THE CORPSE THAT CRIED
It was early morning on Porthdafarc beach when two council workmen driving their sand lorry spotted the body of a man, which was drifting in the shallow waters close to the shore. The workmen called the police, who in turn called a local doctor. The local doctor attended the scene and reported that the man was not breathing and there was no sign of a pulse. The body was bruised and had facial lacerations, which indicated that he could be a jumper. Many people with suicidal tendencies chose the cliffs at South Stack as the place to end it all. He certified the body as dead, and the dead man was covered with loose tarpaulins to hide him from curious on lookers while a home office pathologist was called. A local policeman who attended the scene lifted the tarpaulin and recognised the body as that of Mustapha Ahmed. He had dated a local female customs officer Sian Hughes. The name Ahmed, once reported triggered alarm bells in the security services system. Agents from the TTF were alerted and Graham Libby, the coroner, was flown from Liverpool by RAF helicopter to the morgue at Holyhead hospital, where the corpse was to be taken.
Taskforce officers were still combing the headlands above South Stack Lighthouse where Sian`s dead body still lay. Forensic teams were searching her house and the area around where her death occurred for clues. There was a blood trail all the way from the ocean to Sian`s Jeep. Now that Mustapha`s body had turned up the crime scene investigation would spread to incorporate the beach at Porthdafarc.
Dr. Graham Libby stepped from the Sea King helicopter and ducked low as he ran across the landing pad. He entered the morgue and was handed the attending doctors report as he dressed in his sterile scrubs. The doctor had certified the man`s body as dead, cause of death unknown. Libby lifted the cover from the corpse. He sensed something different about the body immediately. He often thought that he had a sixth sense with his subjects. He felt that the more he could find out about the way they met their end, the closer he became to them.
“The body is a male in his early twenties, he is neatly dressed. He is of Asian or Middle Eastern origin. The body is displaying signs of trauma. There is a chunk of the right cheek missing and definitive teeth marks. From the size and shape of the teeth marks, I would say that they are human. I am not swabbing the cheek wound for DNA because of the time the body has spent in the Irish Sea. There is bruising to the nose and below both the eyes, indicating that he had been in some sort of fight before he died.” The doctor cut open the tee shirt that the body wore and looked for signs of lividity or discoloration.
“There is no dew on the corpse which I would expect to see. There is also no rigor mortis or post mortem lividity. The body temperature is 27.2 degrees centigrade, which is completely inconsistent with the on-call physicians report. This is all wrong. I am taking the body temperature a second time using the mouth as the reading point. The thermometer is reading 27.2 degrees.” Graham Libby looked at the thermometer and noticed fresh spittle on the glass bulb. Dead bodies don’t produce saliva. He was now seriously concerned about the attending doctor`s report. Of the three cardinal signs of death, algor (cooling), rigor (stiffening) and livor (staining), there was only algor present. A body pulled from the waters of the Irish Sea either alive or dead would be considerably cooler than normal. He was not convinced that the doctor`s report was correct. He held the broken nose bone of the dead body and squeezed it hard between his finger and thumb. He stared at the corpse as a tiny tear trickled from the eye down the cheek.
“This man is still alive for god`s sake, unless dead people have suddenly started to feel pain,” Dr. Libby cried.
There was a flurry of activity around the hospital as emergency teams ran to the morgue. Hot water bottles were placed around the body and oxygen was administered. They wired him up to an ECG machine but still the vital signs were negative.
“The body has been in the water so long that the blood circulation has slowed down. He has effectively been frozen alive and is in a hypothermic stupor. We must raise his body temperature immediately,” Dr. Libby had never experienced a patient in hypothermic stupor but its effects were well chronicled.
Silver thermal blankets were applied to the corpse and the hot water bottles were changed quickly as they cooled. A faint pulse appeared in the neck of the corpse and the ECG monitor registered a heartbeat.
Mustapha had no idea where he was as he awoke 72 hours later. He knew that he was awake and that he wasn’t alone. As his eyes started to focus he could see a pretty young nurse leaning over him. Beyond her was a bright light fixed to a white ceiling. The light hurt his eyes and he squeezed them closed again. The smell of antiseptic hung heavily in the air. He felt very weak and tired. His nose and face caused him pain. He wanted to drift back to sleep away from it all.
Mustapha slept fitfully for hours. He drifted in and out of consciousness. He dreamt of Sian and the terrible way she had looked when she died. He dreamt of his sister Yasmine and how they used to play outside in the sunshine when they were children. Yasmine was always laughing when he dreamed of her. Mustapha was pulled back toward reality by the sound of voices around him; the image of Yasmine laughing was replaced by one of her lying shattered and broken on the cold tarmac of a motorway.
He opened his eyes and saw the smiling face of a nurse, she placed a glass of water to his lips and he sipped it. His mouth and throat were sore from the tubes that had been inserted into him to help him to breathe and eat. Behind the nurses he saw a policeman standing near the doorway. He was wearing padded body armour and held a vicious looking black machinegun of some description. Reality was creeping back to him slowly. A big man, that he recognised vaguely, greeted the armed guard and approached the bed. He had a shaved head and his muscular frame stretched the material of his black suit to the limits. Mustapha remembered that he was Sian`s superior officer. His name was Tank. He knew why he was here; he would want to know why Sian was dead. Mustapha wasn’t really sure that he knew the answer except that it would involve his brother Yasser. The killing would never stop until Yasser was dead.