Nothing from Evie.
‘Tradesmen were renovating the house. It was up for sale. What did you think was going to happen?’
‘I would have found somewhere else to hide,’ she replies, making it sound obvious.
‘What about Sid and Nancy?’
She can’t answer me. It annoys her. ‘I want you to leave.’
‘Why?’
‘You ask too many stupid questions.’
‘Does that make you angry?’
‘Yes.’
‘What else makes you angry?’
‘Sweeping generalisations. Hypocrites. Being blamed for something I didn’t do. People who hurt children.’
‘Were you hurt?’
‘Why do you jump to that?’
‘I’m interested.’
‘It’s all in the files.’
‘No, it’s not,’ I say. ‘You keep telling different stories to different people.’
‘Maybe the truth changes.’
Evie reaches for my arm and pushes up the sleeve, rolling it over my forearm to reveal a hummingbird hovering above a flower.
‘I’m going to get a tattoo,’ she says.
‘Anything in particular?’
‘Something bold and unexpected. No butterflies or flowers or birds.’
‘I like birds.’
‘Mine is going to make a statement.’ She traces the outline of the hummingbird. ‘Does it hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re being honest.’
‘Always.’
‘That’s a lie.’
‘Do you ever hear voices, Evie?’
‘No.’
‘Are you anxious?’
‘Not especially.’
‘What are you most frightened of?’
‘The people who want me dead.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Nameless men.’
‘Do you have a gift?’
‘No.’
‘What about a curse?’
Evie lifts her head to look at me, her eyes like a mirror, reflecting my image back to me.
‘Yes.’
10
The mortuary manager is a thin man, with a hook nose and nostrils like sinkholes that draw attention away from everything else on his face. I try not to stare at them as I show him my business card, asking to see Dr Robert Ness.
‘You’re not police,’ he says, stating the obvious.
‘I’m assisting in a murder investigation.’
The manager eyes me suspiciously, as though my true mission is to steal body parts. A call is made. Permission granted. I sign the visitors’ book and look into the camera, letting my picture be captured, laminated and hung around my neck.
The mortuary is on the fourth floor of the Queen’s Medical Centre, which has always seemed odd to me because I feel like it belongs in the basement, closer to where we all finish. Dust to dust and all that.
A trainee pathologist in green scrubs collects me from the reception area and leads me down a long corridor past post mortem suites with stainless steel operating slabs and banks of halogen lights angled from above.
‘You’re late,’ says Ness, peeling off his gloves and tossing them into a hazard waste bin. His dark hands are preternaturally pale from the talc that lingers on his fingers. He raises his arms and an assistant unties his stained scrubs and takes the protective glasses from his forehead.
Jodie’s body is lying on the slab with cross-stitches running from her torso to her pubic bone, showing where her organs were removed, weighed and examined. The stitches are haphazard because Jodie has no need of a pretty scar. Under the bright lights, the whiteness of her flesh makes her look like a marble statue with a tangle of blue veins lying just beneath the surface of her skin. Small for her age with narrow hips and muscled legs from skating, her arms are scored by scratches and her eye sockets look like pools of purple dye.
Ness reaches up and switches off the microphone above his head and turns away, grimacing in pain when he puts weight on his right leg.
‘Everything OK?’
‘Gout,’ he mutters, as if no other explanation were needed. ‘My doctor wants me to give up smoking, drinking and eating rich foods. I think he’s in cahoots with my wife. Maybe they’re sleeping together.’
‘If she wanted you dead she wouldn’t care so much.’
‘True.’
Another assistant approaches with a clipboard, needing a signature. Ness signs with a flourish. ‘Tell the lab I want those bloods done by the morning.’
‘What did you find?’ I ask.
‘More questions than answers.’
Stepping towards the bench, he picks up a white sheet, which he draws over Jodie’s body, leaving only her face exposed. Tucking the sheet beneath her chin, he strokes her cheek like a father saying goodbye to his daughter. Finally, he moves away, as though not wanting to speak in front of her.
‘The semen in her hair will give us a DNA signature. She had nothing internally, but a small trace on her right thigh, along with evidence of a lubricant, which suggests a condom was used. I found no evidence of vaginal tearing or bruising, so the intercourse may have been consensual – at least at first.’
‘Why have sex with her and then ejaculate in her hair?’
‘That’s your area, not mine,’ says Ness, drinking from a bottle of water, not letting the plastic touch his lips. He wipes his mouth. ‘Jodie had dirt under her fingernails, but no skin cells or obvious defence injuries. The scratches came from brambles and branches.’
‘You mentioned a blow to the head.’
‘Some sort of blunt force trauma, which caused a hairline fracture of the parietal bone, but no internal bleeding.’ Ness indicates the back of his skull. ‘She might not have seen it coming. Most likely it knocked her unconscious or disorientated her. She had pondwater in her lungs, which suggests she either fell or was pushed from the footbridge.’
He tosses the empty water bottle in a bin. It rattles around the edge before it drops.
‘Jodie didn’t remove her own clothing. Her jeans were pulled down while she was lying on her back. She didn’t get up again.’
‘How did she die?’
‘That’s a good question,’ says Ness, in no hurry to answer it. He walks to a nearby bench and begins swapping his shoes. ‘Have you ever heard of dry-drowning?’
‘No.’
‘When we inhale water into our lungs, we cut off oxygen to the body, which begins to shut down. Once we take a lungful of air, we cough up the water and usually begin breathing normally again. Everything is fine . . . except for when it’s not.’
Ness can see my confusion.
‘There is a condition called secondary or delayed drowning. With young children it can happen in a matter of seconds, but the process typically takes longer in adults – hours or days. It tends to affect people who have damaged lungs, or pulmonary illnesses. Jodie Sheehan suffered a bout of pneumonia eight months ago and was hospitalised.’
‘You’re saying she drowned on dry land.’
‘Possibly. Theoretically. I think she fell or was thrown from the footbridge. Maybe the cold water brought her round. She crawled out but was struggling to breathe because her diaphragm couldn’t create the necessary respiratory movements. This made her sluggish. Slow.’