The Distant Dead, Lesley Thomson [simple e reader .TXT] 📗

him against the pain of seeing someone’s loved person, whole and as if asleep, be butchered, however skilfully, by a pathologist. It was that very finesse which upset Cotton. Stamping on the tiled floor as the chill seeped through his soles, he felt as if Maple Greenhill was to be murdered all over again.

As Northcote worked, he murmured a commentary which Alberta Porter, his pretty and very capable secretary, perched on a camping stool, took down in shorthand. Porter’s sensible brogues were yet not sensible enough for the wading into rivers and ditches she did to assist her boss examine a corpse in situ. Northcote called Porter his right-hand girl.

While Northcote talked about listening to the corpse, Cotton heard only silence. Maple Greenhill would never speak again.

Today, Cotton felt that, aside from assisting the pathologist, Alberta Porter was also there to represent her own sex. Porter’s cool and steady manner equalled Northcote’s, but now, Cotton knew, the rising pink in cheeks that never saw rouge was for the blunt-faced blokes, himself included, who were gawping at Maple Greenhill in the altogether.

The doctor believed all his deceased – including hanged murderers and the ‘ladies of the night’ of whom he so disapproved – deserved his best. He delved into the truth of their deaths however they had lived.

Cotton knew Northcote suffered with his back but he never spoke of the pain. Lifting out Maple’s organs – kidneys, liver, her heart: ‘healthy as the day she was born, no appendix’ – he passed them to White, ready to receive them into enamel dishes.

Somewhat soothed by the background splashing and gurgling as White chased runnels of blood into the gutters with water from a rubber hose, and by the scratching of Alberta Porter’s HB2 pencil, Cotton made himself concentrate on Northcote’s findings.

‘…as I said at the scene, Greenhill was strangled. The hyoid bone is broken. There’s evidence of damage to the larynx, see this bruising to the skin around the neck?’ He indicated Maple’s skin, now lifeless as tallow, with the tip of a blade of what Cotton knew was a cartilage knife. ‘It’s livid where the blood settled after he flung her down. Gravity’s pull. That’s skin in her nails, one hair from the pubic region, I suspect from their consensual love-making. She didn’t argue. Blunt force trauma at the back of the skull. As I said early this morning she was probably hit by an ash tray, a square one judging by the indentation.’

‘That nail’s broken.’ Cotton tried to avoid pre-empting Northcote. Like his mother always said, don’t go telling the doctor what’s wrong with you. Now he pointed at the middle finger of Maple’s right hand.

‘Unrelated. Down to cheap varnish, these girls don’t look after themselves, with their sordid existence, they’re used up by thirty. She had a way to go, look at this lovely elastic skin.’ Northcote’s brow furrowed. A highly respected expert witness, he carried the jury with him the moment he stepped into the box. Defence counsels buckled before his opinion, uttered with granite authority. True to science, Northcote wasn’t swayed by prejudice. However, a practising Christian, he loathed prostitutes.

‘It is a hard life.’ Cotton was one of the few prepared to part company with Northcote. ‘It would help if men didn’t go after them.’

‘Most lives are hard, George, but can you see your daughter resorting to this?’ Handing Porter his white coat for laundering, Northcote indicated Maple, her ravaged body shrouded now under a sheet. He began scrubbing his hands over the sink, working up a carbolic lather, sluicing to his elbows.

‘No, but—’

‘Blimey, what cat was that?’ White was looking at livid score marks which ran the length of Northcote’s forearm.

‘Bloody wife’s rose-bush.’ Northcote rolled down his sleeves and, businesslike, clipped gold links into his cuffs.

‘You want to watch for sepsis, sir,’ White warned.

‘Julia slathered me in iodine, unnecessary fuss.’ His back to Porter holding out his overcoat, Northcote shrugged it on.

Outside in the yard, Alberta Porter climbed in the passenger seat of Northcote’s Daimler. The two men sheltered from a vicious wind by the entrance to Hammersmith Crematorium, next door to the morgue. Failing to find his lighter, Northcote accepted Cotton’s match. Like a conclave’s signal, the detective and the pathologist sent wreaths of blue smoke up to the dull grey sky. Job done.

‘I’m thinking Maple knew her assailant. She had dressed up for last night.’ Cotton looked through the car window at Porter leafing through her notes. Few pathologists took personal secretaries with them to the morgue or the places of execution. Northcote treated Porter as one of the boys. Cotton liked that about him.

‘That’s your department, Cotton, you know my view. These French Annies have to dress to command the cash. Empty houses are a tart’s Mecca.’

‘It’s the wrong sort of looking good. She was dressing for a man she loved, not for some drunk soldier on leave.’ Cotton was always disappointed by Northcote’s crude language; although it was how blokes at the station talked, Northcote was an educated church-goer. Cotton crushed his cigarette on the asphalt. ‘We found two cigarette butts in the grate. If there was an ashtray, her killer removed it. They stopped for a smoke. Most of the girls I meet don’t hang about, time is money.’

‘They ring the last blood from the stone, stupid risk.’ Northcote looked pained. ‘Oliver Hurrell was a smoker, the chap whose home she decorated. Those butts were probably his.’

They both hated it when the victim was a young woman, whatever her occupation. Northcote performed hundreds of autopsies every week, he was one of the fastest which was why the police liked him on the job. Fearless, he dodged bombs, crossing and recrossing London, cutting open the dead killed by raids, blackout accidents, natural causes and murder.

‘Perhaps.’ Cotton knew Northcote and his wife had problems. The doctor had once said that, with their son at boarding school, Julia Northcote got lonely and gin was her preferred medicine. Cotton’s wife Agnes had said it wasn’t