Wife of the Gods

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Authors: Kwei Quartey
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bashfully and offered a feeble denial, but Dawson
had no doubt that Dr. Biney’s declaration was true.
    “Are we ready to go?” Biney said.
    “We are ready, sir,” Obodai said.
    Dr. Biney turned to the body, standing to its right side as a
doctor always does. Obodai stood at the head, near the sink, and
Dawson took his position on the left. He looked down at the body. A
courier had delivered the police file last night, complete with
photographs of the body at the crime scene, but the Gladys Mensah
now in front of him looked waxy and strangely unreal. He could tell
she had been lovely alive, and he was trying to imagine her
speaking, moving, animated.
    Dawson lightly touched Gladys’s arm. “So cold,” he murmured.
“Once she was warm and breathing.”
    It was what he could never quite get his mind around – not just
how complex life was, but why it was so easy for life to leave a
person once so complex.
    “Only twenty-two years old,” Biney said gently. “It seems a
shame, doesn’t it, Detective Inspector Dawson?”
    “It does.”
    Biney took a deep breath and let out a sigh as if to say, Be
that as it may, we have work to do . He first brought his face
closer to Gladys and examined her slowly from head to toe. He did
not touch her yet.
    “In medical school we were always taught to listen, look, and then feel a patient,” he said. “It’s no different dealing
with a dead person.”
    Dawson watched him, trying at the same time to spot anything on
Gladys’s body that might be significant. She was lean, with
perfectly smooth skin that had likely been the color of milk
chocolate before death had darkened her.
    “Anything catch your eye, Mr. Dawson?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Measurements, Obodai?” Biney said.
    “She weighs fifty-two kilos, and measures one hundred and
seventy-three centimeters long, sir.”
    “Mm-hm. Thank you. No stab or puncture wounds that I can see so
far. Nor contusions, or ecchymoses. No evidence for fractures of
the skull or long bones…” He checked her fingers. “She kept her
nails short – they look clean, but get clippings later, Obodai,
would you?”
    “Very good, sir.”
    “Roll her up?”
    Obodai smoothly and expertly turned Gladys’s body on its side so
Biney could look at her back.
    “Ah, Inspector Dawson, take a look. Here we see blanching at the
shoulders and buttocks, indicating that she was lying on her back
for some time postmortem. The weight of her body compresses the
blood vessels in the areas in contact with the ground, preventing
accumulation of blood there. I still see no wounds of any kind. The
posterior scalp’s clear of contusions or hematomas.
Interesting.”
    “Let her back down, Doctor?” Obodai said.
    “Yes, please. And we’ll put her on the head block now and open
the skull.”
    Obodai lifted the body at the shoulders and slid the wooden
block underneath it. As he did that and Gladys’s neck became
slightly more exposed, Biney seemed to notice something. He went
closer and peered at her chin.
    Dawson followed his lead. “What do you see, Dr. Biney?”
    “It looks like an abrasion,” he said, with a tinge of excitement
in his voice. “I’ve seen it before, in another case. The victim is
being strangled, she lowers her chin to protect her neck and gets a
bruise from the assailant’s hands. Strangling someone is not as
easy as people think.”
    “Strangling ,” Dawson echoed.
    “Indeed. Change of plan, Obodai.”
    “Dissect the neck, sir?”
    “Yes, let’s postpone the skull for the moment.”
    “Very good. Your scalpel, sir.”
    Dr. Biney began at Gladys’s chin and made a long, clean incision
straight down the middle to the sternal notch. There was very
little subcutaneous fat, and the muscle layer popped into view
after minimal dissection.
    “Do I see subtle hemorrhages in the soft tissues around the
right sternomastoid,” Biney said, “or do my eyes deceive? I don’t
want to be premature, but I think we may have something

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