Harry dropped his eyes. When he looked up again, the pathologist had turned to the second gurney. The others gathered round.
‘This child is a very similar size,’ said the detective inspector. ‘How sure can you be that this isn’t Lucy Pickup?’
‘These remains haven’t been in the ground for ten years,’ replied Clarke, without even pausing to think. ‘I’d be surprised if they’ve been in soil for more than a couple of months. Completely different state of preservation.’
Harry stepped closer and DS Russell moved aside to allow him to approach the gurney.
‘Number three is the same,’ said Clarke, indicating the third trolley. ‘Can you see?’
‘Not skeletonized at all,’ said Rushton. ‘They still have skin. They look…’
‘Dry?’ suggested Clarke, nodding his head. ‘They should. They’re mummified.’
Harry looked from one child to the next. They were, as the pathologist said, completely dry, as though something had sucked all the moisture from their bodies. Their skin was shrivelled, dark as old leather, wrapped like cling-film over their small bones. Their scalps still had hair, there were tiny fingernails on their hands. ‘Incorruptible,’ he murmured to himself.
‘There are no bandages,’ said DS Russell. ‘I thought mummies were wrapped in bandages.’
‘Mention mummies and everyone thinks of Ancient Egypt,’ said Clarke. ‘But strictly speaking, a mummy is just a corpse whose skin and organs have been preserved by exposure to something like chemicals, extreme cold or lack of air. The Egyptians and a few other cultures created their mummies artificially, but mummies occur naturally the world over. Most typically in cold, dry climates.’
‘It can’t happen in the ground?’ asked Rushton.
Clarke shook his head. ‘Not in normal soil, anyway. There’s a property in peat bogs that prevents oxygen getting to the body and so halts the process of decay. That’s why we find so many preserved bodies in peat.’
‘Could these be peat bodies?’ asked Rushton.
‘Doubt it. No sign of staining. My guess is that these two were kept above ground, somewhere cold and dry, where the oxygen supply was limited. Some time within the last two or three months – we can have an entomologist check insect activity, give us a clearer idea – they were moved from wherever they’d been kept and put in the grave with Lucy. If I were you, gentlemen, I’d be asking why.’
For a few seconds, there was no sound in the room but breathing.
‘St Barnabas number two would have been around 105 centimetres tall,’ continued Clarke, ‘putting her in the three-to-five-year age bracket. From what I can tell from the skull sutures, she’d be in the upper half of that scale, maybe around four. Our best friends, though, in these cases, are the teeth.’ He indicated the area around the jaw bone. ‘Primary dentition consists of twenty teeth commonly known as the milk teeth. These start to erupt at around six months and are usually fully through by three years old. From about twenty-four months onwards, the adult teeth start to form underneath the milk teeth.’ He ran a gloved finger along the jaw bone. ‘Milk teeth start to be lost at around five to six years old,’ he continued. ‘Of course, this does vary quite considerably from one family to the next, but a child who has lost several of their front milk teeth is likely to be at least seven or eight. The adult teeth come through in an order that looks random but isn’t. This makes it relatively easy to age the skull of a young child. There are even some pretty good charts I can show you, once we’ve got the bones clean and can see the teeth properly.’
‘Any idea at this stage?’ asked the DI, whose name Harry simply couldn’t remember. Dave? Steve?
‘Tricky until we do the X-rays, but from what I can tell, number two appears to have a full set of milk teeth, suggesting a child between four and six years old.’
‘Boy or girl?’ asked Rushton. Both detectives looked at the senior officer, then back to the body.
‘This was a girl,’ said Clarke. ‘Thanks to the mummification I can say that with some confidence.’
‘Is anyone else thinking what I’m thinking?’ asked Rushton, looking at the ceiling.
‘I think we all are, boss,’ said DS Russell.
I’m not, thought Harry.
‘Anything I’m missing?’ asked Clarke, looking from one man to the next.
‘Megan Connor,’ said Rushton. ‘Four years old. Local child. Disappeared on the moors not far from here six years ago. Biggest case of my career. Massive man hunt. We didn’t find a trace.’ He turned to Harry. ‘Ring