'Oh, aye.' He shook his head. 'Cleanest dismemberment I've ever seen. Been trying to do it for years, poor bloke, but people kept rescuing him. Very unlucky he'd been, up until the seven-thirty to London came along.'

Peter said, 'Usually, though, if you really want to do it, there's not a lot that can be done to stop you. They're always succeeding in prison.'

'And in the local loony bin down the road,' added Clive. 'We must get two or three a year from there. They take away all the sharp objects and their belts and shoelaces, but they still manage it.'

I asked, 'How?'

'One bloke used three pocket handkerchiefs tied together, then hooked them around the door k.n.o.b.'

'Surely that wouldn't be high enough?'

Peter shook his head. 'A surprisingly high percentage of people dying by hanging are in contact with the floor when found.'

I was really surprised by this. 'How?'

'Death in hanging is almost always due to excitation of the nerves in the neck that slow the heart and may even stop it. Add to that some constriction of blood supply to the brain and it's usually enough to cause unconsciousness and death within a few seconds. Once you black out, of course, it doesn't matter how low down you are.'

'Really? That quick?'

'Less than ten seconds, sometimes.'

'Never!'

He nodded. 'Most people don't appreciate that. It's likely a lot of hangings are just cries for help but they die a lot more quickly than they thought they would. And that makes it difficult for the Coroner.'

'Why?'

'The Coroner won't confirm a death as suicide unless he is absolutely certain that that's what they intended to do. All we do down here is find out what caused them to die, but it's the Coroner who decides how that came about. If there's a chance that it was a cry for help and they thought that someone would find them before it was too late, he won't call it "suicide"; similarly, if there's a remote possibility that when they fell off the bridge, they tripped because they were drunk, he won't call that "suicide" either.'

'What does he call them?' I asked.

'He calls those "accidental".'

Graham said, 'I don't see that it matters what you call it, b.l.o.o.d.y stupid if you ask me.'

'It does to the relatives,' pointed out Peter.

It was Clive who brought us back to Dr Beaumont. 'Well, I should think that the Coroner's going to have a problem calling his death "accidental",' he said grimly. 'I wonder what type of Land Rover it was.'

Early afternoon and, with PMs over and the dissection room cleaned down, we thought we could relax for a few moments but, as is often the way in the mortuary, this was not to be. Three firms of undertakers arrived at once, all collecting patients, two of them collecting two each. One of the undertakers was Vince, a large man with a cheery smile who always stays for a cup of tea and a chat. Quite often, he brings in pieces of steak for us which, the first time it happened, gave me the creeps as thoughts of the League of Gentlemen and 'special meat' came to mind. It turned out, though, that Vince's family also owned a butcher's shop.

Anyway, for twenty minutes, it was absolute chaos, with Graham and me running around while Vince and Clive reminisced in the office. As if all that wasn't bad enough, no sooner had Vince left than the doorbell rang once again and in came a group of three trainee nurses; Clive had completely forgotten that he had promised to give them a short talk about the work of the mortuary. I think he thought about telling them to go forth but politeness got the better of him, although I expect they could see it on his face. He took me to one side and said urgently, 'Look, Mich.e.l.le. Can you take care of these girls? Normally I would, but I've got to go and see Ed in his office. He just rang.'

'What do I say to them?'

'Just tell them what we do. That's why they're here.'

'What about Graham?'

'I've just sent him off to the wards to collect cremation forms.'

I didn't feel that I was totally qualified for this task but took a deep breath and went out to the nurses. I led them into the dissection room now clean and tidy so that we were out of the hurly-burly. 'This is not only a hospital mortuary but also a public one, so we receive bodies from the community as well. They come here if there is a possibility that they might need a Coroner's post-mortem.'

A young girl with tinted hair, too much make-up and a double chin asked, 'Does everyone get a post-mortem examination?'

I was giving a speech I'd heard Clive give a few times before; when he did it, it came out fluently, but I thought I sounded hesitant and unsure. 'If a doctor can issue a death certificate, then it doesn't need a post-mortem; if he can't, it's referred to the Coroner who will ask a pathologist to perform one.'

I knew exactly what was coming next. 'When can't they issue a death certificate?'

'If they don't know the cause of death, or if the cause of death is unnatural accident, or suicide, or industrial disease.'

'And murder?'

I had quickly learnt from listening to Clive when he did these talks that they always wanted to know about murder. I said, as if I had been doing the job for fifty years, 'If it might be murder, it becomes a forensic post-mortem, which is slightly different.'

And so they got on to forensic post-mortems, as they always did. It was forty-five interminable minutes before I could get rid of them and, by then, I was ready to lie down on a trolley and be put into the fridges with the rest of the deceased.

NINETEEN.

A few weeks later and I was again sitting in the pub with Luke, Mum and Dad, plus Michael and Sarah. Around the table the banter was flowing backwards and forwards as it always did, the beer doing its job and doing it well, but for once I wasn't taking part. Dad noticed first and asked, 'Something up, Mich.e.l.le?'

I looked at him and smiled. 'Bit under the weather.'

Mum, bless her, said immediately, 'It's not a hangover, is it? You haven't been overdoing the wine, have you?'

With a tired grimace I said, 'No, Mum, it's not that. It's probably the start of a cold, or something.'

She looked suspicious but didn't say any more. Luke, who knew the real reason for my quiet, said, 'There's something going around, she'll be OK soon,' hugging me round the shoulder and shaking me in an affectionate manner as he spoke.

And that was that, as far as the family were concerned, but it wasn't like that for me. I had to live with what I had seen that day.

My parents are aware that I'm not a particularly maternal type. I don't see the pleasure in green, dirty and damp nappies, in sick down my back and piles the size of superheated plums hanging out of my rear end. Each to their own is what I say; for me it's evenings of easy friendship and chat, undisturbed nights and late mornings that float my boat. Ankle-biters are all very well in their place, but my life isn't that place.

Yet that doesn't mean I didn't want to go home and cry when we had finished dealing with the sad death of little Lizzie Dawes.

When I had arrived at the mortuary that morning, I could tell at once that something was different. The atmosphere was quiet, almost like a church, and Clive and Graham sat in the office with their coffee talking in subdued tones, without any of the usual cross-talk; even when one of the young girls who worked upstairs in the path lab one that usually caused Clive to look pained and mutter something about 'bazookas' walked past the window, nothing was said. As Graham made my coffee, I asked, 'What's up?'

Clive said, 'Just had a phone call from the Coroner's office. There's a little girl coming in. Only three years of age.' He spoke in a low voice and I could see that, despite all the years he'd done the job, he was seriously upset.

'What happened?' I asked fearfully.

'She was staying with grandparents. She went out to play in the front garden with a ball first thing. Granddad went to the garage to get out the car and didn't see her. He reversed it over her.'

'Oh, my G.o.d.' Suddenly I, too, felt like crying.

Graham, a grandfather himself, said in a low voice, 'b.l.o.o.d.y terrible.'

Even though it seemed obvious what the cause of death was, the law requires a post-mortem. We don't normally do children's autopsies in Gloucestershire they go to Bristol where a paediatric pathologist does them, because the diseases and problems are so different from the ones in adults and because they require specialized investigations but in cases of trauma, one or two of the more experienced pathologists in the county are willing to do them; that saves having to move the body and thus cause (if it is possible to imagine) more upset to the family, should they wish to view the child. Clive rang Ed Burberry who said at once that he would do it, so all there was to do after that was to wait for the body.

Lizzie arrived at just after eleven. She was in a pathetically small temporary coffin, like a huge wicker basket, about two and half feet long. A single undertaker carried her in and that only emphasized how small and precious she was; I could see that he, too, was terribly affected by what had happened. Graham took her and carried her straight into the dissection room, returning a few minutes later with the empty basket. The request from the Coroner's office had been faxed through about half an hour before, and Clive had already booked the case in and prepared all the paperwork for Ed. First Graham, then I, got changed into scrubs and we went into the dissection room while Clive phoned upstairs to tell Ed that we were ready for him. There were b.u.t.terflies in my stomach as I approached the dissection table and I was afraid that I would not be able to stop bursting into tears when I came up close.

Well, my eyes filled with tears but I managed to sniff them back, although only just. She had been a very pretty girl, with long, pale brown hair that her mum had arranged into bunches, a chubby face and blue eyes that were now clouded. She wore pink dungarees over a white blouse. I knew at once that she was loved and cherished, probably spoilt deservedly by all around her.

There was surprisingly little trauma to see. The right side of her face was badly grazed on the cheekbone and around the eyes, and blood trickled from the side of her mouth; also, it was obvious that her right arm was badly broken from the way that it bent so sickeningly, and that her chest was crushed.

Graham, the seasoned old pro who had seen everything and done most of them, and who could heave twenty-stone bodies off and onto the table without help, undressed Lizzie with surprising gentleness. He treated her with dignity and respect, even folding the clothes as he took them off in case Mum and Dad wanted to keep them. He said nothing while he did this and kept his head down, so that it was only when he had finished and I glimpsed his face that I saw that he, too, had tears in his eyes.

By this time, Ed Burberry had arrived and changed. As a matter of routine he checked the ID, and then carefully charted all the external injuries the facial grazes, the broken arm, the crushed chest. Having done this, he told Graham to begin the evisceration while he went back to the alcove where the pathologists kept the paperwork and dictated their reports. While he mumbled into the microphone, Graham started; for once the radio was turned off and there was no banter at all.

There was no difference in what Graham had to do with Lizzie when compared with what he did with an adult, except that the scale was different; the liver was a miniature, the kidneys were tiny, the intestines as if seen in a telescope viewed the wrong way round. When he lifted the pluck out, he did so effortlessly and, when he put this in a stainless steel bowl that I carried over to the dissection bench, it was almost as if it were empty. I don't think that Graham's face altered at all while he did all this; it remained set, as if carved out of stone.

Ed Burberry was normally a happy partic.i.p.ant in the gossip and banter, giving as good as he got, but today he was similarly subdued as he went through his routine. I helped him by weighing the organs and was able to see how it wasn't just in size that Lizzie's organs differed from an adult's; the aorta the main artery was pink, not yellow and cracked, the heart was compact and stiff, not soft and flabby, and the lungs were pale pink, without any sooty dirt. Even I could see the damage that had been done to Lizzie. The chest had been filled with blood because the aorta had ruptured, while the ribs were all broken and the lungs lacerated.

After twenty minutes, he was finished. He thanked us both and left without another word to go back to the alcove to dictate his report. While he did this, Graham reconstructed Lizzie and I cleaned up, once more in silence. In another thirty minutes, it was all over, the dissection room clean, as if it had never happened. Little did I know that the day was about to get tougher.

Lizzie's family, understandably, wanted to come and spend time with her. Mr and Mrs Dawes arrived, your average-looking young family. I could see Dad was trying so hard to hold it together for the sake of his wife. Even though I had by then experienced a fair few viewings, this was going to be difficult. Clive took charge of it but I was in attendance, and realized that I had a lot to learn from the experience; yet I was finding it hard to know how to react, let alone where to look. 'I'm sorry for your family's loss,' just sounded lame as it came out of Clive's mouth. Even I knew that no words would help this family.

Mrs Dawes entered the waiting area looking really shaky and was immediately made to sit down by Mr Dawes. He looked up at us and apologized for his wife's behaviour. Apologize? I thought she was holding it together well, considering. It was only the fact that her knees would not bear the weight of her body at that moment that gave away the signs of what she was going through. Clive spoke to them both in a soft manner, and told them where Lizzie was resting, gesturing towards the door that led to the viewing area. Mr Dawes thanked Clive and helped his wife up out of the seat. Clive slowly opened the door to where Lizzie was laid out, and her parents entered the room. It was only a couple of a.s.sisted steps that Lizzie's mum had taken before her legs completely buckled and she fell to the floor, beginning to cry uncontrollably. It was the most painful, heartbreaking sound I have heard. For the rest of the afternoon, all that could be heard though the mortuary was Mrs Dawes wailing and asking why. I have never felt so helpless.

As I sat in the pub that night, it was only very gradually that I came to terms with what I had seen. It was the first time that I fully appreciated what death can mean. I also had feelings about my own grandfather. I knew how much he loved me, and how much I loved him, and had done so for as long as I could remember. What if this had happened to my family? How would they interact twenty-eight years on? I could not get my head round it.

TWENTY.

Clive ended up spending most of the weekend in the mortuary with Lizzie's family. Her grandparents had been allowed to come and visit her, but there was obviously a lot of tension between the parents and the grandparents and their relationship had broken down. The two-hour slot for viewings at the weekend had gone out the window and Clive had spent a total of seven hours each day over Sat.u.r.day and Sunday just pottering about the mortuary while Lizzie's family sat with her. Consequently, when Graham and I arrived on Monday morning all the weekend work had been done by Clive. We were handed hot drinks and sat down to listen to Clive tell us in detail what had happened.

There had been a blazing row in the relatives' waiting area between Lizzie's mum, Josie, and her grandfather. Len, Lizzie's grandfather, was obviously racked with guilt and was under no circ.u.mstances coming to terms with what had happened, and neither was Mum. I was starting to learn that bereavement can take many different forms. After the initial shock of losing her young daughter, Josie's first reaction was pure grief, her body went into shut-down, her limbs refused to work and she could not speak. This turned to white-hot anger from what Clive was telling us. Josie had lashed out physically at Len and had slapped him hard across the face while verbally abusing him, too. Charlie, Lizzie's dad and Len's son, had to physically lift his wife away from the situation and take her, kicking and screaming, outside. Clive said it had appeared that Charlie was in complete control of the situation. He announced to his family that he wanted to spend some time alone in the viewing area with Lizzie. He made his wife promise him that she would sit quietly for a few minutes while he stayed with his daughter.

Clive said that what occurred next had never happened to him in all his years as a technician. Charlie had gone into the viewing area alone, while the rest of the family sat in silence in the relatives' room. He had shut the door behind him, which was not uncommon, but it had opened only a few minutes later; he then came out with Lizzie in his arms and, before anyone quite knew what was happening, was making his way towards the front door. Josie had screamed at this sight and her body again went into collapse. Lizzie's grandmother took control of Josie while Len blocked the door to his son and dead granddaughter. Clive said that he moved in as well at this point. He had tried to explain to Charlie that it would not be a sensible thing to do, and that Lizzie needed to stay with us. Len had confirmed this, but Charlie was a big bloke and began to try to barge his way past his father and Clive. Clive said it took around ten minutes of coaxing Charlie, with the distraught father eventually falling to his knees holding Lizzie's small limp body in his arms until Len could take Lizzie off him and place her back on the viewing trolley.

Clive needed some quick thinking on this, and decided it was time to get Lizzie to the funeral parlour, but it was three o'clock on Sunday afternoon. Luckily, he knew which funeral service would be taking care of Lizzie and it happened to be a local firm that he had worked with for many years. He took a chance and rang the owner of the funeral parlour, who agreed to be there in an hour. Clive then sat with Lizzie's family and talked them through what was going to happen now.

When Tony, the owner of Phelps & Stayton Funeral Services, arrived, Clive had shown him in the back way to the viewing area where Lizzie was. Once he had concealed the 'tradesmen's' entrance to the viewing area with the curtain, he invited the whole family in and Tony greeted them in his gentle manner. They had met before when Tony attended Josie and Charlie's home to settle the arrangements for Lizzie's funeral just the day before.

Clive felt it was important for all of the family to be able to move on a step with Lizzie's death as, in his experience, it helped them with the grieving process. This was something the family were not dealing with. Clive told me about how he once had a body in the mortuary for three weeks with a viewing every day because the dead lady's husband did not want her to leave the hospital. In the widower's head, if his wife left the hospital, and was released from our care, it would become final. Clive had to spend the last week of this gentleman's visits convincing him to make funeral arrangements for his wife. 'There is only a certain amount of time that you can halt decomposition by refrigeration, Mich.e.l.le,' he had explained tiredly.

That afternoon, Lizzie was placed slowly in the small white coffin that had been lined with pink silk with a pink pillow. Painted daintily on the coffin lid were pink bows, and once this was placed over her, Tony sealed the coffin and the family left the room.

TWENTY-ONE.

I had decided shortly after this that I needed a break and thought that I would ring Dave. Dave is my soul-mate. We worked together for ten years, and from the first day we met we got on. No s.e.xual attraction or complicated stuff like that, just pure friendship. Anyway, Dave moved to Lancashire about four years ago to be near his partner, Chris. They met online, and after a few weekends up there with him, Dave decided to move up to Lancashire permanently. I was pleased that he had met someone, but so disappointed he was leaving.

Dave is a few years older than me, eight to be precise. Sometimes when we are together though you would be forgiven for thinking we have a mental age of about five. Dave is super-intelligent and has a definite opinion about most things, and he fascinates me with the stuff he has locked away in his brain. A bit of an old glam rocker, Dave had hair down to his backside when I first met him, and always wore 'Kiss' T-shirts, jeans and Converse boots; the only thing different about him now is that he's had his hair cut. He's very focused, but I believe the world is missing out on a great man, a talented painter and a wealth of knowledge. He should be in the limelight, in my eyes.

We had vowed never to lose touch, and we haven't. We see each other at least three times a year, always at Christmas and birthdays, and try to get a week abroad together once a year with partners and family. We saw each other Christmas Eve last year, but I knew he wouldn't be disappointed to see me again, and I felt that I could really do with the break.

I spoke to Dave the next morning and, as luck would have it, he said that he was due some time off and could take it the following week. After checking with Clive that it was OK to have leave at such short notice and after half an hour of teasing from him, I arranged to go on Friday for two weeks. Luke and I would have the weekend with Dave and Chris, then just potter about till he finished work on the other days, when I was sure we'd end up in the pub, and that was just fine by me. The beauty of Lancashire is that it is such a friendly place. Steeped in history, loads of old architecture, fantastic countryside and not forgetting the fact that everything is about twenty per cent cheaper than Gloucestershire. Maybe I will move up there myself one day, but until then a fortnight would have to suffice.

We had the best time with Dave, two weeks of pure relaxation, food, ale, laughing, crosswords in the daily paper, hot chocolate and starting with a champagne breakfast on the train on the way up which Luke organized, just because. The weather was still pretty s.h.i.tty, but when I'm with people like Dave, Luke and Chris, it doesn't matter.

As soon as I got back to the mortuary I knew that something special had occurred from the fact that Clive and Graham were laughing loudly. When I went into the office, Graham was red in the face and in danger of choking, and Clive's eyes were watery.

'Morning, Mich.e.l.le,' he said brightly, while Graham tried to get his breath back.

'What's going on?'

'Nothing much,' he said, although this was obviously a big, fat lie. 'It was fairly quiet last week, wasn't it, Graham?'

And Graham, who had been rolling some cigarettes in preparation for his morning break later on, began to laugh and choke again, just about managing to splutter, 'Very quiet indeed.'

'What's so funny, then?' I was beginning to wonder if the joke was at my expense.

'Just a funny story I heard.'

'Go on then, tell me.'

He said at once, 'First things first. When you've checked the bodies in, we'll have some coffee and I'll tell it to you.' This struck me as a bit odd, because normally we had coffee first thing and caught up on small talk before starting the serious work.

'OK,' I said cautiously.

'There's only two,' he said, and Graham began to laugh again. 'Both women.'

I looked at the book where the porters write down the details of the bodies that they have admitted to the mortuary. As Clive had said, there were only two, but Graham had been wrong because although one was called Ethel Smithson, the other was called David Harcourt. Oh well, I thought, we all make mistakes.

I went to the fridge bay where Mrs Smithson had been put to check her over. In order to do this properly, I had to pull the tray out of the fridge onto the hydraulic trolley so that I could get a good look at her, making sure that she wasn't leaking, that if necessary she was viewable and that any valuables were properly accounted for. Having done this, I turned my attention to David Harcourt who was residing in the top s.p.a.ce of the fridge next door. I pulled the door open, positioned the trolley and pumped it up to the right height, then pulled the laden tray onto the trolley before lowering it again to waist height. I unzipped the body bag and was surprised at what was inside. It wasn't Mr Harcourt at all; it was a buxom blonde with long hair and an ample chest, dressed in a long flowing nightie. Obviously, the porters had made a mistake, I thought, except that when I checked the name on the wristband and the Coroner's label, they both said that it was Mr David Harcourt.

I looked again at the face and saw that underneath the heavy make-up there was a faint trace of stubble, and the hairline was slightly crooked. When I pulled at his hair, it came away to reveal the close-cropped black hair of a man. I looked up and saw that Clive and Graham were standing in the doorway to the body store, both grinning like lunatics. Graham asked, 'Isn't she lovely?' Clive said, 'Meet Davina Harcourt, Mich.e.l.le.'

I looked back down at the body. The ample chest was in fact made out of rubber.

Clive explained. 'According to Neville, by day David Harcourt was a respectable inhabitant of the town of Cirencester, a member of the Round Table, hard-working chartered surveyor, father of three and keen amateur golfer. By night or at least on those nights when his wife went off to the Trefoil Guild or Women's Inst.i.tute or whatever he became Davina by rummaging through his wife's drawers and by the appropriate application of make-up and other accessories.'