Desecration Read online

  Jamie glanced down at the bloody wound, held open by a retractor. “Can you tell what was done?”

  Skinner nodded. “Looks like her uterus was removed. Skillfully done too. It’s a perfect Pfannenstiel incision, a Caesarean section, and it looks like the instruments used were from the Museum’s collection.”

  Jamie tilted her head on one side. “That implies no pre-meditation, at least for the excision.” She paused, looking around the museum at the specimen jars surrounding them, an echo of the mutilated body. “Was she dead when her uterus was cut out?”

  “It looks that way but I’ll know for sure after the autopsy. The lack of significant blood loss around the wound suggests that the heart stopped pumping during the operation.”

  Jamie felt a sense of relief that Jenna hadn’t felt the invasion of her body, but why had it been done?

  “Any idea of time of death?”

  “Between nine and midnight, but I might get something more exact after the autopsy. I would say that it was certainly during the gala event. Right, I’ve done all I can here.”

  Skinner nodded at two other men, also in protective clothing and they came forward to remove the body. They bagged the woman’s hands and laid down a plastic sheet. As the corpse was lifted, Jamie heard something fall from the folds of Jenna’s dress with a dull thunk. She signaled for the photographer to capture it as she bent to look more closely, pulling out her sterile gloves and an evidence bag. It was a figurine carved of ivory, around four inches long, a woman laid on her back, torso opened in a detailed miniature dissection. The woman’s serene ivory face portrayed a calm demeanor even as her body lay open and mutilated, her organs and loops of intestines painted a deep red.

  “You can take the body,” Jamie said to Skinner, who was clearly eager to get back to his lab. “I’ll deal with this.”

  She waited until the body had been zipped in its bag and strapped to the gurney. Once it had been wheeled out, she beckoned to the officer by the door to bring the Curator. He shuffled over slowly, his face a mask of grief. Even surrounded by mementoes of death every day, it must have been a horrifying shock to find the newly dead body early this morning. After some brief introductions, Jamie indicated the figurine.

  “Could you explain what this is, sir?” she asked, her voice coaxing.

  The Curator’s posture became more focused as he directed his attention to the figurine, bending down to look but careful not to touch it.

  “It’s an anatomical Venus,” he said. “They were made from the seventeenth century onwards as a way to teach anatomy, but increasingly they became more of an attraction for the cabinets of curiosities belonging to various wealthy collectors. They wanted things that were strange or terrible, horrific or unusual, those that would provoke a reaction in the viewer.”

  “Is it valuable?” Jamie asked.

  The Curator nodded. “Absolutely. We have some examples here but it’s not one of ours. It must belong to a private collection, or a museum perhaps. Someone will be missing it, for sure.”

  There was a bustle of noise at the doorway to the Museum and Jamie turned to see Detective Constable Alan Missinghall enter, hunching over in an attempt to be less obtrusive. He failed miserably, his six foot five muscular frame dwarfing the other officers on scene. He was new in the department and so far Jamie was impressed with his work. Missinghall had only just turned thirty and many underestimated him, seeing in his physicality a propensity for violence. But he was gentle, his expressive face betraying an acute compassion for victims of crime and he had a way of standing that made others feel protected. As usual, he wore an understated dark blue suit, slightly too short in the leg for his height, but he still walked like a man with authority.

  “What have we got, Sarge?” Missinghall said, bending to look at the figurine.

  Jamie recapped what she had found out so far and he took notes on his pad, putting asterisks next to aspects for follow-up. Jamie appreciated his keen attitude, hoping that it would last, for he hadn’t yet tasted the bitter side of detective work.

  “This room is seriously weird,” Missinghall said, glancing around at the glass walls. He walked over and stared at the rows of specimen jars.

  Jamie took a picture of the figurine on her smartphone, bagged the item for processing and then followed him over. The jars looked marvelously benign until you leaned closer, until what was inside became clear. The specimens were organs grouped together across comparative species. A whole shelf contained jars full of tongues, fleshy camel, spongy lion, then a human tongue with soft palate and enlarged tonsils, wrinkled and puckered like an alien mouth. These jars of disease are evidence of our mortality, Jamie thought with a shiver, fragments of flesh and bone that once walked the earth, now imprisoned in jars of preservative, drowning anew each day.

  The Curator shuffled over to the cabinets, noting their interest and clearly eager to distract his own attention from the misery of the crime scene.

  “John Hunter was an eighteenth century surgeon,” he said. “He introduced direct observation of the body and scientific method into anatomy, rejecting the flawed textbooks his generation used. Although his methods were unorthodox and he gained many enemies, he nevertheless changed the practice of surgery and made medical discoveries that saved countless lives.”

  “Is this all his work?” Jamie asked, indicating the glass shelving with a sweep of her arm.

  “Most of it and more in storage,” the Curator replied, “but much was lost in a fire. He worked with his brother initially, William Hunter, who specialized in medical education and gynecology. But John was the real anatomical genius, and he prepped the specimens perfectly as you can see. It became his obsession and he spent his life seeking out the strange and terrible from humanity and the animal kingdom in order to learn from them.”

  There was so much death here, Jamie thought, imagining John Hunter and the bodies he had cut to pieces to make this collection. It was certainly a triumph of science and reason at a time when the body was misunderstood, before anesthesia, before antiseptic, when surgery was more akin to torture and generally ended in death. But it was also a disturbing museum of the deformed and misshapen monsters that Hunter had found so fascinating. Jamie looked into one of the cabinets, staring at the face of a child with no eyes, covered in smallpox. Just a face, floating in liquid. This place was indeed a bizarre and perfect location for a murder.

  “John Hunter eventually had his own anatomy school and private medical practice as well as working at St George’s Hospital. He would hardly sleep, so driven was he in his studies.” Jamie could hear the admiration in the Curator’s voice, his respect for a lifelong obsession. “Hunter was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in recognition for his pioneering work and he was considered the authority on venereal disease, possibly even infecting himself to study its destructive course. He was obsessed with direct observation, hence the specimens you see here.”

  Missinghall leaned towards one of the cabinets and Jamie saw the grimace on his face as he realized he was staring at a set of diseased sexual organs. He shifted uncomfortably and turned back to the Curator.

  “So where did the bodies come from?” he asked, and Jamie felt her own curiosity piqued too, for there were thousands of specimens even in this one room.

  “That was … difficult,” the Curator said, nodding. “But they had no choice, you see. Since the time of Henry VIII surgeons had only been allowed a small number of bodies each year, usually criminals hanged on the gallows. But there were too few to use for effective teaching and the surgical schools required each student to dissect several bodies in the course of their studies. John Hunter and his brother were part of a renaissance in anatomical teaching, but they needed fresh bodies every day in the winter dissection season. Summer, of course, meant the bodies putrefied too quickly.” The Curator was speaking fast now, almost apologetic for what had happened all those years ago. “So they had to work with so-called Resurrection Men, grave robbers who would
take fresh corpses from new graves, from the hospitals or poor houses and sell them to the anatomists.”

  Missinghall’s expressive face showed his distaste, and although Jamie had heard of such practices, she hadn’t really understood until now that many of the bodies were stolen, taken from graves without the consent of loved ones or sold because of poverty.

  “Seriously?” Missinghall was incredulous. “Wasn’t that illegal then? Because it sure is now.”

  The Curator shook his head. “The corpse was not considered property and the Resurrection Men were careful to only take the naked body, leaving the shroud and coffin so as not to be prosecuted for stealing. They were paid more for bodies that died of exotic diseases or deformities, and Hunter also wanted to recover the bodies of patients on whom he had performed surgery to see how they had healed.” He pointed into the glass bell jars at the fetuses preserved there. “These little ones were priced by the inch. There are even some claims that the Hunters bought corpses murdered to order, particularly women at various stages of pregnancy for William Hunter’s detailed study of the gravid womb.” He paused. “Ridiculous rumors, of course.”

  Jamie didn’t want to hear any more of Hunter’s ghoulish past and Missinghall was looking increasingly queasy, even though he was accustomed to the newly dead. What mattered right now was establishing what had happened last night, not over two hundred years previously.

  “Thank you for your time, sir,” Jamie said. “We may come back to you with further questions.”

  The Curator nodded and walked away, his shoulders tense and rigid.

  Missinghall shook his head. “Let’s process this freakish place and get out of here,” he said. “We can look into Hunter some more back at base, but I suspect this place will give me nightmares for weeks.”

  Jamie nodded, walking slowly around the glass-walled cases to the bottom of the stairs. She bent and examined the blood stains there, careful to avoid the crime scene markers.

  “Why was Jenna even up here during the gala dinner?” Jamie thought aloud. “The body was clearly dragged from the bottom of the stairs, so it would be logical that she fell first and hit her head before being moved.”

  “Or she was pushed deliberately,” Missinghall noted.

  “Not a very effective way to kill someone,” Jamie said, walking up the stairs to the next level. “It’s not guaranteed that the person will die, only be injured in some way. And these steps aren’t even that steep.”

  “Maybe it was an accident?” Missinghall said, as they both looked down at the scene below through more glass display cases.

  “Cutting out her womb wasn’t an accident.”

  “Maybe the killer has something against women?” Missinghall said. “Or perhaps this place just inspired impromptu surgical practice?”

  Jamie ignored his black humor, understanding his need to keep a light tone with what they dealt with every day. She turned to look at the other cases on the second floor, which was focused on the history of medicine. In one was a life-size wax model of a hideously deformed victim of war, with half a face and its neck torn away to reveal the jawbone. One hand was burnt to raw pink skin with fingers missing, and there were slashes in the chest, open to bloody rib bones. In the next case, a whole series of surgical saws were displayed, all from a seventeenth century surgeon’s kit. Jamie read the sign on an amputation saw, describing a time before anesthetic and antiseptic, when people’s limbs were hacked off while they were tied down, dosed only with laudanum or alcohol. She turned away, before the imagined horror dominated her thoughts any further.

  “We’ll have to wait for the autopsy results on whether she was pregnant and we’ll need the statements of the attending surgeons from last night.” Jamie sighed. “So let’s go talk to the parents in the meantime.”

  Chapter 3

  The streets of Chelsea were always busy but Jamie wove through the traffic with ease on her bike, while Missinghall followed in the squad car, eventually catching her up outside the Neville’s residence where she jumped in beside him. The exclusive property had security cameras and the gates swung open as the police car drove up. Jenna’s parents had been notified of her death earlier that morning, so they were expected.

  “You’re quiet today, Jamie,” Missinghall said, finishing off a banana. The man never seemed to stop eating. “Do you want me to take the lead on this?”

  Jamie stared out at the ornate garden as they drove slowly up the drive. The grounds were like a miniature Versailles, beautiful even in the chill of early winter, precisely ordered with not a blade of grass or stem out of place. Jamie wondered if her life would ever be this ordered. Right now, she felt it disintegrating around her, but she wouldn’t share that with Missinghall, preferring to keep her distance with work colleagues.

  “Sure,” she said. “Why don’t you talk to them first and I’ll hang back a little. The father may respond better to you anyway.”

  “Isn’t he some kind of minor aristocrat?” Missinghall asked.

  Jamie nodded. “According to the case file, the family is distantly related to Francis Galton, the eugenicist, and he was in turn related to the Darwins, so they have quite the scientific background. Their pedigree plays a prominent role in the marketing for Neville Pharmaceuticals. Lady Esther Neville is the brilliant scientist and Lord Christopher is well connected amongst the aristocracy, playing high stakes business with the manners of a perfect English gentleman.”

  “I’m not sure how well he’ll like me then,” Missinghall said, emphasizing his rough East London accent.

  “But at least you’re a man,” replied Jamie, smiling a little. “He’s apparently quite the chauvinist, with the media citing his preference for much younger women when out on the town.”

  “Marriage issues?” Missinghall said.

  “They’ve been married since they were at Oxford University together,” Jamie said, glancing through the notes on her smart phone that had been assembled by the murder inquiry office manager. “After thirty years of marriage, perhaps that kind of behavior is normal.”

  “Remind me not to ask you for relationship advice,” Missinghall said. “I’m very happy with my missus.”

  Jamie remained silent at his comment, ignoring the unspoken questions about her personal life. Her own failed marriage and her parents’ misery were the only markers she had against which to measure marital bliss.

  Missinghall parked in front of the main doors, which were opened by an immaculately dressed butler before they stepped out of the car. Missinghall turned to Jamie, raising an eyebrow at the unexpected service.

  “Good morning, Officers,” the butler said as they presented their warrant cards. “Lord and Lady Neville are waiting in the library. Please come through.”

  The butler held the door wide and Jamie stepped first into the hallway. It was sparsely furnished with a few tasteful pieces, but the walls were dominated by pictures, many black and white or faded sepia. Jamie leaned close as they were led through and she caught sight of famous faces. These were ancestors of the Nevilles in classic poses, designed to emphasize the visitor’s inherent inferiority in this house of distinction. There were also pictures of Christopher Neville with senior political figures, CEOs and powerful media moguls. Jamie even caught sight of one with her superior officer, Dale Cameron, accepting some award, in the days before he had risen to the rank of Superintendent. Christopher Neville was indeed well connected, she thought, following the butler further inside.

  The library was straight out of a Merchant Ivory film, with tall bookcases of ebony and exotic hardwood filled with leather bound first edition books, some behind locked glass so that they couldn’t even be read. It was another way to impress and Jamie felt its effect, the delineations of social class evident. She thought of her own rented rooms, cluttered with books for sure, but nothing on this scale.

  Lord Christopher Neville was standing by the ornate marble fireplace, his hand resting on the back of his wife’s chair. He wore a three
piece suit in English tweed, the mossy color palette blending into the library backdrop, like the cover of a fox-hunting magazine. Lady Esther Neville sat like an angular statue in a cream trouser suit, staring out of the window into the distance, her blonde hair scraped back into a tight chignon. She didn’t even turn her head as they entered. Jamie had the peculiar sense that the pair had arranged themselves for some effect. She noticed the tension in Lady Neville’s body, her senses attuned as a dancer to how people hold themselves. It was as if the woman was arching away from her husband’s hand, as if his very presence repelled her. Jamie knew that the death of a child took many marriages to breaking point, but this all seemed staged, as if this is how a bereaved family was meant to look. She wondered what lay beneath the careful veneer.

  “Detectives, what can we do for you?” Lord Neville said, his voice cordial with an undertone of impatience. He was bordering on corpulent, barely hiding the evidence of good living with impeccable tailoring and his voice was the epitome of aristocracy, honed by years of conversation in the upper echelons of power. His light grey eyes were clear and piercing, and Jamie noticed that they lingered a little too long on her own slight figure.

  “We’re so sorry for your loss, Lord and Lady Neville,” Missinghall said, with a formal tone. “But we need to ask some questions about Jenna.”