Free Thorn In My Side by Sheila Quigley Page B

legs and
calves and carried on all the way down to her heels.'
    After a
moment’s silence contemplating what the poor young woman on the
slab must have gone through, though he was hard pushed to even try
to imagine it, he said, 'What are these?' Mike pointed to one of
the many two-inch-long white ribbons of flesh hanging just about
everywhere.
    'Muscle.'
    He’d
half-guessed that’s what they were, and had the crazy thought that
no way could she be comfortable lying on that mess.
    He looked up at
Jill. 'What sort of madman would do such a thing? The agony she
must have gone through… It’s… It’s so, so friggin’ well
unbelievable.' He shook his head in angry bewilderment, shuddering
at the thought of the poor woman writhing in pain. Gritting his
teeth, he silently vowed to drag whoever was responsible to the
real justice he deserved, and not just a slap on the wrist, and a
few years behind bars in a cushy jail.
    'I don’t
think,' Jill said after a moment, 'that the scourging is what
killed her. In fact she may have been – actually, the more I think
about it, she probably was -- dead after the first lash.'
    Mike gave her a
puzzled frown. 'So what?'
    Jill looked
steadily at him for a moment, took a deep breath, then went on.
'When the body first arrived here, her front was covered in blood,
even though as you’ve seen, there’s no wounds at all on the front
of her body. If the blood flowed from the back of her, there would
have been flow lines, but the blood was evenly spaced from her
scalp down… It’s my opinion that she bled out of her sweat
glands.'
    'What?' Mike
looked at Jill with disbelief. 'Surely that’s impossible.'
    'No, it’s
called hemathidrosis. I was puzzled for a while until I remembered
reading about it.'
    'Hema
what?'
    'Hemathidrosis.
There’s only about a dozen recorded cases, and it’s only seen in
someone who has under gone absolute tremendous stress and agony. In
hemathidrosis a person actually bleeds from every sweat gland in
their body.'
    Mike was quiet
for a long moment, visualizing what must have happened. 'So what
would you say she exactly died from – the scourging, or the
hema-what’s-it?'
    'Fright. Pure
utter fright.'
    Mike digested
this, vowing even harder to find the monster responsible for this
atrocity. 'OK, then, is there anything else you’ve found out?'
    'I’m not
finished yet.' She looked at him, her green eyes unblinking,
leaving it up to him when he wanted to come back.
    'Tomorrow?' he
questioned with a raised eyebrow. 'Will that be all right?'
    She nodded,
then turned to one of the drawers in her wall cupboards, dismissing
him.
    Mike raised his
eyebrows, OK, it was her domain. He wanted to get started on the
boyfriend as soon as possible anyhow. 'Oh, the girl’s family are
coming up to give a formal identification, some time this
afternoon, if that’s all right with you?' he asked, but thought, damn tough if it isn’t.
    She shrugged.
Without turning round, she said, 'I’m not going anywhere.'
    'Bye then.'
    Covering the
body up, she muttered something that could have been goodbye, or
might just as easily have been , fuck off. Judging by her
attitude, Mike wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if it was
the latter.
    He shrugged,
and with a small smile turned and left her to her own devices.

CHAPTER
NINETEEN
    Outside, Mike
found Smiler sitting on the wall, his hands under his thighs, and
his legs swinging. Tiny’s lead was hooked onto Smiler’s right foot.
Sitting down next to him, and ignoring the enquiring look from the
WPC in the waiting patrol car, Mike waited for the inevitable
question. He didn’t have long to wait.
    'She’s got
black hair, hasn’t she?'
    Staring at the
police car, Mike sighed, then turned to Smiler. 'Yes, she’s got
black hair. But answer this one, if you’re so clever -- how did she
die?'
    'Judging by the
amount of blood that I saw, she must have bled to death.' Smiler
nodded his head with conviction, then looked grim-faced