Down Among the Dead Men (20 page)

I thought for a moment that I must have misheard. ‘Woodworker?’

Ed nodded solemnly, while Clive chortled to himself and shook his head slowly. ‘He was really serious about it, too.’ The chocolate biscuit disappeared and there was a pause while he
trawled in the tin for another one. ‘He had his own circular saw . . .’ he said, his head still down.

‘My God,’ I burst out. ‘He couldn’t have done.’

‘Oh, yes, he could, Michelle. Quite adept at using it, too. Unfortunately one of his friends came to call while he was using it and surprised him. That was how he got the cut. His friend
took him to Casualty where it was sutured closed and he was kept in for a day or two. He returned home, refused all social services, and was intent on carrying on as he had always done.’

‘So what happened?’

‘The police reckon that he was reaching up into the fridge to get some milk for tea. The act must have stretched the stitches too much and opened the wound up. The saw had cut through the
radial artery so once it was open again, he would have bled to death pretty rapidly with no one to help him.’

I winced.

‘Everyone has to have a hobby,’ observed Ed, shaking his head, ‘but even so . . .’

THIRTY-FIVE

There was only one occasion on which everyone in the Department of Cellular Pathology – the histology staff, the cytology staff and the mortuary – met together and
socialized and that was the Christmas party. Apparently, this sometimes took the form of a disco or cabaret but, according to Clive (who had strong views on the subject), the only time it was worth
going to was when there was a decent nosh-up in a nice restaurant. This year it was to be in Number Sixteen, a restaurant that he approved of, often taking his wife, Sally, there. It was to be held
on a Wednesday night in early December because it had been booked late; husbands, wives, boyfriends and girlfriends were not invited, the exception being the consultants, who were paying for it
all. Graham had been invited and had accepted, which surprised quite a few in the department

As was usual when going out with Clive, we changed at work and went straight on to the nearest pub for a few liveners, where we met up with Graham. He looked well, although he was limping badly
and walking with a stick. He had a grin you could fall into for Clive and me, but I thought he was a bit off with Maddie, and I couldn’t help but notice that he kept ignoring her when she
spoke. During the first part of the evening, Clive explained the way these events usually went.

‘You see, you have to understand, girls, that we might all be eating the same grub in the same room on the same night, but we’re not really eating it together.’ Graham chuckled
and nodded at this. Clive went on, ‘The histology technicians mostly sit together, the cytology technicians likewise, the secretaries huddle in their own group, the consultants that choose to
turn up usually talk amongst themselves, and then there’s us. Nobody wants to talk to us.’

‘Except Ed Burberry,’ pointed out Graham. ‘He always makes an effort.’

Clive nodded. ‘Except Ed.’

I’d been there for nearly nine months now and was beginning to understand the way things went, especially because, knowing her as I did, Maddie had given me the low-down on some of the
characters upstairs in the lab, and how they looked down on us because of what our job entailed; they seemed to think that anyone who works with the dead must be weird, forgetting the fact that we
care greatly about what we do and that we provide a good service for the next of kin.

Clive said, ‘Part of the fun is to be as nice as you can to them. Go and sit at their tables and chat with them; doesn’t half make them uncomfortable. We know that we do a bloody
good job, but they don’t know what we
really
do, so it’s fun.’ I must have looked a little worried about all these undercurrents, but Clive reassured me. ‘Don’t
worry, Michelle. The grub’s free and the wine’s pretty pukka. Anyway, by the time we get there, hopefully you won’t care much anyway.’

The restaurant was cosy and warm, with low lighting and comfortable chairs. The department would fill the place, so we didn’t have to worry about disturbing other diners.
As Clive had predicted, by the time the four of us turned up, we were just about mellow enough not to be too bothered by some of the glances that were thrown in our direction. We sat at one end of
one of the tables and immediately dived into the wine. The place soon filled up as Clive had predicted, with each work group sitting together. Ed and his wife, Anne, were late and sat with us.

The service was good and the food delicious. Graham kept hobbling out for a smoke and I joined him on a couple of occasions, but we all spent most of the time listening to Clive. Any form of
communication offered by Graham throughout the evening was aimed at Clive and me, completely ignoring Maddie, but she didn’t let this get to her. During the evening, Clive got mellower and
mellower, and began to talk about some of the people he’d worked with over the years. Ed, who hadn’t been there as long but knew a lot of them, joined in as and when.

‘Mitch Jones was before your time, wasn’t he?’ he asked Ed. Ed nodded. ‘He used to be one of the consultants here in the old days; that was when things were a lot more
relaxed.’

Graham chuckled at this and nodded enthusiastically. ‘He was so relaxed he used to fall down a lot.’

Clive explained, ‘Mitch arrived pissed in the morning and just got more rat-arsed as the day went on. When he did a post-mortem, he’d be smoking a fag which he’d rest on the
side of the dissection table while he worked. Health and Safety would have had a fit. Couldn’t really do the job properly half the time. Got so bad he used to hide the slides from the cases
that he found too hard in his desk drawer next to the bottle of whisky. When he retired, what with all the empty bottles and those slides, there was more glass in his office than in
Pilkington’s factory.’

Graham said, ‘Least he was a decent bloke. Not like Dr McDougall.’

Clive shook his head. ‘That man was a complete bastard,’ he told us. ‘I haven’t got a good word to say for him.’

Ed’s wife asked, ‘Why?’

‘Didn’t like anyone, as far as I could tell. Some disgusting habits, too. Used to write the organ weights in blood on the walls, until I bollocked him about it. Never forgave me for
that. He crossed me right off his Christmas card list.’

Ed said, ‘Tell them about Dick Romney.’

Clive sighed happily. ‘Good old Dick. Thin as a rake, he was; I used to worry when he had a shower in case he stepped on the plughole and fell through.’

‘He had a shower once, all right,’ Graham chipped in.

‘That’s right, he did, didn’t he?’ Clive laughed. ‘He was getting the kidneys off the pluck once when he stuck his finger through this big renal cyst filled with
urine. Shot right into his face and soaked him; he swallowed some, too.’ Anne Burberry made a face, as did Maddie. Clive went on, ‘Never drove above forty miles an hour, even on the
motorway, because of all the car crashes he’d had to look at.’

‘Don’t forget the trousers,’ put in Ed.

‘God, yes, the trousers!’ At our blank looks, Clive explained. ‘Never changed his trousers; he must have worn the same pair every day for ten years. Got so that they could
stand up on their own. You learned never to look below his waist because of all the odd stains.’

We were laughing so hard at this that we were getting some looks, but no one minded much by then and the conversation moved on to some of Clive’s old technician colleagues. ‘When I
first started here, I had to work with Alf and Bert. Alf wasn’t too bad – a bit like a caveman, but able to do the job when he could be bothered – but Bert was something else. He
was the stupidest man who ever lived; couldn’t tie his own shoelaces and had to stop walking whenever he let one rip. He was married to a Thai woman and everyone but Bert knew that she earned
some pocket money on her back with her legs akimbo; he just thought she was careful with the housekeeping. He used to go on regular holidays to Thailand on his own with just a change of clothes in
a carrier bag; he’d come back and spend the next six weeks giving employment to the clap clinic staff.

‘He and Alf used to get up to some outrageous scams. I know for a fact that they used to eviscerate the bodies the night before and leave them out; sometimes, on hot summer nights, some of
them started to go off’ Clive turned to Maddie and me sternly. ‘Don’t ever do that, girls. Not bloody professional. Not bloody professional at all.’

Ed said, ‘They used to get the organs mixed up, didn’t they?’

‘Nothing was ever proved, but people did wonder . . .’ He shook his head. ‘Bert finally left when he hatched this cunning plan to get his pension and carry on working. It
required him to resign, stay off work for a couple of months, and then get his old job back. Simple really, except that it meant asking Alex McDougall, then the head of department, to re-employ
him, and he refused.’

Listening to all this, I was amazed at how life must once have been in the mortuary. It seemed to be much more regulated and controlled these days, something I thought could only be for the
good. At least, though, it made the evening fly past and, what with the wine and the food, it was a brilliant night.

THIRTY-SIX

Ed and I were having a beer evening, something which we had taken to doing on odd occasions since becoming good friends. As we sat in the Cross Keys in the early evening after
work, he supping a lager shandy and I a diet Coke (without ice), we tried to put the world to rights, or at least to our sort of rights. I suppose it’s our way of de-stressing, as there
aren’t many people on the same wavelength in this type of job. The day ought not to have been hard – only two autopsies and neither of them messy or emotional – but it had not
been straightforward.

Ed said, ‘The thing is, Michelle, both of them basically died of drinking too much.’

‘I thought you’d told the Coroner that you couldn’t be sure why either of them had died,’ I replied.

‘I can’t prove it yet, but I think both of them died of overdoing the bottle, only in different ways.’

He finished his shandy and looked around him. ‘No good for you, this, ethanol.’

Mr Alfred Norris was well known about the town; as soon as he saw the name, Clive had said, ‘I bet that’s Fred. Did you ever see him? Bet your dad knows him,
Michelle, he used to hang about the park, muttering and moaning to himself. Usually had a bottle of sherry or, if he was really lucky, Special Brew in his hand. If he caught anyone looking at him,
he’d quite likely turn on them, but he would always be too wasted to get up off the bench to do anything; there was no real harm in him.’

When Clive opened up the body bag and we saw the grubby, unkempt little man, I certainly did remember him. Dad had often had to turn him away from the pub because he was bothering the other
customers and one time he actually lost control of his bowels in the back bar. The smell had been vile and hung about for days, so Dad was not pleased, as you can imagine. I saw from the
information supplied by Bill Baxford that he had recently been living at a hostel for the homeless not far from the hospital, but had just been thrown out for stealing from the other residents. I
wondered what had happened in his life to lead him to such a state. He had been found in the park in the early morning, lying on a bench. I was actually surprised that he had lived so long after
the incident in the back bar. That was ten years ago, and he had certainly smelt very unwell, so I had been sure he was on his way out even then.

The other post-mortem that day was on Mrs Jennifer Bartram, who had lived in a much nicer part of the town, in a small town house. She had been a prominent member of the local community, a
school governor at one of the better local schools in the area. She had not been seen for over a day when her neighbours became concerned because she had missed a dinner party with them. The police
had attended, found the house secure and then broken in. They had found her in bed, but fully clothed. On the bedside cabinet was an empty bottle of gin and another was found in the kitchen. There
were a few empty bottles of sherry around the place, too.

Maddie said, ‘So she liked a tipple, too.’

Clive said, ‘Looks like it. You can never tell.’ Then he added, ‘Bloody awful stuff, sherry, though – it should only be used for cooking, girls – but gin’s
something else. I don’t mind a good G&T now and again; got to be a decent one, mind.’ Clive and Ed nodded in agreement while Maddie and I made faces and muttered about how both our
mothers had warned us individually about ‘mother’s ruin’.

I was fairly certain that I would find a very ugly liver when I came to do the evisceration on Fred Norris, so it was something of a surprise when I exposed the abdominal organs and the liver
did not have the look that I had come to know was cirrhosis. Ed and Peter had taught me about cirrhosis – that it is basically scarring of the whole liver with the formation of thousands of
tiny nodules where the liver tries to renew itself and I have to say, it is one of the things that turns my stomach in the PM room, because it does look so abnormal it is horrible. But this liver
was huge and pale yellow, and very, very smooth. As soon as Clive saw it, he said, ‘An expensive liver, that.’

By this he meant, as I have subsequently learnt, that you had to spend a lot of money on alcohol to achieve it but, not knowing this at the time, I asked, ‘What’s up with it,
then?’

‘It’s a fatty liver.’

Ed came in at that moment and said at once, ‘Pâté de fois gras! My favourite.’

I continued to eviscerate the body. The smell of alcohol was still strong; it is almost a rotten fruity smell, like rotten apples. I handed the organs over to Ed. The liver weighed nearly two
and half kilos, twice as much as normal. ‘Why has his liver gone like that, Ed?’ I asked.

‘It’s a sign that the liver isn’t working normally. Alcohol can do it, but so can diabetes; and obese people may have similar changes.’

‘Is it related to cirrhosis?’