Down Among The Dead Men Part 3

'The trouble is,' said the nurse on the end of the phone, 'the family are coming down from Leeds.'

'That's fine,' I replied. 'What time are they going to be here?'

'Could be any time. He was p.r.o.nounced dead an hour and a half ago, we thought they would prefer to see him here, but they haven't yet arrived and we can't get hold of them to see how far away they are.'

I knew that this gentleman would probably have been transferred to the mortuary by now. I finished my phone call, left Luke and the dogs in bed and made my way to the mortuary at eight forty-five.

As I arrived, the porters were just bringing the patient over from A&E. I admitted him to our department and began making him presentable for his family. All the tricks Clive had showed me worked to perfection, and by nine thirty Mr Jenner was in the chapel, laid out in the proper manner and awaiting his visitors.

By eleven o'clock there was still no sign of his family. I had rung A&E a couple of times, but they had heard nothing. I had told pathology reception, which was manned until twelve on a Sat.u.r.day, but they had had n.o.body wandering around looking lost.

In the time I had already waited, I had admitted a couple of other patients that had come in overnight, chatted with the porters for twenty minutes, drunk a fair few cups of coffee, run barefoot through the biscuit tin and read the local and national news on the internet. I then spent another fifteen minutes chatting to Gramp on my mobile about random stuff, but I could tell he was getting ready to go out and didn't want to miss his bus, bless him. Luke had rung twice to see how long I was going to be, but I had told him to forget our plans for the day.

At twelve thirty, and still with no sign of Mr Jenner's family, I decided I would have to ring Clive and take his advice on what to do. I had really hoped I could do this myself, if only to give him a break from the place, but needs must.

'What do you mean, you're still there?!' was Clive's response. 'Mich.e.l.le, put the body away and go home! If we sat waiting for every family that might might want to come and visit a relative, we would have to have camp beds installed.' I felt about an inch tall, my do-gooding had done no good at all for my staff relations. 'You should always try to get a definite time and speak to the relatives direct. This is what happens when the ward arrange things for the morticians, our time gets wasted. I want you out of that mortuary within half an hour, Mich.e.l.le. That's an order.' want to come and visit a relative, we would have to have camp beds installed.' I felt about an inch tall, my do-gooding had done no good at all for my staff relations. 'You should always try to get a definite time and speak to the relatives direct. This is what happens when the ward arrange things for the morticians, our time gets wasted. I want you out of that mortuary within half an hour, Mich.e.l.le. That's an order.'

I finished my phone call and put Mr Jenner away in the body store. Luke said he would be outside at quarter past one to collect me. As we pulled up outside my house, I could hear Harvey and Oscar barking as they recognized Luke's car. Just as I placed the key in the front door, my mobile rang. The family had arrived. So back to the hospital for the viewing that was supposed to have been hours ago. I met the family and they could not apologize enough.

So, after the formalities, Mr Jenner was met by his family at long last. I must have been able to hide my frustration, as I don't think they noticed it. I explained to them, in a manner that I hoped was acceptable, that we really needed direct contact with them as we are not manned 24/7, and they apologized again. I showed them into the viewing room and left them to it, pointing out how to contact me if they needed me. There were four of them and they were there for each other, so my presence, I felt, would only get in the way.

I had told them how long I had waited for them, and thought this would mean they would take into consideration my time. How dare I be so selfish? Three hours later they were still with me. Five o'clock came and I had spent all day Sat.u.r.day in the mortuary.

I have to admit I was annoyed. Not physically annoyed, but inside annoyed. That helpless feeling you have when you know you should not be angry because you have to consider how other people are feeling or accept them for what they are, and that it is not your place to say anything. But annoyed because you have not been considered in the whole picture, you are there and that is that. Apologies begin to mean nothing at that point and frustration takes over.

I finally left the mortuary at seven that evening. I never knew how much I enjoyed my weekends until they had been taken away from me.

Once again, Luke collected me from the hospital and I got home and collapsed on the sofa. My mobile, I wanted to throw in the bin. Being on call meant that when I relaxed a bit at home, I had to limit how much I drank. OK, I don't drive, but I still have to be presentable and, if the evening needed it, attend for a forensic post-mortem should someone be so unlucky as to be murdered or fall foul of an ugly death.

The phone remained silent for the rest of the evening, but that did not diminish my anxiety.

FIFTEEN.

As I entered the mortuary through the double red doors, I heard a voice say in an astounded manner, 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l.' Being a nosy person, I could not resist going at once to see what had provoked such a reaction, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, 'What now?' after the weekend I had just had. As I entered the body store, Clive and Graham were standing on either side of a trolley, looking at each other. Without a word more being spoken, I looked down and saw the usual white body bag, partially opened, and without even realizing it spoke the same words.

What lay in front of us was a headless body; fully clothed, but headless. Curiosity got the better of me and I just had to pull back the top of the body bag to see what other injuries this poor individual had sustained. Resting between his knees lay his motorbike helmet, so it was a road traffic accident, which gave me a little clue as to what had occurred to him.

'Where's his head?' I asked, because it wasn't with the rest of him.

What happened next, though, was enough to turn the hardest technician's stomach. Clive picked up the helmet with his gloved hands and said in a voice of perfect seriousness, 'He had it gift-wrapped.' Hanging from the bottom of it were ragged tatters of flesh and what appeared to be cervical vertebrae . . . I looked into the visor and found myself fixated by the face behind it. Hardly a mark could be seen on the features, and his eyes were closed so that he actually looked quite peaceful.

Just then, the phone in the office began to ring. It was Bill Baxford from the Coroner's office. 'That road traffic you had in overnight. Are we able to do an identification on him after the post-mortem?'

I knew enough to appreciate that this is important. All victims of unnatural death have to be identified by law and, obviously, this is usually done through visual identification by the next of kin, but clearly in some cases this is not possible; no relative would want to see the head of their nearest and dearest a few feet away from the rest of the body, after all. In such cases, it's usually done by dental records; as a last resort, DNA is used. Both of these are expensive and time-consuming, and any sensible Coroner's officer wants to do what's easiest and cheapest. Clive and Graham were in the body store, dealing with the body, so I said, 'Can I ring you back?'

We would have to think seriously about this. From what I had seen of his face, he was certainly viewable, but the small fact remained that his head was at this moment resting between his legs on a body tray in the fridge. I wasn't experienced enough to be sure that we could reconstruct him well enough to allow the next of kin to see him. But I wanted so much to do it and knew that Clive and Graham would want to do it as well not so much for our satisfaction, but for his family.

I went back to the body store and told Clive what Bill had asked. I had expected him to be hesitant but he said at once, 'No problem, Mich.e.l.le. We'll have this poor chap looking as good as new. No one will ever guess what's happened to him, not from looking at him.'

Bill Baxford was duly promised that we would be able to do an identification of the motorcyclist for his family that day. It was booked for two thirty in the afternoon, which meant that we had approximately four hours to try to create the effect that his head had not left his body. We did not know whether his family had even been told of the horrific injuries. All we knew was that this man had been travelling at perhaps seventy miles an hour down a narrow country lane in the west of the county when he had lost control. His front wheel had then clipped a fallen tree by the side of the road; he had been catapulted over the handlebars into a field. Unfortunately, and with the cruelly perfect aim of fate, he had landed with his outstretched neck on the large circular blade of an old farrow abandoned among some stinging nettles, thus severing his head.

The pathologist on for today, Dr Peter Gillard, arrived. Between them, he and Ed do most of our post-mortems. A strange little man but, honestly, I say 'strange' with affection. He was quite short, quiet, but deep down there lurked a wicked sense of humour. Graham and Clive had told me, and I had seen for myself, that he was also a complete pain in the behind because, they said, he lacked confidence and would often ask the technicians for advice. That said, he was not really any trouble by which I mean in the sense that he was undemanding, to a degree unconcerned, and was happy to be directed. This may seem an unfair thing to say about a consultant pathologist but, believe me, I had very quickly discovered that some could be completely unreasonable and unmanageable with no respect for the mortuary technicians, whom they just saw as androids that can stand and eviscerate bodies all day long. At least Peter Gillard wasn't like that.

He looked at the headless corpse on the dissecting table. Clive had told me that his usual first question before he starts is, 'Have you got a cause of death yet?', but on seeing this case, all he said with a wince was, 'Oh dear.' He checked that the bodies we had got out were the correct ones and asked Clive to call him when we were ready. As I was preparing myself to start the evisceration, I began to wonder how we could hope to make any difference to this man. I stood over the body and placed his head, still in the helmet, to one side. Clive and Graham were at work on their bodies, and the radio was playing some Michael Jackson.

As I picked up my post-mortem knife it occurred it me that it wouldn't be very often that I would have to cut open a headless body. I felt uncomfortable, but I reckoned that I was experienced enough by now to put this to one side and prepare myself to dive straight in, so that within fifteen minutes the torso in front of me would be completely empty, with its contents in a stainless steel bowl. The more I studied the body, though, the more sick I felt; it just didn't feel right. Despite this, I placed my blade between the clavicles and began to cut down towards the pubis. Still feeling nauseous, I started to retract the skin away from the ribcage and removed the sternum exposing the organs. Usually you would see some sign of disease, or evidence that disease was hiding somewhere behind something. Here, there was nothing apart from the fact that there were obvious rib fractures and subsequent crush injuries to the chest. It seemed a waste of a life. I continued to eviscerate and it was an easy thing to do; no tongue to remove for a start. This can always be a bit tricky as you have to do it blind without putting the point of the blade through the neck, chin or lips and causing obvious cuts to the face. Anyway, there was certainly no chance of that happening here.

What happened after this was even weirder. After the evisceration of the torso, I needed to remove the brain. While Graham held the head on the table, I pulled the helmet off and, as I did it, I saw that even he found the whole thing a bit uncomfortable. He then had to continue holding it while I first retracted the scalp, then removed the top of the skull with the bone saw and took out the brain. Not a word was spoken between us while this was taking place, but the look on his face became more and more pained.

During the post-mortem, I was quietly hoping that Dr Gillard would find a cause of death that was other than the obvious. I wondered if maybe this guy had had a ma.s.sive heart attack which had caused him to come off his bike, but no such luck; it appeared that this was just a horrendous accident.

With the PM over, Clive had decided that he was going to attempt to st.i.tch the head back on to the body. He told me that he thought it best just to go for it and, after half an hour of st.i.tching, the head was indeed reattached to the body, the shroud covered the st.i.tching, so that the poor motorcyclist looked very peaceful as he lay in the viewing chapel. We all felt a huge sense of relief and also one of achievement. Although I could not expunge the facts of what had happened and the thought that the family would feel a sense of loss for the rest of their lives, we had managed to create an aura of unharmed peacefulness about him and hoped that therefore we would not add to the discomfort his family would be experiencing when they came to identify his body.

Bill arrived ten minutes before the family and we both stood over the motorcyclist in the chapel of rest. Bill is a tall, thickset man with a very loud voice. He is the lead of the three Coroner's officers in the county and is very good at his job. Being ex-police force, he is an excellent judge of character and knows how to handle people. I stayed while the family arrived, and as far as identifications go, this went much better than I had expected. Of course the family were gutted, but because of the work on reconstruction that Clive had put in, we had achieved our goal. Although most of the time this goes unnoticed by the family (as my previous weekend had proved) it's not always about the thank-yous, but about knowing we do our job well.

On days like this, there is little room for humour. Graham had told me that when Peter Gillard first came to work in the mortuary, he had been so nervous and fl.u.s.tered that he had put a blue plastic overshoe designed to be used when someone in normal shoes enters the PM room on his head instead of the normal disposable theatre cap. He'd appeared in the dissection room looking like a member of the Thunderbirds family and no one had had the heart to tell him. Maddie came to the PM door, but had to turn around and walk away as soon as she saw this, as she could not hold back her laughter . . . Worse than that, for the rest of the day he had a red line running across his forehead where the elastic had bitten in. In honour of this, Peter Gillard will occasionally put one on again, just for a joke, but not today. Today was a day only for due respect and the right headgear.

SIXTEEN.

When stuff goes wrong in the mortuary, it goes seriously wrong. For instance, a few weeks later, in among the ma.s.ses we had two bodies with the same surname. Both were female, both were called Jones and both were for burial. The first Mrs Jones was going back to her native Wales, and the second Mrs Jones was staying in Gloucesters.h.i.+re where she had lived all her life. After four months of constant training from Clive, in which he had repeated himself over and over, I thought I had finally got it into my head: you check, check and then you check a third time to make sure that you are releasing the right body; you check not only the name but the date of birth and the address as well. It was one of his recurring themes.

You'd think that anyone with that nagging voice in their ears would be incapable of any mistakes, but you'd be wrong. The local Mrs Jones had already been released when the funeral director arrived to take the second; as they had come from Wales, they had already had quite a drive and they still had two hours' return journey to come. I happened to be the one releasing the body, because Clive was busy booking in PMs for the next day and Graham was dealing with a viewing. I pulled Mrs Jones out of the fridge and received the paperwork the undertakers had brought with them. As per instructions, I checked this with the identification tag on the wrist, and was horrified to see there the address of a local Gloucesters.h.i.+re village. It was with a sinking feeling that I turned to the tag on the foot only to discover that it, too, bore the Gloucesters.h.i.+re address. It could only mean that the Welsh Mrs Jones was with the wrong funeral director.

This was a disaster, one that could prove very embarra.s.sing. I knew that the family of the Gloucesters.h.i.+re Mrs Jones were due to go to the funeral directors that afternoon for a viewing, to say their last goodbyes. They were going to walk into a viewing room, probably feeling emotional, and when they looked into the coffin, they would be looking at a Mrs Jones who had no resemblance to their family member; then, quite rightly, they would want answers as to how it had happened. If they made a complaint, there would be a Trust inquiry, perhaps disciplinary action. What do you say to people? This makes us look like a shambles, a complete cowboy set-up. I could see that the Welsh funeral directors were none too impressed. I knew that I hadn't released the wrong body, but that didn't make me any less worried.

I called out to Clive, who came at once. When I explained what had happened, he frowned and sighed, but remained calm. He asked the Welsh undertakers to wait in the office and told me to make them some coffee, then at once he rang the local funeral directors who, luckily, were only a five-minute drive up the road; even more luckily, the family had yet to arrive and no one knew of the mistake.

Within an hour, the two Mrs Joneses had been returned to the appropriate funeral directors and were on their way to the right funeral homes. It turned out that it was Graham who had made the mistake. Clive didn't go mad, but he did make it quite clear that this was unacceptable. I could see that Graham was very upset and contrite as Clive stressed once more that it didn't matter how many years you did the job, you always checked, checked and then checked again.

SEVENTEEN.

The one thing that confirmed I really was part of the team, now that I was regularly doing viewings, eviscerations and reconstructions, was when Clive announced that we were going to have a works outing on the Friday evening. I imagined he was talking about a large do, perhaps including the pathologists and even the Coroner's officers and the rest of the histology staff from upstairs in the lab, which would give me a chance to meet a few more people and maybe sneak off with Maddie mid-evening, but it turned out that it meant just the three of us, not even wives and boyfriends. As Graham pointed out, 'We're the department, no one else really.' He grinned wickedly. 'Three morticians on the town; hope you can hold your ale, Mich.e.l.le.'

We finished work at four o'clock on the Friday and headed for our first stop, the local watering hole the one that is in every town and looks the same wherever you are, the local cheap-but-cheerful chain pub with no character and, more importantly, no characters. It had the great advantage, though, of being only a stone's throw from the hospital. It was definitely not my normal sort of a place but it served to get the evening off to a start and, because of happy hour, the beer tokens went twice as far when it came to getting a round in strong lager, or as he called it 'wife-beater' (due to the younger generation not being able to handle it), for Clive, bitter for Graham and (I figured I might as well go for it) vodka for me.

At about six o'clock, Clive asked, 'Right, shall we move on?' Graham gave me a questioning look and I realized that it was to be my decision where to go next. Luckily, what with Dad having been a publican in the area for over thirteen years, I knew where most of the pubs were and which were closest, but I had to be personally careful. The last thing I wanted was to go into a pub with a landlord or landlady I knew well while I was out with two men a lot older than me and, at the same time, I wanted to stay away from the town centre. I was fond of both of these guys, but I still had some street cred to hold on to and did not want to spend the evening explaining myself and my newish job to people I only see when I'm out on the town. We moved on to a few pubs in the opposite direction of town, and both Clive and Graham seemed happy.

By nine o'clock we had been to four further watering holes and were slowly working our way up the Bath Road. When it came to the curry house, though, I had no choice. The Taj Mahal, an Indian restaurant that Clive and Graham both vowed was the 'best b.l.o.o.d.y curry house in the Cotswolds', was the only possibility. We were all fairly merry by then so I was not bothered where we ate, or even if we ate at all, and Clive, who I had discovered had had an interesting life, was about to take centre stage and tell some fantastic stories about it.

Over our curry I learned just how fascinating life or, to be more accurate, death could be, and how the Coroner's officers weren't always as helpful as they are now.

'John Parker was the best,' said Clive, while loading a poppadom with mind-blowing chutney. 'He was Bill Baxford's predecessor. Completely and utterly useless, wasn't he, Graham?'

Graham, who was concentrating on rolling a cigarette, raised his eyebrows and answered in his deep burr, 'He was that.'

'Have I told you about the jogger who got struck by lightning, Mish?' Four months in and Clive was now shortening my name.

I shook my head and his face lit up. 'It was some fitness fanatic who used to go jogging every night and every morning, no matter what the weather was. One night he goes off as usual, but this time in a thunderstorm, and is found an hour later in the gutter by a pa.s.sing motorist. Without even going out to look at the scene or the body, John Parker, the so-called Coroner's officer, sends us the PM request with the last line suggesting that he might have been struck by lightning.'

'Was he?' I asked.

Graham laughed; he had a deep, gurgling laugh, one that brought on his smoker's cough if it went on too long. Clive shook his head. 'I examined the body carefully and there were no burn marks anywhere, no entry or exit wound as you would expect,' Would you? was my initial reaction to this; I had a lot to learn still 'but there was a curious linear pattern on the back of his vest and an octagonal shape punched out on the middle of his back, about an inch and a half across.'

My face must have said it all I didn't understand at which Graham laughed again and said excitedly, 'Listen to this,' while pointing to Clive.

Clive went on, 'Stupid sod not only used to jog,' clearly something which Clive thought was a complete waste of time 'but every few hundred yards he'd drop to the ground and do press-ups. The night he died, he decided to do this on an unlit road in the driving rain, and some motorist ran him over. Probably thought he hit a deer or something. The octagonal mark was from the sump plug of the car.' He sighed happily. 'I was even able to tell Parker that it had been a Land Rover that did it. They're the only cars that have that shape of sump plug.'

I sat in awe.

The food arrived, but that wasn't going to stop Clive now that he was well and truly 'lagered', plus, there was now a curry in front of him. Then Graham leaned across the table to him and said, 'Tell Mich.e.l.le about Michael Walters.' Clive's face exploded with delight, and for a minute I thought I might have been in danger of getting covered in the contents of his mouth. 'G.o.d, yes! I'd forgotten about him.' I didn't need to encourage him to tell me more. 'Michael Walters was a head case, complete and utter. Lived with his parents, but kept himself to himself in his room when he wasn't in the local funny farm. One evening Ma and Pa returned home with a fish and chip supper. They settled down in the kitchen, to tuck in. The kitchen was directly below the bathroom which was next to Michael's room upstairs; they heard the bath running, so decided not to bother him but were content he was home and safe.

'So, there they are, about to have a right old nosh up, when Mr Walters senior notices that there's some tomato sauce on his plate when he sat down at the table after making a brew, which is not what he asked to be put on his plate by Mrs Walters; he'd opted for HP. He's about to ask his wife what she thinks she's playing at when he just happens to look up to the ceiling to see blood dripping off the light fitting.'

Graham chortled at my expression. Clive was getting into his stride. 'They found their son in the bath, with the walls, floor and ceiling drenched in blood. He had been stabbed seventy-three times and hit on the head with a hammer three times.'

I winced. 'Seventy-three times! Who did it? His girlfriend? Boyfriend?'

Clive grinned his usual wicked grin. 'The house was completely secure, and none of the neighbours reported seeing anyone around the house while the Walters were out; also, because of his mental problems, as far as his parents knew there was no significant other.'

'Then how . . .?'

Graham was almost wetting himself, because he knew what was coming. Clive, being Clive, tucked into some lamb vindaloo, leaving me waiting and itching to hear the rest of the story. At last he found time for me. 'John Parker decided that since there was no evidence of a third party, it didn't need a forensic PM and faxed through the details and request, exactly as if Michael Walters had keeled over after chest pains. Like this was an everyday post-mortem request, with no suspicious circ.u.mstances! Idiot.'

'The pathologist on for that day was Martin Apse nice bloke, wasn't he, Graham? Wouldn't normally say boo to a goose, but he really had the heebie-jeebies when he read that particular E60 the request from the Coroner's office for a post-mortem to be done. I thought he was going to faint. He started to shake and kept muttering, "I don't believe it," to himself He went up to his office and twenty minutes later, John Parker phoned through to say that it was going to have a forensic PM after all.'

'And?'

This time Clive needed a long drink, followed by calling for a refill before he could continue. I could have collapsed with the antic.i.p.ation. 'The forensic pathologist took eight hours to determine that each and every wound including the hammer blows could could (and he would only say "could") have been self-inflicted.' (and he would only say "could") have been self-inflicted.'

'You are joking ,' I decided at once, but Graham rushed to confirm what Clive had said.

'He's not. The poor b.u.g.g.e.r did it to himself. Took slices of flesh off his own legs and everything. I never saw such a mess of a body, and to do it to yourself, well, unbelievable.' With that, they both tucked into their curries as though they had just told me a fairy story, and I contemplated that, with time, I was also going to become this blase about my job.

Another half hour went by with talk about the mortuary, and at that point I really had started to have enough of work. Yes, I loved my job but, as fascinating as I found Clive's reminiscing, I am a breathing human being, and enough was enough for one week. I wanted now to forget death for the weekend and get back to the living. While I had nipped to the Ladies, I secretly texted Luke to meet me at eleven and, as luck would have it, as I placed my cutlery on my empty plate, a familiar face entered the curry house and I introduced Luke to Clive and Graham. Clive insisted that Luke stay and have a drink before we left, and he had to listen to 'how well' I was doing and what an a.s.set to the team I was.

Although it felt a bit like parents' evening at school, deep down I was so chuffed I had been accepted by two people who had been doing an exclusive job for so long and who obviously had faith in me, let alone allow me into their world.

EIGHTEEN.

Until I started this job, I'd never really thought very deeply about suicide and, if the subject did come up during conversation in the pub, I suppose I'd thought that people usually offed themselves by taking an overdose of pills, hanging themselves, or jumping in front of trains. I hadn't been in the job long before I found out that I had been very, very wrong.

What first made me realize just how wrong I had been was when Dr Gerald Beaumont was brought into the mortuary. We had no warning from the Coroner's office that he was going to arrive, so only had the undertakers' word to go on concerning what had happened. Dr Beaumont was a successful anaesthetist who lived in a big house with plenty of land in the country. He must have earned pots of money from private practice and ought to have been as happy as Larry, but he wasn't. He had made a mistake, resulting in the death of a patient. Referral to the General Medical Council was pending, which apparently is very bad. 'Basically, as far as doctors are concerned, it's pretty much "end of',' Clive said.

Dr Beaumont had come home early that morning, leaving the hospital without saying anything. He had got into his Land Rover, then driven out to a remote pasture on which grew an old oak. He had taken a tow rope, tied it to the tree, then fed it through the back of the Land Rover. He had got back in, tied the other end around his neck and driven off as hard as he could.

When we opened the white body bag, we were relieved to see that his head had stayed on, but it had been a close call. Poor Dr Beaumont's neck had been almost ripped apart, and was now held together only by the spine and a few tethers of flesh. The head had been smashed, too. 'b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l,' and I spoke almost reverently.

Clive nodded, then said matter of factly, 'When people decide to duff themselves in, sometimes they really go for it.'

'What on earth made him think to do it like that, though?'

When Graham saw Dr Beaumont, he winced and said, 'Bet that stung a bit.'

Back in the office and over coffee, I said, 'I can't believe he's done that to himself'

Clive shook his head. 'You'd be surprised, Mich.e.l.le. We get all sorts in here. Most of them are the usual, of course overdose, hanging etcetera but some people seem to think that, as it's the last thing they'll ever do, they'll do it in style.'

Graham said, 'Like that old girl and the weedkiller.'

Clive nodded enthusiastically. 'Now that that was an unwise way to end it all.' was an unwise way to end it all.'

When I inquired what they were talking about, they were keen to tell me. 'She went to the garden shed and got out the weedkiller, Paraquat. On its own, it's pretty lethal but she decided to spice it up. She cooked it with some herbs, then swallowed it like soup. I reckon it might have tasted nicer but she still died about week later on ITU, and it wasn't nice, by all accounts.'

Graham added brightly, 'And there was that poor sod who drank a bottle of kettle descaler.'

Clive nodded and said sorrowfully, 'Descaled him, no doubt about it.' There was a moment's silence, but only a moment, before he added, 'Don't forget that woman who set fire to herself in her car.'

Graham shook his head. 'Don't think I ever will forget that,' he said.

Clive said to me, 'Poor woman set fire to herself in her car. A pa.s.sing motorist sees the flames, stops and runs over to drag her out of the car. You know what she did? She struggles and fights, tells him to sod off, then slams the door shut and locks it.'

Graham sighed. 'b.u.g.g.e.r that.'

Peter Gillard, who was on for PMs that day, came in. When he was told what had happened to Dr Beaumont, he looked rather worried, but all he said was, 'Oh dear,' which is a typical Peter Gillard thing to say. Clive asked, his voice completely genuine, 'Think you'll find a cause of death, doc?' And Peter smiled shyly.

After the post-mortem cause of death, 'neck trauma' the four of us sat in the office over coffee and Peter Gillard talked to us about suicides. I'd always thought it a very selfish thing to do and said so, but Peter was more easy-going. 'A lot of them just aren't thinking normally.'

Graham said simply, 'Not right in the head.'

To which Clive added, 'Reckon you've got to be if you're going to stick your head on a railway line and wait for the train to come. Remember him, Graham?'