Her smile broadened. “All the better for seeing you today. Blake said you’ve been experimenting in the garden?”
Pember let out a breath and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, but whatever he told you about the moonshine isn’t true.It’s meant to be elderflower wine, or it’s going to be. I’m not sure how it’ll turn out. It’s my first time.”
Chichi smiled and clapped once. “Ah! Kofi, my mate, tried to make cider last year. It would have been better on chips, it was so vinegary.”
Pember chuckled. “It sounds like he had an oxygen leak somewhere along the road.”
She nodded, pulling on a pair of elbow-length rubber gloves. “I told him not to ferment it in a plant pot! Honestly, that man… You’ll have to compare notes when he’s back on his feet.”
Pressing the back of his hand to his mouth, Pember tried to contain a smile. The thought of casually chatting with someone about protease and amylase over a glass of home brew was enough to make him positively giddy.
Chichi let out a breath, and studied his face. She stepped forward and gently tugged his hand away. “Don’t cover your smile,” she whispered, cupping his cheeks as the scent of her rubber gloves drifted into his nostrils. It was comforting, in a strange way. “Are you safe?” she whispered.
Pember flushed, unsure how to answer. Dropping his chin, he bent towards her. “I… I’m not sure what Blake’s told you, but I’m fine.” He glanced at Duncan, who was busy brushing the creases out of his brown bag. “And it’s not something that’ll affect my work in any way. I have a duty to?—”
Chichi pulled him closer. “I know what it’s like, Pember. I’ve been there.”
Releasing one of Pember’s cheeks, she tugged aside her medical suit to reveal a dark web of leathery looking scars across her neck and shoulder.
Acid burns.
“I was chased out of my house by my father when I said I wanted to pursue a career in medicine, and not a family. Forget about work for a minute. Are you safe?”
Letting out a slow breath, Pember nodded. “I think so.”
Chichi’s eyebrows twitched as she tucked her suit back into place. Unpeeling her other hand from his face, she said, “Good. I’ve put my personal number in your locker. If anything else happens and Blake isn’t around, call me. Kofi and I will come.”
With that, she pulled on a second set of gloves, turned on her heel and strode towards the middle of the room, leaving Pember with his mouth hanging open. He’d gotten the impression that she and Blake were friends, but he’d never expected him to talk to her about anything to do withhim. He should have been embarrassed, but somehow the only emotion he could muster as he stared at the other omega was gratitude. And a twisting kind of sadness that she had been made to suffer in that way.
“Ready?” she said, glancing at Mark, who had taken to doodling on the back of his glove.
“Been ready for the last ten minutes,Dr Zabu,”he drawled.
With that, Duncan flicked off the main lights and turned on the high intensity LEDs. The overhead cameras hummed to life and suddenly everyone was in work mode. Pember straightened, clutching the forensic camera as Chichi held out the scalpel.
Just as she pressed the blade to the victim’s sternum, there came a frantic cry. “Wait!” David called. “Wait, don’t start, there’s sharps in the body!”
They all looked up as Chichi’s assistant came barrelling into the room. Clipping a series of X-rays onto the light bar, he pointed at each of them in quick succession. “Lodged in vertebrae C5, and another in the left lung. Two shards of metal.”
Chichi placed the scalpel back on the table with a clink, and they all gathered round the line of hyperfilms. Sure enough, the X-ray showed two triangular shards lodged in the body. One in the victim’s neck, the other in his lung.
“Remnants of a past surgery, perhaps?” Duncan said, running his fingers over his chin.
Chichi shook her head. “That isn’t surgery. Plates are always accompanied by screws. These are shards. As for the lung… Let’s just get him opened up, shall we?”
They nodded, and even Mark appeared to be concentrating as Chichi clicked on her Dictaphone. “Bruising and a small abrasion to the centre of the forehead, consistent with being face down post-mortem, end sentence. Accessing the neck structures, full stop.”
Chichi expertly cut away at the neck and throat tissue, eventually revealing the victim’s thick spinal column and voice box. Pember stood wide-eyed next to the body. Whilst the state of the victim was desperately sad, he couldn’t help but be fascinated by the intricate structure of the alpha’s vocal tracts. They were larger, more defined than any of the other secondary sexes. It was where all that alpha growling, snarling and general ‘mumbo jumbo’ came from.
“Upon initial examination,” Chichi continued. “There appears to be catastrophic damage to the trachea and oesophagus, full stop. Vertebrae C3 to C4 have minor damage, but C5 has sustained major splinter trauma, full stop, new line. A small metal object, smaller than a five pence piece is lodged in C5, though further examination will be undertaken once the neck structures are removed, full stop, new line.”
She tugged and twisted the soft tissue, examining it for injury. “There appears to be minimal damage to the pharynx and larynx, indicating one precise sideways strike to the neck, though closer examination will confirm this, full stop.”
After roughly twenty minutes, and when Pember’s toes were well and truly frozen, they gathered around the workbench to watch Chichi carry out the organ dissection.
“So, bits of a knife broke off in the victim’s body?” Duncan said, sealing an evidence bag.
Chichi shook her head. “Not quite. It’s my suspicion that we have two separate weapons. You’ll be able to confirm this for certain in the lab, but… see here?” She dislodged a shard from within the lung and held it up with a pair of tweezers. “You can see the sharp edge and the blunt spine. See how they come together? Both very similar in shape and size? I’d say we’ve got the points of two knives, not shards of the same knife.”
