AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I promised Jamie,” Adam mutters, his eyes locking on his best friend’s wife, naked on the slab.
Ross raises an eyebrow. “I’m not going to pull any punches, I’m warning you.”
“Noted.”
Adam doesn’t want to be there. It’s hard enough seeing a human being at a postmortem, without having known them as a living, breathing person. But a promise is a promise, so here he is.
“You know the cause of death?” Ross asks, looking back to Pippa.
“Exsanguination?”
“Almost complete blood loss. It was a feat for this guy to drain her. Heparin found in her body, same as the other victim, but even so.”
“How did he do it?”
Ross points to the red bruises circling her wrists. “Two sets of markings here. One from the restraints. Narrow, hard. Would correspond with the cable ties you found at the scene. Same on her ankles. She struggled a fair amount, causing some nasty abrasions through the top layer of the epidermis.”
Ross is looking at him closely, waiting for a reaction. “Go on,” Adam says.
“The second markings, here, closer to the end of the radius and the scaphoid.” He points to the knobby bones on her wrist. “These were made by something that chafed. A rope, or similar. My hypothesis is she was suspended by her wrists, almost fully off the ground. Straining and damage to the ligaments in her shoulders would support this.”
Adam closes his eyes for a second. “For what aim?”
“Gravity, Bishop,” Ross says. “Pulling her up would force all her blood downward. Then all the killer needed to do was insert the needles.”
Adam swallows hard. He feels his body waver. He tries to distract himself, but Ross is still talking, working his way down the body. “Cannulae were initially inserted in the backs of both her hands, and some blood was taken. But once she was in the upright position, he switched and inserted two larger needles here and here”—he points to the tops of her thighs—“plus, looking at the wound here,” he adds, referring to a thin cut on her ankle, “he performed a saphenous cut down. A procedure normally used to get vascular access in trauma or hypovolemic shock patients when cannulation is difficult. In this case, I’m assuming he used it to drain her body of blood more efficiently.”
Adam’s heart beats hard in his chest. His eyesight starts to blur.
“Who would be able to do this?” he says, blinking. “Are we looking for a doctor?”
“Well, possibly. It’s not common. It’s taught on trauma courses, but it’s not massively technical. Assuming your suspect wasn’t too worried about getting it wrong, it could be anyone who’d been around vascular surgeons, trauma docs, or emergency medicine and fancied having a go. There’s even videos on YouTube. All you’ve got to do is find the vein, then stick the cannula inside.”
Adam feels a trickle of sweat run down his back. He wobbles slightly; he gulps a long deep breath, but the room starts to spin. The world leaches of color. It’s too late.
His legs give way, and everything goes dark.
THIRTY-ONE YEARS AGO
THE BOY SITS alone in the hospital bed. He can see his parents on the other side of the glass, faces cast down, hands over their mouths. In front of them a doctor is talking. One of many, but the man the others listen to. The important doctor stops, and his parents nod. They all look through the glass at the boy, their faces stern.
They’re coming back into the ward now. His mother stands next to his bed, her hand resting in his hair. He can tell she’s going to cry; she cries a lot nowadays. Ever since the nosebleeds, the bruising that wouldn’t go away.
The doctor’s talking to him, but he’s not listening. He doesn’t comprehend what’s happening, why he feels so ill.
“Do you understand?” the doctor says, looking at him.
“Can I go home?” the boy asks. The doctor glances to his parents.
“No, darling. That’s what the doctor is saying. You need to stay here for a while. So they can make you feel better.”
He nods. But he’s thinking, They don’t. They just make me feel worse. The aching in his bones, the tiredness. The pain that takes over his whole body, as if it’s growing from the inside. None of it has gone away.
The doctor has turned and is talking to a nurse. She leaves, then comes back with a tray covered in equipment. He’s seen this before. Last time, he trusted them. They said it wouldn’t hurt, but it did. So much. He cried, clutching his worn-out stuffed dinosaur, as they put needles into his arms, into his hands. Then they connected tubes and wires and pumped him full of drugs that made him puke.
He shakes his head. “Please don’t,” he says quietly. He grabs at his mother’s hand, holding her tight. “Please don’t let them hurt me. Please,” he begs.
His mother starts crying. His father moves closer to his bedside.
