Impurity (DI Gardener 1)

Chapter Twelve

By the time Gardener and Reilly arrived at the mortuary, they had been on duty for twelve hours with no sleep and little in the way of breaks. Navigating the weekend lunchtime traffic through the centre of Leeds had been a nightmare. Their patience wearing thin, they made their way through the empty building, their footsteps echoing loudly down the corridors.

They found Fitz in Theatre 1, which was long and low-ceilinged with bright strip lighting. Four steel gurneys, each occupied, lined the walls. Fitz stood at the sink removing his gloves and mask.

“I thought I might have seen you two before now.”

Gardener noted the pathologist’s agitation. He liked that in Fitz, his no-nonsense attitude.

He always told you what he thought, despite your rank. Gardener recalled the first time they’d met. On being introduced, George Fitzgerald had asked the young, fresh-faced Gardener to go to the boot of his car and collect a brown paper parcel. When Fitz opened the package, it contained a human heart. Gardener had felt nauseous for the rest of the day.

“Such a long day when you have nothing to do,” Reilly joked.

“Nothing to do? I think I’ve been on my feet as long as you two. And I reckon I’ve put more constructive hours in.”

“In that case, you should have plenty for us.”

Fitz hesitated – a bad sign. The pathologist put on a fresh set of gloves. “You’d better follow me.”

The two detectives followed Fitz down the hall to another examining room. The decaying corpse had been sectioned to solitary confinement.

“I’ve never seen anything like it. Whatever attacked the body is still eating away at it.” Fitz removed the sheet and pointed at what was left.

To Gardener’s horror, the body had deteriorated since the previous evening. He struggled to convince himself that, only twenty-four hours earlier, it had been a living human being.

A few strands of hair dangled helplessly on the skull. Lingering remnants of once healthy tissue clung to the bones, no longer pink but brown, almost black. An eye gawked accusingly at the two detectives from the base of the cranium. A pair of false teeth perched precariously between the mandibles. Gardener leaned over for a closer examination and caught sight of a finger bone floating within the liquefied area where a hand used to be. The foul smell assaulted his nostrils.

“Fuck me!” said Reilly.

“I told you.”

Gardener wondered what could have caused such complete destruction. He turned to Fitz. The man was tired. His normally tall, lean frame stooped. Fitz’s wrinkled complexion, combined with the exhaustion in his face, easily gave away his sixty years. The pathologist’s half-lens glasses, still speckled with blood, perched lower down his nose than they should be, on the verge of falling off.

“Can you tell me anything?” asked Gardener.

“The only fact I have at the moment is the skeleton belongs to an elderly male, approximately sixty years of age. I can’t do a normal post-mortem. As you can see, there’s nothing left. All the major organs had been completely destroyed before I could make an inspection. His brain, heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, all gone. There’s nothing but bones and mush. Extensive degradation due to proteolysis.”

“Which means what?”

“All the proteins have broken down. I’ve taken tissue samples for analysis.”

“You’ve no idea what caused it?”

“None. Because of the advanced putrefaction, I had to work pretty quickly. I’ve taken hair samples, which can be tested for drugs, and I managed to acquire some urine. Hopefully, toxicology will tell us something. I would have liked at least one major organ to work with for histology.”

“What about acid?” Reilly asked.

“It’s possible, but acid usually leaves a residue on the bones. Most acids leave something of themselves behind. For example, if sulphuric acid had been used, the bones wouldn’t have dissolved. There would have been an insoluble coating of calcium sulphate, which would show on the bones as a strange, off-white, almost yellow colour. But acid doesn’t usually leave bones. I remember the case of John George Haigh in 1949.”

Oh, God, thought Gardener, here he goes.

“He’s probably the most celebrated of the acid murderers. He had an acid bath at his factory in Crawley, Sussex. Dropped a Mrs...” Fitz paused, sucked in breath, “Durand-Deacon in it. If a human body is submerged in acid, it will be completely digested, bones and all. Haigh’s mistake was that her body wasn’t fully immersed. A little bit of the feet were left above the level of the compound.

“One of the doctors investigating the case found a gallstone on the ground outside the factory where Haigh had dumped her sludge. He also discovered the remnants of the bones of the feet and believe it or not, her false teeth. They were identified by her dentist, and Haigh was convicted.”

“That’s all very entertaining, Fitz, but we’re investigating this body, not some woman who was killed while you were serving your apprenticeship.”

Fitz snorted. “It’s not an acid, in my opinion. Whatever it is, it started on the inside and worked its way out. It’s dissolved all of the soft tissue, but not the clothing or the bones. It’s a new one on me.”