Read Online Born in a Burial Gown by Mike Craven - Free Book Online

have a lab.’
    He went back to the body and moved the big overhead light above her head. Fluke handed the tube to the SOCO man who put it into an evidence bag. Out the corner of his eye, Fluke noticed Lucy walk over and ask to see it.
    ‘It’s difficult to be sure, but it looks like there’s some slight haemorrhaging in the eyes,’ Sowerby said, looking at Fluke.
    ‘Strangled?’
    ‘Normally I’d say that’s as good a guess as anything right now but there’s nothing else to support that. No marks on the neck.’
    ‘What then?’ Towler asked.
    ‘Patience, boy. We’ve only just started. We won’t leave here until you and Avison have something,’ Sowerby said, not unkindly. Everyone in the room had the same goal.
    ‘Looks like she may have had cosmetic surgery at some point; nose correction, poor one by the look. If they’ve moved bone around, I’ll know more when I open her up. Nothing else of note on the anterior.’
    As the body was carefully turned over, Sowerby commented, ‘She’s been moved after death occurred. No uniform lividity.’
    Fluke knew that if a corpse lay undisturbed, livor mortis, where blood obeyed the laws of gravity and settled at the lowest point, set in. If someone died on their back then the blood drained from their front and settled underneath before clotting, causing a difference in colour. White on top, purple on the bottom, like cream on raspberries. If the body was moved before the process had finished then lividity was interrupted and livor wouldn’t be uniform. The victim on the table had purple and white patches competing with each other. She had been moved in the first few hours after her death. It didn’t really help; it only confirmed what they already suspected – that the building site wasn’t where she’d been killed.
    Fluke noticed Lucy had finished looking at whatever had been found under the victim’s nails and was back observing. Earlier, he’d wondered if she’d ever attended a PM before. Now he knew.
    She was obviously struggling with being in the proximity of a dead body, and he wondered whether she’d asked to see the sample just to take time out. Her eyes were red and glistening but she was yet to cry.
    Wait until the bone saw buzzes into life and the top of the head comes off.
    In those situations, people sometimes gave up and left. Fluke had experienced it, the embarrassed pause while the person walked out. It shouldn’t be, but it was a walk of shame. She appeared determined to stay, however. She was making notes, pages of them, by the look of it. Sowerby had let her have a look at the body before he started with the external examination, and she’d stated there were no signs of insect activity. Fluke would give her a call the next day, find out how she was and what ‘no insect activity’ meant in her world. He suspected it meant that the victim had been either stuffed in the bag immediately or it had been too cold. It was probably both.
    Sowerby glanced up, saw where Fluke was looking and gave him a slight nod of approval.
    He bent back down. ‘Gotcha,’ he said quietly. ‘Avison, come over here and have a look.’
    Fluke bent over to see what he was pointing at.
    ‘Shit,’ he said. The room seemed to get colder.
     
    The bullet hole was in the back of her skull; partially covered by hair but still visible. There was some surrounding blood on the wound which had clotted and was almost black.
    ‘There is a hole in the occipital bone,’ Sowerby said for the recorder. ‘Possible GSW. Photographs, please.’
    The technician moved round with his camera.
    Fluke knew Sowerby would say nothing definite until he had cold, hard facts to support it but they all knew; she’d been shot.
    Execution style, he thought.
    A bullet hole ruled out someone covering up an accidental death. It had been a long shot anyway. FMIT officially had what Fluke had known since midday; a murder to investigate.
    Fluke also knew that the bullet hole could reveal a lot