Studies in Detective Fiction II
Jenny
"Ah need a word with yous," a thick Glaswegian accent penetrated Jenny's idle thoughts about the goings-on in the secret life of her beloved girlfriend, a secret life she was becoming more and more convinced of the existence. They were in the reception of the mortuary while James finished his food he had brought with him, because Jenny wouldn't let him take it into the actual morgue. Who ate in a morgue? She hated the idea. But Dr Cohen had grown impatient and come to look for them, and now Jenny was on the receiving end of her anguish, "What's with all this puddle shite, eh?"
"Excuse me?" Jenny asked.
"A bag of skin full of goo! Seven bags of skin full of goo! What dae ye expect us to do with tha?"
"You know, work your magic?" Jenny suggested uselessly, trying to smile. Her smile didn't matter though, because Cohen wasn't looking at her face at all. The celebrated Dr Death was scaring the life out of the receptionist, who was on lunch just like Elliott was, eating from a tupperware container full of pre-made pasta salad. But she was sinking into her seat and fixing her eyes on her paperwork as Cohen aggressively questioned the detectives. "It's a drugs thing, look, I've got the case files here," Jenny said, indicating the irritatingly slim brown folder in her hands.
"They dinnae look like they hold a loat of information," Cohen pointed out.
"It was Keegan and Holloway before we got reassigned," Jenny said, "You know what Holloway is like for paperwork – bare minimum. We've got nothing to go on, I was hoping you'd come through for us. You always do. Come on, cutie, we're going to go look at the dead people," she addressed James now, who had been trying to wolf down the remainder of his lunch ever since Cohen had appeared in her usual foul mood. He rammed half of an entire thick slice of ham into his mouth.
"Can I leave this plate here?" he spoke to the receptionist with his mouth full, trying to chew as quickly as possible. He still managed to flash the girl behind the desk, who was not so much a girl but more a forty-year-old woman with photographs of two teenage children next to her computer, his winning smile. "I promise I'll come and get it." It looked like that receptionist would let DI Elliot do whatever he wanted.
"Ye'll have more luck tryin ye charms oan the dead bodies downstairs than up here, pretty boy," Cohen snapped at him coldly. Elliott sometimes reminded her of Clara when he tried to schmooze everyone he met, and then it got worse when he simultaneously reminded her of Jack, and she discovered the striking similarities between Clara and Captain Jack which she had not pieced together before; maybe she had a thing for womanizers. It was only a matter of time before strangers started telling him they liked his accent, and then he really would forget about Sally. God, the two of them were bad for each other. Not that they always had been, they had once worked very well, but relationships deteriorated… and again, she was thinking about Clara, trudging in Cohen's wake.
The seven bodies were arranged on slabs, sometimes topping-and-tailing because there were only four slabs to work with. The most recent corpse alone got its own silver, stainless steel surface and that was all. It was icy cold, as always, and the desk in the corner was a mess with paperwork, food wrappers and coffee cups, all of which would belong to Dr Kinsey because Dr Cohen could not function if there was clutter around her of her own making. She took the idiom 'tidy home, tidy mind' very literally – but she took most things literally. Her description of the bodies, for example, had been very literal – 'seven bags of skin full of goo.' They looked very mushy, she had to admit. Like leather bean bags.
"What we really need is identifications and any information on the compound they've ingested," said Elliott.
"Aye, that's whit ah wis lookin for, but it isnae that easy. Even at the best've times, identifying the corpses of homeless youths? Which ah'm guessing at purely based oan the appearance of their skin, by the way – it's no mean feat, ken?" Cohen said, going over to the most recent body they had found that very morning and pulling on a fresh pair of latex gloves. Her lab coat was already covered in blood, but it looked dry. "See, if ye looky here ah'll show yous what's making it so difficult. Any other John Doe and what ye want tae do is run dental records, ken?"
"Standard procedure," James nodded.
"Except – look," she said, pulling open the sagging mouth of the nearest one. In it, pinkish goop was pooling at the back of the throat, dribbling over the lips and face. Then Dr Cohen reached her thankfully-gloved hand inside this gap and pulled out three teeth, "They're jist floating in there in all that puddle shite. Ye cannae get dental records froam jist teeth. The gums have disintegrated like everything else, it's impossible tae reconstruct his mouth accurately enough tae git even a partial dental match."
"What, exactly, has this drug done?"
"Gooified them."
"Is 'gooifed' a word?" Jenny frowned.
"It's a word if ah say it's a word, likesay. And that's what happened, in us professional, medical opinion. Everythin is goop, everythin except the skeleton. And the teeth. How much is the identity of these people really gunnae tell yous?"
"Apart from us being able to notify their families that they've died, it'll help us narrow down where they spent their time. Maybe scrub some CCTV if we get good photos of them from any official materials," Jenny said, because it was too hard to get a facial match on them. They looked like partially melted, latex masks. The kind people wore on Halloween. Only it was their actual faces, so it was significantly more grisly. "Find out where they got this drug, or who they got it from, or just find an acquaintance who can point us in the right direction without us having to canvas every slum in the city." And 2020s London was a big city indeed. They might as well give up if mass canvasing was their only lead.
"Let me see these," Elliott took the case files from Jenny and opened them to flick through, finding the profiles of the few victims who had actually been ID'd. "Cohen, can you do x-rays? Did Kinsey do x-rays? There's nothing in here about x-rays."
"Kinsey is a lazy wee gobshite who'll do anything tae avoid work," Dr Cohen said grimly, "Why dae ye want x-rays?"
"If skeletons don't melt, then foreign bodies won't melt either," he said, "Ah-ha, here – the ones they've identified was only because they had tattoos or distinctive scars. If they've got any foreign bodies – like a hip replacement or screws from an injury, or a bone malformation, or anything that might show up in medical records, we'll be able to work out who they are." And there was the good detective James Elliott was ninety-five percent of the time, coming back to the surface because he had eaten and flirted with two whole people. He closed the file and handed it back to Jenny, "I'm going to go get coffee and request access to all the missing persons reports from the last two months."
"Wait, what?" Jenny was surprised at his going.
"Coffee, I'll get you one. Both of you." He was already on his way out. He was just leaving her there, in a morgue, with Cohen, who was holding an intimidating scalpel.
"Git some gloves oan and make yersel useful," Cohen ordered her, "Start fishing oot those teeth. Some of them could have fillings, and if we can count them and work oot if there's any missing it could help us find dental records. Ah'm doing x-rays." Jenny sighed, but resigned herself to do what Cohen told her to do. After all, Hayley Cohen was brilliant and had never yet led them wrong. Or anyone wrong, for that matter. And she had done worse things than pull teeth out of liquefied organ gunk… maybe.
It was, ultimately, very unpleasant. Largely because the stuff had the consistency of lumpy custard and was incredibly cold from being locked away behind the doors of a mortuary. Sometimes she had to reach her arm down quite far, and felt like she was trying to do a manual evacuation of a cow.
"Hey, Cohen, can I talk to you about something?" Jenny asked, regretting saying anything almost immediately. Was she really going to ask Dr Cohen about Clara's affairs? Just because Nios, in whom Jenny felt Clara confided in to a greater extent than herself, could have let something slip to her? If Clara told Nios everything, and Nios told Cohen everything, then was it bad of Jenny to talk to Cohen – acutely aware of the inability to lie granted to her by her high-functioning spectrum disorder – and try to glean information from her? Was it immoral? A niggling voice in the back of her mind said that it was, most certainly, immoral, but she was blind. Blind with a paranoia imbued within her by James Elliott and his bitter ravings about Sally Sparrow and their doomed relationship, and the worry that their slow-but-sure demise was mirroring an equally slow one of her own relationship.
"…Is it related tae the case?" Cohen asked eventually, after a long pause.
"No."
"Well, this is work. Isnae personal time, ken? Ah cannae talk about-"
"Please?" Jenny interrupted, though Cohen hated to be interrupted, and regardless of Jenny she finished her sentence anyway before getting back to thinking. When she didn't say anything more, Jenny went ahead and asked. "I'm worried about Clara, I think there's something going on with her." Nothing. "Has she said anything to you? Has Nios? She's been acting funny."
"Ah think everybody is acting 'funny' in everything they do."
"But, really, it's like she's hiding something. Do you know anything?"
"Ah ken a loat of things."
"About Clara."
"Ah know her birthday, how tall she is, her surname, her star sign?"
"I know all of that, too," Jenny was growing impatient. "Anything about if she's hiding something from me." Silence. "Cohen."
"Looky here, there's seven dead people here and you're supposed tae be oan the case, but ye cannae pay attention because yer too focused on yer fanny. Ah'm no interested in whitever's goin oan between yous, so can ye try tae keep it oot of my – and your – workplace, likesay? Ah'm busy taking x-rays trying tae help you, after all, technically ah can jist leave." Jenny decided to drop it, lest she upset Cohen so much that she actually did storm out of Kinsey's morgue and abandon the case. They needed her expertise on the toxin still.
"Fine, whatever…" Jenny mumbled, "Back to the case. Do you have any ideas what kind of substance could have done this?" Cohen did not even hesitate in her answer this time.
"Ah've git a list of mibbe a dozen or so toxins which could potentially affect the human physiology in such a drastic way, but ah'll need tae do a proaper chemical analysis. The issue is everything in the body has been broken down, it'll even be hard tae git a viable blood sample. It's jist mush. The AI ye've got living in yer phone would be better help than me, ah cannae narrow it down without scientific investigation and ah dinnae have the equipment. Ah could mibbe work it if ah took the bodies back tae headquarters, but it would require a loat of admin Darling willnae want tae do in order tae officially take over the case."
"I'd rather not resort to Helix," Jenny said, "He's not admissible in court."
"If ye find out what it is ah may be able tae work backwards and find yous more specific trace evidence in these boadies. Mibbe see if anything can be extracted from the bone marrow, likesay."
"Do you at least know how they're taking whatever they're taking?"
"Ah have a theory, actually. Ah think it's being inhaled."
"Smoked?"
"Nah, sortae like… nitrous oxide."
"But if they're breathing it in then there might still be trace evidence on the teeth," Jenny realised.
"Aye, why dae ye think I've git ye picking all the teeth out? Scrub 'em down, ken? Ah already told ye a dental recreation will be impossible. Ah'm no collecting teeth for the good've mah health, Major." She liked when people still called her Major. It was something Cohen did because she liked to be addressed by her own professional title all the time, so she gave the same courtesy to Jenny, and she had known Jenny as a Major longer than she had known her as a Detective. "But, eh, ah'm still no sure of havin' the correct equipment."
"What's this about equipment? Tell Darling she isn't reclaiming another case from us, I don't care how angry she still is with me for quitting," James Elliott announced his return in his usual, buoyant way, carrying coffee cups. Jenny could smell her mocha from the dead body she was standing beside, her hand in its mouth down to her wrist, two teeth in her grip. It was like Teletubby custard. "Eurgh, what are you doing, Jenny?"
"Fishing for teeth," she said, drawing out her hand and then showing him the two teeth sitting there in organ-coloured slime in the palm of her hand. "The good doctor thinks that the toxin is being inhaled, like laughing gas, and that there might still be trace elements on these teeth. She wants me to use Helix to work out what it is."
"Uh-huh. I've been thinking about this drug," he began, "Oh – and – I went and took the plate back to the caff, and I got that cook's phone number."
"Brilliant, I'm so happy for you. You've been single for less than twenty-four hours. You really need to stay away from that woman," Jenny shook her head. Elliott seemed not to hear any of her sarcasm and was just beaming to himself. Jenny cleared her throat. "The drug? What were you thinking?"
"Oh. Turner thinks this is a new street drug, yeah? But a drug with mortality rates this high in just two months and with such strange symptoms would have been discovered weeks ago. There would be junkies in hospitals and A&Es. Unless it has a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Everyone who takes it dies."
"So?"
"So, what drug dealer wants to kill their clientele? None, that's who. If they all die, they can't carry on being dedicated customers, can they? They can't even get addicted if they die after one hit. Like when people have bad reactions to solvents and aerosols, yeah? Some people die straight away after snorting deodorant and sniffing glue." They were all agreed, at least, that the substance was somehow being inhaled.
"So do you think they're suicides? Maybe this thing is marketed like a bullet to the brain, we can't know for sure."
"Suicides or murders, maybe. But I think what we have to do is start picking up drug dealers. Chances are, if this lot did this One Hit Wonder drug, they've probably done a ton of others. And now they're dead. So the dealers aren't going to be happy about who's killing off their clients – besides, who sells suicide in a bottle, anyway? We'll just talk to Jenkins and ask who some of the regulars are they pick up for possession with intent and we'll go work them over. Because before, if this was a new drug they're all getting rich off, they would have stuck together and not talked to us in a million years-"
"But with someone picking off their customers and limiting their income with a mystery substance…"
"They might talk to the cops. Tell us what they know."
"Brilliant – you call Jenkins and ask about that, get a list of known-dealers and their locations. I'll print off the missing persons list you got access to for Cohen, and she can carry on working on these bodies to try and identify the substance. If it's in the air we might be able to track it – the HCC have equipment like that we might be able to wrangle access to." Of course, she could use Helix for that, too – but again, it was inadmissible in court. They couldn't try and get a conviction based on some random and uncorroborated bits of information DI Young had conjured from thin-air with her magic robot friend. "I'll just go wash my hands."
"Ah've nearly finished these x-rays now, dae ye no wannae wait for the results?"
"No, just send pictures," Jenny said, peeling off her gloves and their lumpy cud, "Then get on searching those teeth."
"The equipment-"
"Yes, okay, the equipment, here," Jenny dug around in her pockets and found her phone, "My passcode is 0711, alright? Ask Helix to run the tests before you do the x-rays while I go wash my hands and print, okay?"
"Alright."
"Fantastic!" Jenny grinned, kissing Cohen's cheek (much to her discomfort) and then dashing off in James Elliott's wake to follow up on his hunch.
AN: I was so tempted to write in Elliott's Welsh accent like Cohen's Scottish one but it's WAY harder to write a Welsh accent phonetically than a Scottish one.