – a scatter of abrasions like a galaxy of dried blood – which was unexpected since all the other injuries were on her left-hand side which had clearly taken the brunt of the impact.
With the chart completed, Cassie draped a coverlet over Sophia’s naked body below the neck. It wasn’t something she’d usually do – bodies were unremarkable, the mortuary’s stock-in-trade – but she didn’t like the idea of Jason seeing her naked, young and still beautiful, from the neck down at least.
Bit late to start getting protective now, noted her snarky inner voice.
When Dr Curzon breezed in to perform his external examination of Sophia’s body she gave him a welcoming smile and even attempted some small talk – albeit through gritted teeth.
‘How did your conference go?’ she asked him. ‘Bermuda wasn’t it?’
Curzon frowned: their interactions were usually solely functional, borderline chilly. He had never hidden his dislike of her: an antagonism that seemed to be partly a knee-jerk reaction to her piercings and tatts, etc., but also because she had Opinions. To Curzon, Opinions were the exclusive domain of the pathologist, not of some gobby technician with ideas above her station – especially one who sometimes had the temerity to question something he had overlooked on a body.
‘It was very agreeable,’ he said, visibly puffing up. ‘I was at The Loren, at Pink Beach? A delightful spot, and my paper was very well received.’ This last with a smile that aimed for modest and fell at the hurdle of smug.
‘It sounds great,’ she enthused, before handing him the coroner’s report on Sophia’s death. There was method in her charm offensive. Curzon could be a slapdash operator at the best of times, keen to get through the list and back to his private practice, but she also knew, via Archie, that Curzon’s wife had killed herself, which meant he tended to bring personal baggage to the suicides they saw.
Cassie wasn’t about to let Sophia get a raw deal. Still, it must be two years since Curzon had come home to the terrible sight of his wife hanging from a ceiling joist of their garage. Perhaps he’d come to terms with it by now?
Curzon glanced down at Bronte. ‘Another narcissist who didn’t care about wasting valuable police time and resources,’ he said, in a voice etched with acid.
Or not.
‘What’s wrong with a quiet overdose in bed? At least that doesn’t upset the neighbours.’ He handed the report back to her with a dismissive sniff. ‘She was on drugs I assume?’
‘The police report says there was what appeared to be synthetic cannabinoid at the scene.’
Reaching out a gloved hand, he flipped Sophia’s poor damaged head from side to side, making Cassie wince. ‘No doubt as to the CoD anyway. Fracture dislocation of C-spine and significant head injury due to collision with terra firma. The lividity suggests she lay undiscovered for at least four hours.’
He was referring to the mauve colour that stained the left side of Sophia’s face like a birthmark, which could also be seen on her left shoulder, upper arm, and hip: not bruising, but the result of her blood pooling and coagulating where her body had lain closest to the ground.
‘I did notice an abrasion,’ said Cassie carefully, turning Sophia’s right hand upwards to show him the palm. ‘Hard to see how that fits with the rest of the injuries? From the fractures to the left arm it’s clear that side took the impact,’ extending her own arm to demonstrate.
Curzon’s mouth went down at the corners. Barely glancing at the grazed hand, he shrugged. ‘She probably scraped it on something on the way down. I think we can file it under “not significant”’ – sending Cassie a warning look.
