Take Out by Felicity Young

having finished his task, stepped back to give Fowler some room.
    ‘Is it her?’ Burridge asked Fowler who squatted down next to the sodden form. Stevie looked for a moment and then averted her eyes.
    ‘Not decayed enough if you ask me,’ Burridge said.
    ‘It’s impossible to tell.’ Fowler sighed as he looked at the pale, almost translucent head of the corpse. ‘Longish hair, could be a woman.’
    ‘Bodies decay a lot slower in cold water than on land; with so many variables at play, it’s almost impossible to tell at this stage how long the body has been in the river.’
    The female voice belonged to the pathologist, Melissa Hurst, who emerged from behind the white coroner’s van acknowledging Stevie and Fowler with a nod of her curly grey head.
    ‘You’ve already examined the body?’ Fowler asked Hurst.
    ‘No, only got here a few minutes before you.’
    Hurst beckoned him back to the body. The other officers stepped aside. Fowler shone his torch at the slurried face and empty eyes. Decay and aquatic scavengers had eliminated any hope they had of a visual identification. The view from the forehead up told its own story.
    ‘A shotgun to the head,’ Hurst said. ‘See the peppering of shot on either side of the wound?’
    Stevie forced herself to look. The top of the woman’s head was split down the middle, the skin on either side of the wound peeled back, exposing the remnants of waterlogged brain tissue and ripped blood vessels. Fine shotgun pellets formed a smoky rash along the torn sides of the pale skin.
    And then something moved.
    ‘Oh, fuck.’ Fowler turned his head and expelled a sharp breath. Hurst lost no time scissoring her gloved fingers into the cranial cavity. Stevie stepped back, horrified to see the yabby flicking back and forth between the pathologist’s thumb and finger.
    ‘Bag!’ Hurst snapped and dropped the small crustacean into the hastily proffered bag. ‘Okay put it in with the body bag,’ she told the constable.
    ‘Like something from fucking Alien,’ Burridge muttered.
    As if this was their call, two hovering mortuary attendants took a step closer. Fowler held up his hand. ‘We’re not ready yet.’ He turned back to Hurst. ‘Was the wound inflicted before or after death, doc?’
    ‘I can’t tell for sure, not until I open her up. Information from bruising would be inconclusive after more than a day or two in the water. How long has Delia Pavel been missing?’
    ‘Last seen a week ago,’ Fowler said.
    Hurst said, ‘Let’s have a look at the rest of her. We’ll have to remove this covering.’
    The body was wrapped in a waterlogged doona secured by thin wire ties around the ankles, waist and chest. ‘This’ll be the missing cover off her bed,’ Stevie said under her breath to Fowler. She wondered what had led to the gruesome transformation of something so domestic and banal. Though discoloured by river slime, the small blue flowers on the fabric stood bright under the spotlight’s beam, undoubtedly matching the pillowcases on the Pavels’ bed.
    Fowler nodded and took the pliers a constable handed him. ‘Okay, here goes.’ He carefully snipped the lengths of wire wrapped around the torso and ankles. Hurst peeled open the sodden doona. The woman wore jeans that swelled at the belly from the build up of bodily gasses. A long-sleeved T-shirt stretched tight across the distended abdomen. The exposed skin of her neck, hands and bare feet was pale and loose; her fingernails, barely keeping a grip upon her skin, looked like fakes about to come unstuck. Stevie caught a whiff of putrid gas, took a step back and pulled the neck of her jumper over her nose and mouth.
    ‘Washerwoman’s skin,’ Hurst remarked, pointing to the dimpled flesh on the feet. ‘How was she found?’
    ‘A couple taking their dog for an evening walk saw what they thought was a log floating near the bank,’ said Joe Burridge. ‘The guy reckoned it might be a danger to small boats and