Chapter Two

Pulling herself together, Cassie tried to speak normally as she would to any of her guests. ‘Hello, Sophia,' she said softly. ‘Long time no see. You're in the general mortuary in Camden and I'll be looking after you. We'll be trying to find out what happened.'

The last time they'd laid eyes on each other they'd been fourteen-year-old schoolgirls, classmates at Camden High. Classmates but not friends . Feeling a surge of guilt, Cassie leaned closer and spoke with feeling. ‘I am so sorry to see you here, Sophia. I promise we'll do our very best for you, and your family' – wondering whether she might pick up some clue to her last thoughts, as she sometimes did from the bodies in her care.

The first time had been just a few months into the job. She'd been checking in a Mrs M, an elderly lady who'd died of a skull fracture after falling on her front step one icy morning. Cassie had been overcome by a weird sensation – a feeling of slippage into a space between dream and reality, before hearing the single word, Bugger! Nothing dramatic or mysterious, just an expression of the old lady's shock, which of course she knew could simply have been a product of her imagination. And yet .?.?.

Now, setting an awkward hand on Sophia's chilly shoulder, Cassie scrunched her eyes closed, and waited, but the only sound was the soft burble of the fridge.

What did you expect? scolded Cassie's internal voice. Why would she speak to you, of all people?

Cassie had actually seen the adult Sophia, albeit from a distance, once since school: at Dingwalls, one of Camden's music venues a couple of years back. Sophia had been up on stage singing – transformed from the dumpy little girl into a beautiful and slender woman with a cloud of near-black curly hair, sleeve tattoos inked up both her arms.

Although she'd only been the support act to another band – this was before the media started calling her ‘a rising star' – it was clear she had serious talent. Despite her tiny frame, no more than five foot three, her jazz-inflected contralto had an intensity that gave Cassie the shivers, and a bouzouki player among the backing musicians added a spine-tingling roots depth to some of the numbers. She hadn't known who it was when a friend had dragged her to the gig, because this new incarnation of the girl she'd known as Sophia Angelopoulos went by the name of Bronte – the Greek goddess of thunder.

The door to the corridor opened to admit her fellow technician Jason.

‘What's on the menu today then?' he asked, sounding bored. ‘Jumper?'

‘No idea until we see the coroner's report.' Cassie hesitated. ‘I knew her – kind of – at school.' Hoping to head off any off-colour comments Jason might be tempted to make: she'd had to tell him off before for calling the bodies ‘stiffs', or making comments about the size of a woman's breasts. Like Sophia, Cassie was only twenty-seven – almost half Jason's age – but she was the senior technician and in her mortuary the dead were treated with dignity and respect.

No need to mention that Sophia – Bronte – was a celebrity, appearing regularly in the tabloids, if not always for the right reason. Cassie held her breath, half expecting him to recognise her, but luckily he just shrugged and turned to go, saying, ‘Just popping out for a ciggie.'

Cassie fired up the computer. Nothing from the coroner's office yet to say whether Sophia was down for a routine post-mortem – the kind you got when death was unnatural or unexpected but not suspicious – or the full-on forensic version where the police had reason to suspect foul play. It was only just 9 a.m. – aka half an hour since they'd opened but she was impatient to find out more.

‘Dorothy? Hi, it's Cassie.'

The warm reassuring tones of Dorothy, the admin assistant, came down the line. ‘I expect you're calling about that poor girl by the canal.' A pause as she consulted her computer .?.?. ‘Sophia Angelopoulos?'

So at least her surname had been corrected. ‘Does the police report mention her performing name, Bronte?'

A pause as Dorothy checked through the notes. ‘Not that I can see.'

So it sounded like the cops had yet to realise they were dealing with a celeb death. Surprise surprise .

‘What's the deal?' asked Cassie. ‘Does the coroner want a routine or a forensic?'

‘Just a routine. The police officer who attended – Sergeant Hickey – reported no suspicious circumstances. Apparently she left a suicide note – well, a text.'

*

Half an hour later Cassie had peeled the clothes from Sophia's stiffening limbs, and laid her out on her workstation. Taking a blank female body chart – the basic outline of a woman, front and back view – she started marking the location of any visible injuries, scars, and so on, with crosses. ‘We do this to alert the pathologist to anything that might need investigating further,' she told Sophia quietly.

A cross for the head injury, obviously . Rocking Sophia's head gently side to side, she found it as floppy as a puppet's. C1-C2 cervical fracture . Another cross for the neck. Working her way down the body, she marked up several contusions and grazes – no doubt the result of the impact – before turning Sophia's arms palm upwards. Seeing the cut marks sliced into the delicate skin inside the upper arm she flinched. The place to self-harm without being discovered . They were silver-white, long faded, might even date from her school days – their school days . She marked them up, knowing that they'd go down as evidence for a history of mental health issues.

Sophia's left forearm was floppy too, with complex and multiple fractures of the radius and ulna – probably as a result of flinging her arm out reflexively before she hit the ground. The palm of the right hand and the underside of the fingers were also badly grazed – a scatter of abrasions like a galaxy of dried blood – which was unexpected since all the other injuries were on her left-hand side which had clearly taken the brunt of the impact.

With the chart completed, Cassie draped a coverlet over Sophia's naked body below the neck. It wasn't something she'd usually do – bodies were unremarkable, the mortuary's stock-in-trade – but she didn't like the idea of Jason seeing her naked, young and still beautiful, from the neck down at least.

Bit late to start getting protective now , noted her snarky inner voice.

When Dr Curzon breezed in to perform his external examination of Sophia's body she gave him a welcoming smile and even attempted some small talk – albeit through gritted teeth.

‘How did your conference go?' she asked him. ‘Bermuda wasn't it?'

Curzon frowned: their interactions were usually solely functional, borderline chilly. He had never hidden his dislike of her: an antagonism that seemed to be partly a knee-jerk reaction to her piercings and tatts, etc., but also because she had Opinions . To Curzon, Opinions were the exclusive domain of the pathologist, not of some gobby technician with ideas above her station – especially one who sometimes had the temerity to question something he had overlooked on a body.

‘It was very agreeable,' he said, visibly puffing up. ‘I was at The Loren, at Pink Beach? A delightful spot, and my paper was very well received.' This last with a smile that aimed for modest and fell at the hurdle of smug.

‘It sounds great,' she enthused, before handing him the coroner's report on Sophia's death. There was method in her charm offensive. Curzon could be a slapdash operator at the best of times, keen to get through the list and back to his private practice, but she also knew, via Archie, that Curzon's wife had killed herself, which meant he tended to bring personal baggage to the suicides they saw.

Cassie wasn't about to let Sophia get a raw deal. Still, it must be two years since Curzon had come home to the terrible sight of his wife hanging from a ceiling joist of their garage. Perhaps he'd come to terms with it by now?

Curzon glanced down at Bronte. ‘Another narcissist who didn't care about wasting valuable police time and resources,' he said, in a voice etched with acid.

Or not.

‘What's wrong with a quiet overdose in bed? At least that doesn't upset the neighbours.' He handed the report back to her with a dismissive sniff. ‘She was on drugs I assume?'

‘The police report says there was what appeared to be synthetic cannabinoid at the scene.'

Reaching out a gloved hand, he flipped Sophia's poor damaged head from side to side, making Cassie wince. ‘No doubt as to the CoD anyway. Fracture dislocation of C-spine and significant head injury due to collision with terra firma . The lividity suggests she lay undiscovered for at least four hours.'

He was referring to the mauve colour that stained the left side of Sophia's face like a birthmark, which could also be seen on her left shoulder, upper arm, and hip: not bruising, but the result of her blood pooling and coagulating where her body had lain closest to the ground.

‘I did notice an abrasion,' said Cassie carefully, turning Sophia's right hand upwards to show him the palm. ‘Hard to see how that fits with the rest of the injuries? From the fractures to the left arm it's clear that side took the impact,' extending her own arm to demonstrate.

Curzon's mouth went down at the corners. Barely glancing at the grazed hand, he shrugged. ‘She probably scraped it on something on the way down. I think we can file it under "not significant"' – sending Cassie a warning look.

Stay in your lane.

And with that he headed over to Jason's table to meet his next customer.

Cassie bent her head level with Sophia's dark curls. ‘Don't take any notice of him,' she murmured confidentially, as if they were back in the loos at school bitching about a teacher. ‘He's a professional dickhead.'

Bronte. My name is Bronte.

Cassie blinked. The words seemed to rise from the body in what she remembered as Sophia's fourteen-year-old voice: a slightly harsh tone, aggrieved sounding. As a rational person, Cassie knew that it was probably all in her head, but nonetheless she always respected anything she got from the dead.

‘Bronte it is,' she said.