Crossed Out by Malcolm Hollingdrake

Author:Malcolm Hollingdrake [Hollingdrake, Malcolm]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: calibre
Published: 2018-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

22

Owen stood momentarily on his toes as he peered down at the three people working around Ian Fella's naked body. He was used to the cloying atmosphere that seemed to hit you physically. He could never quite put his finger on it; even though the temperature appeared fine he always seemed to feel uncomfortably hot. It could be nerves or maybe it was just him.

He concentrated on the corpse that seemed vulnerably exposed, only then did he recall Mrs Fleet's words, “You’ve not met Ian, have you?” Here he was, broken and in some ways undignified; the rope lay on a small side table. The reddened flesh at the lower part of the body seemed in stark contrast to the upper part of the torso.

Caner talked his way through the removal of the thoracic and abdominal organs before handing them over to an assistant. They were weighed and their general condition noted before being moved to a further work station for a more detailed analysis. To Owen, the room suddenly seemed brighter than usual and he could feel the perspiration bead along his forehead. He took a deep breath but kept his eyes focused on Caner and his colleagues.

“We’ll be moving to the neck shortly, blood and tissue samples will be screened. Toxicology results shouldn’t take too long. Are you all right?”

Owen just smiled and waved a hand, thankful of the glass screen that separated them. Somehow he felt more secure than being in the same space.

“Why the blackening to the neck?”

“There are a number of types of hanging; this one was a slow one, a strangulation. It was painful I’m afraid and probably quite prolonged. Looking at some of the damage to the elbows and heels there was a degree of severe thrashing of these limbs against the building’s surface. Scratch marks to the neck here and here, you will see them clearly on the screen, suggest he had second thoughts and tried to ease the pressure on the neck and allow air passage, but once the steps had been removed he had little hope, unless of course, the rope or hook had given way. That could account for the greater movement but my experience tells me that in strangulations you tend to find the body squirms and fights. The blackening to the skin is due to the heat caused by friction of the ligature. You’ll notice here that displacement was to the right owing to that movement…”

Owen heard the words “decorticate” and “decerebrate rigidity” but they passed well over his head. He was focussed on the man and not the body. He wondered what could drive someone to go through that. What could they have done that required such a devastating and undignified end? Surely nothing is more frightening than tying a rope around your neck and then kicking away the only means of staying alive.

“…Fracture of the thyroid and hyoid, normal considering the age of the victim. They ossify. We know that there was a fixed knot

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