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Authors: John Burdett
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perimeter walls of the compound was a magic castle where a policeman could find refuge from the surging masses. It had air conditioning too.
Chan paused for a moment in the reception area in Arsenal House. He had asked for three-dimensional impressions of Polly, Jekyll and Hyde, in the form of plaster busts. This was expensive, and he’d expected to be refused. But the request form had returned the same day with an endorsement by the commissioner himself.
He telephoned Angie, the forensic artist, whose studio formed part of the corridor occupied by the identification bureau, then asked a female constable at reception to ring down to forensic. The dentist, a part-timer who ran his own private practice two blocks away, was waiting for them. They took a lift, emerged into a government issue corridor: linoleum the color of lead, cream paint that had oozed down the walls like lava and dried in waves. At the end was a door marked “Government Laboratory.”
The lab had its own reception. The options were odontology, toxicology, forensic anthropology, serology. The ballistics and firearms identification bureau was in another building. For disciplines not in frequent demand it was still possible for experts to be brought in on retainer from outside government service, which was the case with odontology, although over the years the government laboratory had built up an autonomous expertise in most branches of forensic science.
Dr. Lam was in the small laboratory off the reception area. Chan noticed the white coat, thick lenses, hard features of an old pro indifferent to pain. Other people’s anyway. Three plastic jaws were laid out on a Formica bench top. Each jaw carried a neat red tag with a number printed in black. A copy of his report was open next to them.
“How can I help?”
Chan lit a cigarette, saw a no smoking sign, put it out, twitched instead. “Great report, really good. It helps us a lot. Just a couple of questions. I mean, we need to know the state of the teeth—whatd’you call it? the dental profile?—before they were tortured and killed. We also need to know about any damage to the teeth and jaws that happened during the murder.” Never at ease with strangers, he looked at Aston. “Right?”
Aston nodded. “And the numbers. We’re not too clear about them.”
“Numbers?” Dr. Lam frowned. He flicked through his report. “What numbers?”
Aston took out his copy, read: “ ‘31, 32, 16, 17 all have amalgam missing.’ ”
Lam looked from Aston to Chan. “You never had to deal with forensic odontology before?”
Chan cleared his throat and stopped himself on the point of reaching for a cigarette again. “Not really. Not in Mongkok. People bite each other only rarely. For identification, victims usually have identity cards, fingerprints. Now, ask me about fingerprints. Loops, deltas, ridge counts, bifurcations, islands, tented arches, ulnar loops. See, usually we know who the victim is, we just don’t always know who did it.”
Lam pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. They were so thick both eyes were magnified and distorted. It was like looking at two oval fish in a tank.
“I see. Look.”
From a briefcase he took out a laminated diagram of a human mouth. “It’s easy. Easier than fingerprints. The human mouth has thirty-two teeth. Half of them grow from the top part of the jaw, called the maxilla; the other half from the mandible. Half of them are on the right, the other half on the left. Clear so far? So, the convention is to count from upper right to upper left, then from lower left to lower right. That way the upper third molar number one crunches against the lower third molar number thirty-two. The Caucasian female had fillings missing or seriously eroded from most of her molars.”
“Does that indicate violence?”
“Not at all. It indicates neglect. In her youth she had some first-class dental work performed on her mouth. Later she stopped goingto a dentist.
Chan paused for a moment in the reception area in Arsenal House. He had asked for three-dimensional impressions of Polly, Jekyll and Hyde, in the form of plaster busts. This was expensive, and he’d expected to be refused. But the request form had returned the same day with an endorsement by the commissioner himself.
He telephoned Angie, the forensic artist, whose studio formed part of the corridor occupied by the identification bureau, then asked a female constable at reception to ring down to forensic. The dentist, a part-timer who ran his own private practice two blocks away, was waiting for them. They took a lift, emerged into a government issue corridor: linoleum the color of lead, cream paint that had oozed down the walls like lava and dried in waves. At the end was a door marked “Government Laboratory.”
The lab had its own reception. The options were odontology, toxicology, forensic anthropology, serology. The ballistics and firearms identification bureau was in another building. For disciplines not in frequent demand it was still possible for experts to be brought in on retainer from outside government service, which was the case with odontology, although over the years the government laboratory had built up an autonomous expertise in most branches of forensic science.
Dr. Lam was in the small laboratory off the reception area. Chan noticed the white coat, thick lenses, hard features of an old pro indifferent to pain. Other people’s anyway. Three plastic jaws were laid out on a Formica bench top. Each jaw carried a neat red tag with a number printed in black. A copy of his report was open next to them.
“How can I help?”
Chan lit a cigarette, saw a no smoking sign, put it out, twitched instead. “Great report, really good. It helps us a lot. Just a couple of questions. I mean, we need to know the state of the teeth—whatd’you call it? the dental profile?—before they were tortured and killed. We also need to know about any damage to the teeth and jaws that happened during the murder.” Never at ease with strangers, he looked at Aston. “Right?”
Aston nodded. “And the numbers. We’re not too clear about them.”
“Numbers?” Dr. Lam frowned. He flicked through his report. “What numbers?”
Aston took out his copy, read: “ ‘31, 32, 16, 17 all have amalgam missing.’ ”
Lam looked from Aston to Chan. “You never had to deal with forensic odontology before?”
Chan cleared his throat and stopped himself on the point of reaching for a cigarette again. “Not really. Not in Mongkok. People bite each other only rarely. For identification, victims usually have identity cards, fingerprints. Now, ask me about fingerprints. Loops, deltas, ridge counts, bifurcations, islands, tented arches, ulnar loops. See, usually we know who the victim is, we just don’t always know who did it.”
Lam pushed his spectacles up to the bridge of his nose. They were so thick both eyes were magnified and distorted. It was like looking at two oval fish in a tank.
“I see. Look.”
From a briefcase he took out a laminated diagram of a human mouth. “It’s easy. Easier than fingerprints. The human mouth has thirty-two teeth. Half of them grow from the top part of the jaw, called the maxilla; the other half from the mandible. Half of them are on the right, the other half on the left. Clear so far? So, the convention is to count from upper right to upper left, then from lower left to lower right. That way the upper third molar number one crunches against the lower third molar number thirty-two. The Caucasian female had fillings missing or seriously eroded from most of her molars.”
“Does that indicate violence?”
“Not at all. It indicates neglect. In her youth she had some first-class dental work performed on her mouth. Later she stopped goingto a dentist.
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