The First Time Ever by L M Krier

Author:L M Krier [Krier, L M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General Fiction
Published: 2017-12-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eighteen

James, the young pathologist, was certainly looking more cheerful than Ted felt at the prospect of an early morning post-mortem on a young female victim on Boxing Day.

Now that they had a name for their victim, he began with giving her details for the tape which would be running constantly for his findings as he went along. As he’d told Ted, he was only doing the preliminaries. A post-mortem on a murder victim needed to be done by a Home Office pathologist, in this case, Professor Gillingham. But James could at least give Ted something to be going on with, to get the enquiry started.

‘I’m about to make the first incision, which is the part that some people find the most disturbing to watch,’ James warned him. ‘Ironic, really, as I’m afraid there is far more gruesome still to come. Will you be all right, do you think?’

Ted wasn’t sure himself. He usually had a strong stomach but this was a whole new area for him. The clinical surroundings somehow made the pathologist’s actions worse; a violation of the already damaged corpse in front of them.

‘I’ll just have to hope for the best. It’s my first PM, too, so please excuse me in advance if I lose my breakfast. Well, I only had a cup of tea, just in case.’

‘Here we go, then. Bite down on your cough sweet, think of England and all that. And remember, it’s a perfectly human reaction to feel repelled by this. It’s only odd types like us pathologists who are past such emotion. If anyone tells you otherwise, don’t trust them.’

Ted managed better than he feared he might. At the end of the examination, he knew more about the victim than he had done before. James put her at about sixteen and put the time of death as approximately mid-evening on Christmas Eve. Although she was slightly built, James confirmed that she was fit, well toned. He suggested she may have done something like long-distance running, based on her musculature.

‘We will, of course, be testing for any kind of trace of her attacker on her. Whoever raped her, and I’m almost certain from what I’ve seen that this was rape and not consensual, obligingly did it without a condom. We should get lucky with DNA from that source, if he’s on record, but I’m afraid the results won’t be speedy, not at this time of year.

‘I’ll email you my findings as soon as I possibly can. The preliminaries, at least, until the Professor approves the final version. He should be back later today. Various tests for drugs, alcohol, and so on will take a little longer. I’m inclined to hope she was drunk or drugged. At least that way she wouldn’t have known much about what was happening to her.

‘Poor lass, not a nice way to end up, and I’m sure it’s just rare sentimentality on my part, but it always seems much worse when something like this happens at Christmas.’

Ted was surprised that he felt hungry when he left the hospital after the post-mortem.

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