Chapter Three

As the blade of Cassie's scalpel breached the tender skin below Bronte's collarbone, she waited for the usual mental gear shift: the necessary switch from seeing the body she was slicing open as a person to an inanimate object to be analysed.

Nothing. The body was still nerdy Sophia Angelopoulos from Mrs Hooper's Year Ten class.

She felt a flutter of panic. This had never happened before, not even the time she'd eviscerated someone she'd been far closer to.

Come on , she muttered to herself fiercely, forcing herself to make the second cut of the Y-incision that started at the collarbone, meeting at a point on the chest where a pendant might hang. But her hand was shaking.

She noticed that Bronte's eyes had drifted half-open. It was simply the result of the facial muscles relaxing as rigor faded – but feeling that half-lidded gaze resting on her made sweat prickle out on her forehead. Throwing a glance at Jason on the other side of the autopsy suite – who was busy opening his gent's chest with the rib shears – she reached for the blue roll they used to clean up, tore off half a metre and draped it over Bronte's face, her hands still trembling.

‘Sorry,' she murmured. ‘I just can't .?.?.'

It worked . Her racing heart slowed, and she was able to make the midline incision.

Ten minutes later, after extracting the viscera in a single ‘block' into the waiting white pail, she removed the blue paper mask shrouding the face. Now that the body was an empty shell from neck to groin her usual self-preserving dissociation had finally kicked in. Bronte's body had become anonymous, a puzzle to be solved rather than a person, and would remain that way until the organs were replaced and the body reconstituted.

Seeing Dr Curzon had arrived at his dissecting bench, she used both hands to carry the pail over – viscera were surprisingly heavy even in someone as small-framed as Bronte – and tipped out its contents. ‘Do you want the head opened, Doctor C?'

‘No need,' said Curzon without looking at her.

Usually she would agree: the severity of the head trauma needed no internal confirmation of catastrophic brain injury. But this time she hovered at his shoulder as he started separating the organs for dissection with swift strokes of his PM40. She lowered her voice. ‘Look, I should probably let you know, she's a singer, name of Bronte?' He looked blank. ‘Anyway she's a bit of a rising star? .?.?. So I wouldn't be surprised if the media crawl all over her death. Just saying.'

He shot her a look, picking up her meaning immediately. ‘Let's have her brain then,' he said wearily.

She headed back to the body, hoping that Curzon would be covering his substantial arse by giving Bronte a more thorough PM than the usual. A routine post-mortem examination could take as little as thirty or forty minutes. And no wonder: the pathologists only got paid around a hundred quid per body, as opposed to the four-figure fee they charged for the full forensic version.

Jason must have been earwigging because she hadn't even fired up the bone saw before he sidled over to her station. Staring at Bronte's face, he said, ‘Is it her? That singer, you know? The one who was in all the papers, off her tits?'

‘Yep.' Cassie pictured the infamous image of Bronte in the tabloids. It was night-time and she wore a figure-hugging evening dress but was barefoot and clearly drunk, stoned – or both – lipstick smeared, mascara gone walkabout down her face. Caught at the door to her block she had turned to remonstrate with the paparazzi, face angry, mouth open – a moment illuminated by a brutal flash. Under the unflattering picture one of the headlines had screamed: brONTE MELTDOWN! And underneath, the faux-concerned subhead read: FEARS THE TROUBLED STAR WILL BE THE NEXT AMY .

Aka Amy Winehouse.

Bastards.

The effort of memory twisted Jason's face before he burst out, ‘Bronte! Yeah, that's her. She did "Clean Break".'

Cassie shrugged, frowning.

Jason looked incredulous ‘You must've heard it? Biggest dance track of last summer. ' Excitement had flushed his already ruddy cheeks. ‘We've never had a celeb in before.'

Moving so that she blocked his view of Bronte's body, Cassie fixed him with a look. ‘She isn't a celebrity in here, OK? We treat her exactly the same as we would any of our guests, understood?'

Jason shrugged, but as he walked away she could hear him singing the earworm she dimly remembered playing everywhere last summer, ‘"Break, break, I need a break, break, break. Gimme a break" .?.?.'

After she'd removed the skullcap to access Bronte's brain, her eye fell on the stream of water that constantly sluiced the autopsy table, carrying the blood away towards the drain-hole between her feet. She gripped the table edge, pitched back to that terrible moment in the showers in Year 10.

The thread of what looked like blood in the water heading for the drain. Muffled laughter. Then the high-pitched sound of a girl keening.