The Last Temptation by Val McDermid Page B

tentative cuts on the navel here.’ He pointed with a latex-covered fingertip. ‘You see? I’ve never seen this before. Pubic scalping, I suppose you’d have to call it. Your perpetrator has been careful not to damage the genitals themselves.’
    ‘Was he still alive when it happened?’
    De Vries shrugged. ‘The scalping was done very close to death itself. He was either just dead or dying when it happened.’ He continued to examine the body, pausing at the left side of the head. ‘Nasty bump here.’ His fingers probed the lump. ‘Slight abrasion of the skin. Blunt force trauma. He took a blow to the head some time before he died.’ He nodded to the technician. ‘Let’s roll him.’
    Marijke stared down at the pattern of lividity on de Groot’s back. The hollow of his neck, the small of his back, the thighs above the crook of his knees were stained purple as a bruise with the blood that had drained there, drawn downwards by the inexorable force of gravity. Where he had been pressed against the surface of the desk, the flesh remained a ghastly white; the shoulders, the buttocks, the calves. It reminded Marijke of a strange abstract painting. De Vries pressed a thumb against the shoulder of the corpse. When he withdrew it, there was no change. ‘So,’ he said, ‘hypostasis is in the 1 second stage. He has been lying dead in this position for at least ten to twelve hours. And he hasn’t been moved after death.’
    Now came the part Marijke hated. The body was replaced on its back and the dissection began. She slid her eyes sideways. To the casual observer, it would look as if she was paying close attention to what de Vries was doing, but in reality, she
     
    72
     
    was staring at the tray of instruments as if her life depended on committing them to memory in some perverse version of Kim’s Game. The dissecting knife, for incisions and removal of organs, with its metal two-piece handle and four-inch disposable blades. The brain knife with its fine twelve-inch blade for making thin sections of the delicate tissue. The scissors and scalpels and forceps for things she didn’t want to think about. The oscillating-bladed Stryker saw for cutting bone without destroying the surrounding tissues. The T-shaped chisel called the skull key, for extra leverage when prying apart the bones of the cranium.
    So it was she missed the moment when de Vries cracked open the chest and the pale distended lungs ballooned out of the cavity. ‘I thought so,’ he said, satisfaction creeping through his professional demeanour and demanding her attention like a leg-winding cat.
    ‘What’s that?’ She dragged her reluctant eyes from the surgical tools.
    ‘Look at the state of the lungs.’ He poked a finger into the grey tissue that bulged through the space between the ribs. It left a clear indentation. ‘He’s been drowned.’
    ‘Drowned?’
    De Vries nodded. ‘No doubt about it.’
    ‘But you said he died in the position where he was found.’
    ‘That’s right.’
    Marijke frowned. ‘But there was no water there. He was tied to his office desk. It’s not like it was a bathroom or a kitchen. How could he be drowned?’
    ‘Very unpleasantly,’ de Vries said, his tone neutral, his eyes fixed on the work of his hands. ‘Judging by the state of the mouth and the windpipe, I think some sort of runnel or tube was forced into his airway and water was poured down it. You said he was tied down, and I can see the marks of the
     
    73
     
    ligatures for myself. He couldn’t have put up much of a struggle.’
    Marijke shuddered. ‘Jesus. That’s cold.’
    De Vries shrugged. ‘That’s your province, not mine. I just read what the body has to say. Thankfully, I don’t have^ to deal with the mind behind it.’
    But I do, the detective thought. And this is a very nasty one. ‘So the cause of death would be drowning?’ she asked.
    ‘You know I can’t say that for sure at this stage. But it certainly looks that way.’ De Vries