monotone delivery belying the fact that they were looking at the remains of a child. ‘In the water approximately twelve to thirty-six hours, judging by the skin texture.’ He recorded the obvious into the microphone: ‘Headless, limbless and bloodless. Two incised wounds to the chest, approximately eight centimetres in length, in the shape of a cross.’
He began a meticulous search for other injuries or external signs of disease, then opened up the chest cavity. Bill was familiar with the procedure but the process still horrified him. Once the body lost its shape it ceased to be human and became a carcass in a butcher’s shop. But this intricate study of its constituent parts would tell them much about the boy.
‘Likely cause of death, decapitation, allowing the blood to be drained out. The removal of arms and legs may have been associated with a ritual or an attempt to make the body unrecognisable. The sexual organs have also been removed. The anus has been swabbed and no evidence of sexual assault found.’
He began the removal of the internal organs.
‘If the child has spent time in West Africa, then parasitic invasion is a likely possibility. We should check for schistosomiasis in particular. It’s endemic and specific to region, which could be helpful in pinpointing his origins.’
The stomach contents plopped into a basin. What looked like the remains of a gherkin swam in a sea of part-digested meat.
‘Looks suspiciously like a McDonald’s.’
Sandra took a closer look. ‘Judy at GUARD says Burger King crinkle-cut their gherkins. McDonald’s don’t.’
The juxtaposition of fast-food outlets and ritual murder had a dark kind of irony to it.
‘His stomach contents should indicate whether he was in the UK twenty-four hours before his death.’
Finished with the examination, Sissons gave instructions to Sandra to tidy the torso then made for the sink and pulled off his gloves.
The fresh running water sounded good to Bill.
‘You were lucky to find him. The next tide could have washed him well downstream.’
The word
lucky
didn’t seem to have a place in this room.
Sissons scrubbed his hands thoroughly, then dried them on a paper towel. He turned to face Bill. ‘I take it you want to know if this torso is the missing boy?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘We can’t go on skin tone alone, but judging by the length and breadth, I would estimate this torso to be older than the missing boy. The only way to be sure is for Dr MacLeod to confirm with DNA.’
Bill refused to think of the victim as a torso. He was a boy. And he had decided to call him Abel. The name of Adam’s son, killed by his older brother, Cain. The first murder in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an.
Bill didn’t know whether to be jubilant or distraught at the likelihood that it wasn’t Stephen. Odds were, after this amount of time, a missing child, especially one as young as Stephen, was dead. If Abel wasn’t Stephen, they had another dead child on their hands.
11
TWO HUNDRED CELLS . The equivalent of holding a pen for thirty seconds. That was all it took to generate a DNA profile.
But samples collected at the crime scene had to be free from contamination. It didn’t matter how good the laboratory was, how good the DNA facilities were. If the samples were compromised or of poor quality, the evidence was suspect.
She had used Carole’s blood to profile her DNA. For Abel it had to be tissue. If Carole was Abel’s mother then her DNA strands would show up in his.
The comparison printout told Rhona what she wanted to see. Abel had genotype 3,2. He had inherited the two-type repeat on his chromosome from his father. His mother had gifted him three repeats in his chromosome pattern. But Carole Devlin didn’t have that pattern to give him. The torso they’d pulled from the Kelvin wasn’t Carole’s son.
She had run the semen-produced DNA profile of the perpetrator through the NDNAD. The murderer wasn’t in the national
He began a meticulous search for other injuries or external signs of disease, then opened up the chest cavity. Bill was familiar with the procedure but the process still horrified him. Once the body lost its shape it ceased to be human and became a carcass in a butcher’s shop. But this intricate study of its constituent parts would tell them much about the boy.
‘Likely cause of death, decapitation, allowing the blood to be drained out. The removal of arms and legs may have been associated with a ritual or an attempt to make the body unrecognisable. The sexual organs have also been removed. The anus has been swabbed and no evidence of sexual assault found.’
He began the removal of the internal organs.
‘If the child has spent time in West Africa, then parasitic invasion is a likely possibility. We should check for schistosomiasis in particular. It’s endemic and specific to region, which could be helpful in pinpointing his origins.’
The stomach contents plopped into a basin. What looked like the remains of a gherkin swam in a sea of part-digested meat.
‘Looks suspiciously like a McDonald’s.’
Sandra took a closer look. ‘Judy at GUARD says Burger King crinkle-cut their gherkins. McDonald’s don’t.’
The juxtaposition of fast-food outlets and ritual murder had a dark kind of irony to it.
‘His stomach contents should indicate whether he was in the UK twenty-four hours before his death.’
Finished with the examination, Sissons gave instructions to Sandra to tidy the torso then made for the sink and pulled off his gloves.
The fresh running water sounded good to Bill.
‘You were lucky to find him. The next tide could have washed him well downstream.’
The word
lucky
didn’t seem to have a place in this room.
Sissons scrubbed his hands thoroughly, then dried them on a paper towel. He turned to face Bill. ‘I take it you want to know if this torso is the missing boy?’
‘As soon as possible.’
‘We can’t go on skin tone alone, but judging by the length and breadth, I would estimate this torso to be older than the missing boy. The only way to be sure is for Dr MacLeod to confirm with DNA.’
Bill refused to think of the victim as a torso. He was a boy. And he had decided to call him Abel. The name of Adam’s son, killed by his older brother, Cain. The first murder in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur’an.
Bill didn’t know whether to be jubilant or distraught at the likelihood that it wasn’t Stephen. Odds were, after this amount of time, a missing child, especially one as young as Stephen, was dead. If Abel wasn’t Stephen, they had another dead child on their hands.
11
TWO HUNDRED CELLS . The equivalent of holding a pen for thirty seconds. That was all it took to generate a DNA profile.
But samples collected at the crime scene had to be free from contamination. It didn’t matter how good the laboratory was, how good the DNA facilities were. If the samples were compromised or of poor quality, the evidence was suspect.
She had used Carole’s blood to profile her DNA. For Abel it had to be tissue. If Carole was Abel’s mother then her DNA strands would show up in his.
The comparison printout told Rhona what she wanted to see. Abel had genotype 3,2. He had inherited the two-type repeat on his chromosome from his father. His mother had gifted him three repeats in his chromosome pattern. But Carole Devlin didn’t have that pattern to give him. The torso they’d pulled from the Kelvin wasn’t Carole’s son.
She had run the semen-produced DNA profile of the perpetrator through the NDNAD. The murderer wasn’t in the national
Similar Books
