A Room Full of Killers, Michael Wood [best books for students to read txt] 📗

Claire Alexander was an acutely professional woman. She was all for office banter and gossip but her body language told Matilda she thought there was a time and a place for that, and it was not in the Digital Autopsy Suite. She pressed a few keys on the keyboard and the scanning of Ryan Asher began. It took minutes. Eventually, an X-ray image of the fifteen-year-old killer came up on the large computer screen. Claire looked at it briefly before selecting the trunk of the body and rescanned it to get a closer look at the areas where he was stabbed.

‘As I’m sure you know, Matilda, skin is the most resistant soft tissue to stab wounds in the body. It takes effort to penetrate it. Once you’re through very little force is needed to penetrate what lies beneath.’

‘So you’ll be able to see exactly what damage each stab wound did?’

‘Absolutely. Look at the heart—’

‘Can you point it out for me?’ Matilda said trying to make sense of the black-and-white X-ray.

Claire circled the heart with her index finger. ‘See that black blob? In layman’s terms, that is air. The edge of the heart, here … you can see a disruption. That is where the knife stabbed the heart.’

‘So he stabbed the heart, letting air in?’

‘That’s right. Obviously, you don’t want air in your heart. This darker shade of grey outside of the heart is blood. The heart is still pumping and blood is rapidly seeping out of the organ and into the chest cavity.’

‘Is that what killed him? A stab wound to the heart?’

‘There are twelve penetrating injuries on the body. I’ve no idea what order they came in. This one would definitely have done it but so would the ones to his lungs too. Look here.’ Again Claire pointed out the lungs for Matilda’s benefit and showed how the punctured lung had let in air and deflated. ‘This would have caused a pneumothorax and would almost certainly have killed him too.’

‘He could have been killed twelve times over,’ Adele said, leaning in to the screen.

‘If we look at the 3D image.’ Claire clicked with the mouse and a brilliantly clear image of Ryan Asher came up on-screen. It showed the ribs and organs perfectly. Matilda didn’t need anything pointed out this time. ‘You can see the deflation of the organs more clearly.’

‘What’s that there?’ Matilda asked, pointing to a very large balloon-like object towards the bottom of the screen.

‘That would be his bladder. It’s quite full and probably the only thing that wasn’t stabbed.’

‘And what about this ribbing here?’

Adele suppressed a laugh and turned away.

‘What? Have I said something I shouldn’t have?’

‘The ribbing is the elastic from his underwear,’ Claire said with a small smile on her lips.

‘Oh.’ Matilda turned red with embarrassment. ‘Well, it’s incredibly detailed, isn’t it?’

‘So what happens now?’ Matilda asked once she and Adele were back in the pathologist’s office.

Even with the air conditioning on in the Digital Autopsy Suite, the closed space and the number of people had made it warmer. When they left, Matilda had felt damp. She wiped her forehead and ran her fingers through her hair. Her hand came away wet. Maybe she was warm. Maybe it was the sweat from an impending anxiety attack. Either way, a bottle of water from Adele’s table-top fridge was enough to cool her down.

‘Ryan will be brought in for a full invasive post-mortem.’

‘I didn’t think you’d need to do one.’

‘In a forensics case, such as this, we always need to do an invasive post-mortem. It’s just that, now I’ve seen the scans and X-rays, I know the areas to concentrate on. When your lovely ACC rang and so pleasantly asked for Ryan to be bumped up the queue I thought she’d want the very best treatment so I took it upon myself to book in a digital autopsy.’

Matilda smiled and felt herself relax.

‘Tell her from me she can expect a bill for five hundred pounds coming her way very soon.’

‘Are you doing more of these digital autopsies?’

‘We would do if you lot would put your hands in your pockets. You’ve no idea how effective they are in a forensic case. Ryan Asher is still in the body bag, yet we’ve been able to see how he died, what happened to him internally, without losing a shred of evidence. Once I’ve cut him open it’s not like I can put him back together as he was before. Now, I can go into the invasive PM knowing exactly what to look for.’

‘Well, from now on, I want a digital autopsy done on all my cases that come through here. Screw the cost. I’ll sneak it through somehow.’

Adele smiled. ‘You’ll have made Claire’s day with that remark.’

‘She seemed a bit feistier than usual today.’

‘You don’t mess around in Claire’s autopsy suite.’

‘When will you be doing the full PM?’

‘You sound like Valerie Masterson.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’ll do him next. From the X-rays and 3D imaging I counted the stab wounds – eight in the stomach, three in the chest, and one in the shoulder. I can tell you in what order to stab a person to make the death linger but I have no idea in which order Ryan was stabbed. Only the killer can tell you that.’

‘It seems like he knew what he was doing. By the look of things, he punctured all the major organs,’ Matilda said, taking another sip of cold water. ‘Is that why there was so much blood at the scene?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you be able to check for a needle mark or something? I find it very difficult to believe Ryan just hopped onto the pool table and allowed himself to be stabbed to death.’

‘Don’t worry. If he was drugged, I’ll find it. I’ll send samples of his blood and stomach contents off to be analysed. Fancy coming over for dinner tonight?’

‘How you can ask that question in the same sentence as stomach contents and not want to vomit is beyond me.’ Matilda half-smiled.

‘I can