Free Whispers of the Dead by Simon Beckett Page A

the autopsy suite in
silence. From somewhere outside I heard a phone ring. It went unanswered,
and finally stopped.
I turned back to the victim's remains. The skeleton was almost
completely denuded of flesh by now, leaving only the residual soft
tissue to be removed by boiling it in detergent. Since it wasn't
practical to immerse the whole skeleton in a huge vat there was
another grisly process that needed to be undertaken first.
Disarticulation.
The skull, pelvis, legs and arms would have to be severed, a job
requiring both care and brute strength. Any damage to the bone
would have to be carefully noted, so it wasn't confused with
perimortem trauma. I'd started to remove the skull, painstakingly
cutting through the cartilage between the second and third cervical
vertebrae, when Summer returned.
In her scrubs and apron she looked less out of place in the morgue,
except for the ear and nose piercings. The bleached hair was concealed
under a surgical cap.
'Where's Dr Lieberman?' she asked.
'He had to go out.' I didn't enlarge. Tom wouldn't want any of his
students to know he was ill.
Summer accepted it. 'You want me to start with the detergent?'
I wasn't sure what Tom had in mind, but that seemed as good an
idea as any. We began filling large stainless steel vats with detergent
solution and set them heating on gas burners. Although the powerful
extractor hood over the burners sucked most of the steam and
fumes from the room, the combination of bleach and boiling soft
tissue gave off a smell disconcertingly reminiscent of both a laundry
and a bad restaurant.
'So you're British?' Summer asked as we worked.
'That's right.'
'How come you're over here?'
'Just a research trip.'
'Don't you have research facilities in the UK?'
'We do, but not like yours.'
'Yeah, the facility's pretty cool.' The big eyes regarded me through
I
    the glasses. 'What's it like being a forensic anthropologist over there?'
'Cold and wet, usually.'
She laughed. 'Apart from that. Is it any different?'
I didn't really want to talk about it, but she was only being friendly.
'Well, the basics are the same, but there are a few differences. We
don't have as many law enforcement agencies as you do over here.'
To an outsider, the number of autonomous sheriff and police departments,
let alone state and federal agencies, that operated in the US
was bewildering. 'But the main difference is the climate. Unless it's a
freakish summer, we tend not to get bodies drying out like you do
here. The decomposition's more likely to be a wet one, with more
moulds and slime.'
She pulled a face. 'Gross. Ever thought of moving?'
Despite myself I gave a laugh. 'Work in the sun belt, you mean?
No, I can't say that I have.' I'd talked about myself as much as I
wanted to, though. 'So how about you? What are your plans?'
Summer launched into an animated description of her life so far,
her ambitions for the future and how she was working in a bar in
Knoxville to raise enough money to buy a car. I said little, content
to let her carry on her monologue. It didn't slow her work and the
torrent of words was relaxing, so that when Tom returned I was
surprised to see that nearly two hours had passed.
'You've made progress, I see,' he said approvingly, coming to the
table.
'It's been pretty straightforward.' I didn't ask how he was in front
of Summer, but I could see he was feeling better. He waited until she'd returned to the pans bubbling on the gas burners, then
beckoned me to one side.
'Sorry I took so long, I've been speaking to Dan Gardner. There's
been an interesting development. There aren't any fingerprints on file
for Terry Loomis, the guy whose wallet was at the cabin, so they still
need us to confirm if this is him.' He gestured towards the remains on
the table. 'But they got a result on the print from the film canister.
Belongs to a Willis Dexter, thirty-six-year-old mechanic from
Sevierville.'
Sevierville was a small