The Ghost Marriage

Chapter Seven

The naked body of Jiang Meilin was wheeled into the autopsy room by two assistants, and transferred to a steel autopsy table. The air was chill and suffused with the slightly perfumed odour of decay, like meat that has been left in the refrigerator two weeks past its sell-by date.

Margaret stood at the table preparing for the initial examination. Beneath a long-sleeved cotton gown, she wore green surgeon’s pyjamas covered by a plastic apron. Plastic covers protected white tennis shoes, and her long blonde hair was secured beneath a plastic shower cap. Now she pulled on a pair of latex gloves, followed by plastic covers, then a steel-mesh glove over her non-cutting hand, before finally pulling on a further latex pair.

She was being assisted by Pathologist Wang, with whom she had conducted autopsies on many occasions. When she had first arrived in China, young and arrogant, and skilled in the latest Western techniques, he had resented the shadow she cast over him and his department. But such resentments were history now, and they had long ago arrived at something approaching mutual respect. Their working relationship was comfortable, and she enjoyed his irreverent sense of humour. But even Wang could find nothing amusing to say today. He cast his eyes over the slim teenager and shook his head.

‘Pity. Pretty girl.’

Margaret looked at the body on the table before her. Meilin was taller than the average Chinese, much of her height concentrated in the long femurs which had given her the power to run fast. But she did not possess the muscle mass that would have made her a sprinter. Instead her legs were slender and elegant. Margaret began with the feet and worked her way up the body looking for any unusual markings. She found some slight bruising on the forearms, noting them on a body chart she held in a clipboard, but did not consider them significant.

Wang examined her hands. ‘No sign of trauma,’ he said. ‘And no blood or skin beneath the fingernails.’ He and Margaret exchanged looks, and he nodded to one of the assistants, who drew blood from the femoral artery with a large syringe. ‘What do you think they’ll find in toxicology?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘These days, who knows? Rohypnol would have had a sedative effect after fifteen to twenty minutes. She obviously didn’t put up any kind of a fight.’

They continued the external examination. There was no sign of sexual activity, and no trauma around small, flat breasts with their tiny, dark areolae around the nipples.

Then they came to the neck, where a skin-coloured cosmetic foundation had dried and cracked. Using moistened cotton pads, Margaret carefully washed it away to reveal the bruising that the facial lividity had suggested would almost certainly be there: four circles on the left side of the neck, two of which were close to half an inch in diameter, one larger oval on the right side.

‘Her killer left his mark,’ Wang said.

Margaret carefully traced the line of the little crescent-shaped abrasions that were associated with the bruising. Tiny flakes of skin were heaped up at the concave side. ‘And took a little of her away with him beneath his fingernails.’

They moved up, then, to her face, where blood pressure had mounted in her head and caused petechial haemorrhaging of the tiny blood vessels around the eyes and nose. It was not necessary to stop someone breathing to strangle them. It only required around four-and-a-half pounds of pressure on the jugular to prevent blood draining from the head. Death would have come fast.

Margaret pulled back the eyelids and closed them again. ‘Strange.’

‘What is?’ Wang looked more closely.

‘There are circles of paler flesh around the eyes, blanched into the lividity.’ Margaret stared at the closed eyes of the dead girl, and could almost have sworn she saw patterns in those pale circles. ‘As if coins might have been placed over them to keep them shut.’ She turned to Wang. ‘Do we have a TMDT kit?’

‘We do.’ And he nodded to one of the assistants, who disappeared to return two minutes later with a four-ounce spray bottle of test solution, and a short-wave ultraviolet light source with a 4-watt bulb, sometimes known as a Wood’s lamp.

Margaret took the bottle, and carefully sprayed the solution around each eye, and they waited in silence for several minutes until it had dried. ‘Lights,’ she said. And the assistant turned out the overhead lights, plunging the autopsy room into total darkness.

Margaret snapped on the Wood’s lamp, and an eerie ultraviolet glow filled the room. She moved the lamp over the dead girl’s eyes. There over each one, marked in dark purple against the yellow background of the dried solution, were two perfectly round images with clearly engraved markings.

‘Coins,’ Wang said. ‘You were right. What metal is denoted by purple?’

Margaret stared thoughtfully at the circular patterns engraved into the lividity around the eyes. ‘Brass or copper,’ she said. ‘We’ll need to take photographs. And samples.’