above and eight below, as well as a series of deep indentations along the lips themselves, some of which had broken the skin. The mouth had been sewn up.
She looked at the nose and saw a puncture mark on either side, right through the middle, very slightly encrusted with dried blood; on the underside of the nostrils was a small horizontal cut, the same width as the marks on the lips. Nose sewn up too. The object used to make the hole had been thick and long, a needle, she estimated, with an eye wide enough to hold something with the density of a guitar or violin string, which was what she thought had been used to fasten the mouth and nose. She'd seen this before a couple of times, but she couldn't remember the specifics. Once here, once in New York; some kind of black magic ritual. She made a note to cross-reference it on the computer if she had the time and that was a big if.
'Are we going to look inside the head?' Javier asked. She usually left that to him.
'Depends what the insides tell us.'
'The Look of Love' began to play as she made the T-incision from shoulders to mid-chest and all the way down to the pubis. It was around about now that the dieners would start dropping.
She opened up the body and inspected its insides. It was a predictable sight, looking a lot like a butcher's shop might two weeks after the owners had suddenly closed it up and abandoned it with all the contents inside. The organs hadn't just changed colour-reds and maroons had turned shades of grey-blue-they'd started losing their shape too, becoming viscous, and some had been disconnected from the main framework and shifted position because hungry insects had eaten through the cabling. Surprisingly Ralph and Martin had hung on in there. Ralph even looked like he was enjoying himself.
Gemma took a large syringe and extracted blood and fluid from the heart, lungs, bladder and pancreas. Then she spiked the stomach and started filling the syringe barrel with a sample of its contents-a green liquid, the colour of spinach water-but then something solid got sucked up by the needle and blocked it.
After they'd removed and weighed the organs one by one, she sliced open the stomach and emptied its contents into a glass container-more green liquid came out, murky at first, then clearing as a gritty white sediment with the consistency of sand floated to the bottom of the receptacle, followed by small shiny dark scraps of something that could have been plastic.
She noticed the stomach wasn't quite empty; there was something that hadn't come out. She opened it up a little more and saw a pale, sticky greyish ball of matter stuck to the lining. It reminded her of a shrunken golf ball. When she held it up to the light she saw it wasn't a single object, but small overlapping squares compacted into a ball.
Using tweezers she tugged and pulled at the ball until she'd managed to prise loose one of the squares. It was about a third of an inch long, made of cardboard, printed on both sides, miraculously intact despite the digestive process. One side was black, the other was multicoloured-reds, yellows, oranges, blues-but she couldn't make out the design.
She unpicked the rest of the bundle, laying out the squares one by one at the end of the slab, until she found herself staring at a jigsaw.
She spent the next hour piecingit together. Fifteen minutes in, she began to recognize the thing she was assembling.
The image she had before her was familiar, but the design differed in many ways. The drawing was more sophisticated, more detailed, the colours richer and more vibrant-what there was of it, because it wasn't complete. At least a quarter was missing. She guessed where she'd find it.
'Javier, open up his throat,' she said.
The victim had choked to death on the remaining cardboard squares.
When Javier had finished and handed her nine missing pieces, she completed the jigsaw.
It was a tarot card depicting a man sitting on a throne with a golden crown on his
She looked at the nose and saw a puncture mark on either side, right through the middle, very slightly encrusted with dried blood; on the underside of the nostrils was a small horizontal cut, the same width as the marks on the lips. Nose sewn up too. The object used to make the hole had been thick and long, a needle, she estimated, with an eye wide enough to hold something with the density of a guitar or violin string, which was what she thought had been used to fasten the mouth and nose. She'd seen this before a couple of times, but she couldn't remember the specifics. Once here, once in New York; some kind of black magic ritual. She made a note to cross-reference it on the computer if she had the time and that was a big if.
'Are we going to look inside the head?' Javier asked. She usually left that to him.
'Depends what the insides tell us.'
'The Look of Love' began to play as she made the T-incision from shoulders to mid-chest and all the way down to the pubis. It was around about now that the dieners would start dropping.
She opened up the body and inspected its insides. It was a predictable sight, looking a lot like a butcher's shop might two weeks after the owners had suddenly closed it up and abandoned it with all the contents inside. The organs hadn't just changed colour-reds and maroons had turned shades of grey-blue-they'd started losing their shape too, becoming viscous, and some had been disconnected from the main framework and shifted position because hungry insects had eaten through the cabling. Surprisingly Ralph and Martin had hung on in there. Ralph even looked like he was enjoying himself.
Gemma took a large syringe and extracted blood and fluid from the heart, lungs, bladder and pancreas. Then she spiked the stomach and started filling the syringe barrel with a sample of its contents-a green liquid, the colour of spinach water-but then something solid got sucked up by the needle and blocked it.
After they'd removed and weighed the organs one by one, she sliced open the stomach and emptied its contents into a glass container-more green liquid came out, murky at first, then clearing as a gritty white sediment with the consistency of sand floated to the bottom of the receptacle, followed by small shiny dark scraps of something that could have been plastic.
She noticed the stomach wasn't quite empty; there was something that hadn't come out. She opened it up a little more and saw a pale, sticky greyish ball of matter stuck to the lining. It reminded her of a shrunken golf ball. When she held it up to the light she saw it wasn't a single object, but small overlapping squares compacted into a ball.
Using tweezers she tugged and pulled at the ball until she'd managed to prise loose one of the squares. It was about a third of an inch long, made of cardboard, printed on both sides, miraculously intact despite the digestive process. One side was black, the other was multicoloured-reds, yellows, oranges, blues-but she couldn't make out the design.
She unpicked the rest of the bundle, laying out the squares one by one at the end of the slab, until she found herself staring at a jigsaw.
She spent the next hour piecingit together. Fifteen minutes in, she began to recognize the thing she was assembling.
The image she had before her was familiar, but the design differed in many ways. The drawing was more sophisticated, more detailed, the colours richer and more vibrant-what there was of it, because it wasn't complete. At least a quarter was missing. She guessed where she'd find it.
'Javier, open up his throat,' she said.
The victim had choked to death on the remaining cardboard squares.
When Javier had finished and handed her nine missing pieces, she completed the jigsaw.
It was a tarot card depicting a man sitting on a throne with a golden crown on his
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