The First Fingerprint by Xavier-Marie Bonnot

…” Dr. Mattei had explained gravely.
    De Palma pushed open the door between the changing room and the dissection room. The smell of the rotting corpse grabbed him by the throat. He stopped to swallow back his saliva several times, then gave a friendly wave to the two officers charged with identification and stood beside Mattei. The doctor was not wearing a mask, and was flanked bytwo assistants wearing huge goggles, like skiers’, except for the color. The trio of specialists was bending over the naked body.
    When he saw de Palma’s face, Mattei winked at him, and chuckled.
    â€œSo, the boys have dropped by. And not just anybody, if you don’t mind. The prestigious Commandant de Palma. Sorry, Monsieur, but this isn’t a pretty picture. Especially not after Le Zanzi. So step forward. You’re going to get your money’s worth.”
    â€œMattei, once again you’ve started the job before I arrived …”
    â€œNo choice, Baron,” he said with a shake of his head. “There are too many corpses in my drawers. Too many scores being settled! I called you three times this morning. No answer. It’s your job to sort the situation out. Here, we start work at 8:00 a.m. sharp.”
    The doctor was sewing up the woman’s thoracic cage. Her flesh was puffy and covered with a fatty translucent liquid, like grease. De Palma saw the chrome-plated steel of the curved needle as it entered and then reemerged from the epidermis which had been bleached by the sea. To save face, he picked up his notebook to write down the doctor’s conclusions.
    â€œChristine Autran. Caucasian, female—as you can see for yourself. I’ll skip her personal details, you’ll find them in the file. We’ve put her papers in a bag, just as it says in the rulebook.”
    De Palma was about to remind this doctor of the dead that it was the job of the police to take care of all that, but he held himself back. This forensic surgeon was as stubborn as a mule, but also the best in the region.
    The corpse’s face was covered with a blue cloth.
    â€œWe hid her face because we were beginning to get fed up with her watching us work. But for you, Michel, we’ll make a little effort. Take a look.”
    Mattei lifted the cloth. Two empty eye sockets stared dumbly at some point on the gray ceiling. The face had been devoured. All that remained were scraps of flesh, entirely bloodless now. The dead woman had no lips, her mouth was slightly open and her teeth jutted from greenish gums which were disintegrating. Her half-eaten cheeks revealed the depths of her throat. De Palma noticed that her tongueand a large part of her scalp had disappeared, gobbled up by some carnivorous sea creature. The surgeon showed the police officer the signs of strangulation, two distinct black marks around her neck like a tattooed necklace.
    â€œApart from the bruising on the body, I don’t have much else to tell you. She was strangled, then thrown into the sea. Her abdomen was full of gas, which is why she was floating on the surface … The salt then absorbed the water in her blood, which has a high chlorine content. There’s a very weak presence of diatomeae. This tells us that she was thrown in postmortem. The nape of her neck was snapped; cervical vertebrae four and five are broken. She must have been hanged, or something similar. But one thing’s certain: someone broke her neck.”
    With a well-practiced movement, Mattei turned Christine Autran’s head to one side and pointed to the position of the fracture. A brown blotch indicated the fatal wound. The kind of trace the murder squad sees all the time.
    The doctor pressed down on the flabby flesh with his index finger, protected by a double layer of surgical gloves, and moved it in small circles. The movement made the half-empty skull emit a slight glugging sound, like a siphon being opened.
    â€œThe marine fauna has done its work. I