Ritual Demise: A Cavendish & Walker Novel - Book 7 by Sally Rigby

Author:Sally Rigby [Rigby, Sally]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Top Drawer Press
Published: 2020-08-24T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nineteen

Whitney hurried down the corridor towards the lab where she was due to meet Claire. She hoped the pathologist would have something for her because despite further door-to-door enquiries they’d received nothing useful, nor had any of the press conferences generated anything worth following up on. It was like this murderer operated in a vacuum.

Claire was standing in the centre of the lab. She was wearing a white coat which didn’t hide her spotted, navy, wide-legged trousers. Whitney had an inward bet with herself that the top Claire was wearing would be clashing and patterned.

‘Morning, Claire,’ she said.

Claire turned around. Whitney had won her bet. She was sporting a mustard and brown paisley blouse with a bow at the neck.

‘Hello,’ Claire said, smiling broadly.

She did a double take. It wasn’t yet nine-thirty in the morning and Claire was cheerful. In all of the years she’d known the pathologist, those two things had never gone together.

‘You seem happy,’ she said, deciding to broach the subject.

‘That’s because I enjoy my work.’

‘I thought you always enjoyed your work, but we rarely get a smile from you, especially early in the morning. In fact, very often you don’t smile at all, whatever time of day or night.’

‘I’ll accept that,’ Claire said. ‘But despite the hour, I was anxious to get in today because these bodies are proving extremely fascinating. So much so, deliberating on them is keeping me up at night. I couldn’t wait to get to work this morning.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ she said shrugging.

‘Come over here and take a look at the latest victim. I’ll explain everything.’

Whitney stepped forward and stared at the body lying on the table. It had the usual Y-shaped incision from where Claire had done her work and there was dried blood all over the victim’s stomach, head, face, feet, and hands.

‘He’s a mess,’ she said, shaking her head. She hoped Claire would clean him up before his father came for the formal identification.

‘I’ve never come across anything like this,’ Claire said.

Whitney frowned. ‘What do you mean? Surely there isn’t much you haven’t seen in your years of undertaking post-mortems.’

‘As we discussed yesterday at the crime scene, the victim appeared to have been dragged along the ground and this caused some serious damage. All his clothes were ripped, and his body had taken a severe beating. But he was also stabbed.’ She pointed to a wound on the stomach. ‘I didn’t see that until he was on the table.’

‘And that’s what killed him?’ Whitney asked.

‘No. I don’t believe so. Have a look around the neck.’ She pointed to the dark brown ligature mark, with a red band either side. ‘This mark is what we’d expect to see on a person who’d been hanged with a rope.’

‘So, you think someone hanged him before dragging and stabbing him?’ Whitney asked.

‘No, I don’t believe that was the cause of death, either. But he did have a noose around his neck and the dragging is what caused the raised imprints. See, they’re pointing upwards? That’s a result of him being pulled along at speed.

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