Free Cut Dead by Mark Sennen Page A

she’d seen the very same vehicle driving down her street when she left for school that morning.
    Back at Major Crimes by mid-afternoon Savage took an unwanted call from Hardin. Due to technical issues at the hospital the first post-mortem had been delayed from the morning. He and Garrett had been due to attend, but the DCI had left to conduct a media briefing. Would she like to take his place?
    Savage didn’t think she had much choice in the matter so she said ‘yes’.
    ‘Of course, ma’am,’ Calter said when Savage had hung up. ‘I mean, you wouldn’t want to be at home with your feet up with the newspaper and a glass of white in your hand, would you? Not when the alternative is watching a decomposing corpse being sliced and diced.’
    Savage returned to her car and drove the short distance to Derriford. As was customary, when she arrived at the mortuary Nesbit greeted her with a joke.
    ‘Ran out of coins for the meter,’ he said, peering over the top of his glasses and giving a little smile. ‘The result being the entire refrigeration system has ceased to function. We’ve been having to stuff ice bags into the drawers to keep everything sweet. My PM schedule has gone haywire. The best thing to happen is if people would stop dying.’
    It appeared as if the pathologist was only half-joking, because to one side of the main anteroom several wall panels lay on the floor and two technicians fiddled with a bundle of multi-coloured wiring and circuit board. A cleaner mopped a puddle of brown liquid from around the base of one of the big body storage cabinets and Savage wondered if the odour assailing her nostrils wasn’t even more acrid than usual. In Nesbit’s office Hardin sat munching on a biscuit, oblivious to the smell, steam curling from a cup of coffee.
    ‘Good to see you, Charlotte,’ Hardin said as she entered. ‘Long time since we’ve done one of these together, hey? Makes a nice change from paperwork.’
    Lovely, Savage thought. Much better than wine and a newspaper.
    Hardin wiped some crumbs from his mouth, took a final slurp from his cup and rose from his seat. The two of them returned to the anteroom where Nesbit was scrubbing up at a sink.
    ‘What did you mean Saturday night,’ Savage asked him, ‘when you said you’d seen this sort of thing before?’
    ‘Exactly that.’ Nesbit dried his hands and then pulled on gloves. He looked at Savage. ‘Mandy Glastone. Tangled in some unlucky fisherman’s line, she’s pulled up from the murky depths of a pool on the river Dart on Dartmoor. Those marks … we thought at first they’d been made by crayfish, although a biologist doubted it. Then I wondered if they could have been caused by a thin piece of monofilament moving back and forwards in motion with the river current. Once she was on the table though I could tell she’d been cut with a knife. A sharp knife.’
    Nesbit gestured with an arm and the three of them walked through into the PM room proper. The cadaver was already in position, the waft of the fans failing to do much to take away the despair in the air. Savage regretted not bringing any mints with her, the feeling doubling when she approached the body.
    ‘Remarkably well-preserved, isn’t she?’ Nesbit said. ‘Considering she has probably been dead for a fair number of months.’
    If this was well-preserved then Savage didn’t think she wanted to see the other two bodies. She peered at the corpse on the table. The woman was partly still covered in sludge, the mud drying to a light grey. The angular shapes of the bones rose as the translucent skin sagged around them like papier-mâché on a wire frame. In places subcutaneous fat had slipped down and collected in weird globule-like formations. Cellulite for zombies.
    ‘As long as a year?’ Savage said, thinking of the date fast approaching.
    ‘Possible. The anaerobic conditions have slowed the decomposition process. No air equals no bugs and no microbes. It’s why the other two