There was almost a note of admiration in his voice. Many would have chided him for this, but Helen let it go. Too much time in a mortuary does strange things to you and Jim was saner than most. He was also fiercely bright so Helen always paid attention to what he had to say.
‘First incision was made just below the sternum. A big blade, perhaps twenty centimetres in length. Then they cut through the ribs and breastbone. After that you’d usually use muscle retractors – rib-spreaders – to peel open the chest. But our killer used something more interesting. See those two puncture holes there?’
Helen craned over the body to look inside the chest cavity. There were two holes about fifty centimetres apart in the right flap of what had once been his chest.
‘They were made by some sort of hook. A butcher’s hook maybe? Two hooks embedded to the side of the main incision, then you just use brute force. They ripped open the right half first, then did the same again with the left side. Once the chest is open and the heart revealed, it’s simply a matter of cutting around the surrounding tissue and lifting it out. Bit of a hatchet job, but effective.’
Helen digested these macabre details.
‘So what are we talking? A butcher’s knife and a meat hook?’
‘Could be,’ Grieves replied, shrugging.
‘How long would it take?’
‘Ten to fifteen minutes depending on how experienced you are and how much care you take.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Your victim was immobilized with chloroform – found it in his nostrils and his mouth. Forensics are doing their work on it now, but I’d hazard that it was home-made. Any fool can make it with bleach, acetone and internet access.’
‘Any traces of our killer?’
Jim shook his head.
‘Looks like there was minimal contact between them. That said, your man has had a good deal of contact with others over the years.’
Jim paused as he always did when he had something good up his sleeve. Helen tensed slightly, eager to be put out of her misery.
‘There is plenty of evidence of STDs. Mr Matthews certainly suffered from gonorrhoea – recently, I would suggest. There’s also evidence of Mycoplasma genitalium, which sounds weird but actually is very common, and possibly pubic lice too. I wish I’d been a member of his church – sounds like a riot.’
He walked off to clean up. Helen let this latest development settle – the first little steer in an otherwise bewildering murder.
Back at Southampton Central, Helen continued her dissection of Alan Matthews. The team had assembled in the incident room and were pooling what they’d learned.
