Suffer the Children by Cheryl Rees-Price

Author:Cheryl Rees-Price [Rees-Price, Cheryl]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: THE BOOK FOLKS bestselling crime fiction publishers
Published: 2020-10-03T20:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Meadows could hear laughter as he approached Daisy’s office. The door was ajar, and he could see Daisy with her head turned towards a man perched on the edge of the desk. He had a mop of dark brown hair and steel rimmed glasses. Meadows guessed him to be in his thirties. He sat with an easy manner, his smile flirtatious. He stood when he saw Meadows and Edris approach.

Daisy turned her head. ‘Hi, you just caught us taking a break.’ She smiled. ‘This is Theo, he’s a forensic anthropologist. He came down last night to take a look at our little miss.’

Meadows introduced himself as he stepped forward and shook hands with Theo. ‘Thank you for coming so quickly.’

‘No problem,’ Theo said. ‘I know Daisy from years back, we studied together.’

Meadows was horrified to feel a sudden stab of jealousy.

‘Come on, I’ll show you what we’ve discovered so far, it’s not a lot I’m afraid.’ Daisy led them out of the office.

They entered the morgue and Meadows felt the temperature drop. Bright strip lights illuminated the sterile, stainless steel worktops and a faint chemical smell hung in the air. They gathered around a trolley where the pitifully small remains were laid out.

‘We can now confirm that it is a little girl.’ Daisy snapped on latex gloves.

‘How do you know?’ Edris asked.

‘While there are some sexually distinctive traits in the mandible, this alone is not enough to reliably allocate a sex,’ Theo said. ‘So, we took samples of bone and ran DNA tests. Nuclear DNA–’

Daisy laughed. ‘I think you’re in danger of losing Edris.’

‘Yeah, I think we’ll stop at the DNA testing,’ Edris agreed.

‘We found a fracture to her skull which we couldn’t see until we got her out of the ground.’ Daisy turned the small skull and pointed to the injury.

‘Is that how she died?’ Meadows asked.

‘I can’t say with certainty, it may have been enough to cause a bleed to the brain. Then again, it could have been done post-mortem. My best guess is that it’s likely that the head injury was contributory to her death. There are no other signs of trauma to the bones.’

‘Any idea how long she’s been in the ground?’

Daisy looked at Theo. ‘You go ahead but keep it simple.’

‘We tested the soil and took into consideration how she was wrapped. That, together with the tests we ran on the bones, gives us an estimate of about twenty-five, thirty years. That’s our best guess. It could be more, or less. We have to run some more tests but I’m afraid it’s difficult to give an accurate timeframe.’

‘You guys must have been working all night,’ Edris said.

‘We did work quite late,’ Daisy said. ‘But she deserves no less attention than if she’d only been in the ground a few days.’

‘I couldn’t agree more,’ Meadows said. ‘We’ll do all we can to find her identity.’

‘Theo, do you want to take them through to the lab and show them what else we found? I’ll just scrub up.

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