The environment of the scene where the body was found is indeed very terrible.
Hecticity is a small town with a large population, where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer, and the environment of Choi Fung Building and its surroundings perfectly reflects this.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxGnuPQVegw
Several isolated old buildings are surrounded by brand-new commercial buildings that have been rebuilt and are in a state of disrepair.
The exterior walls are covered with signboards such as "SHOE POLISHING", "LOCKSMITH TEL: XXXX-XXXX", "HOURLY LOVE HOTEL" and "MIRIN HAIR SALON" with red and white barber's pole, etc., all of which have been eroded by the wind and weathered over the years. The iron frames are rusty, and the once-modern girls in the advertisements for nylon pantyhose have faded into a muddy yellow colour, which, in the flickering neon lights, tells a silent story of the past.
This community was once glorious, but now it is in decline.
Choi Fung Building is a standard Hectican-style old apartment building with eight floors and no lifts. The owner has subdivided a 400-square-foot flat into five units separated by simple plastic partitions, each of which can barely accommodate a bed and a little bit of stuff.
They are called "sub-divided units".
Most of the people living here are elderly and grassroots, and there are also some illegal immigrants.
The body was found by a woman who is an illegal immigrant to Hecticity, overstaying her visa and living in prostitution.
With a pale face, she squats outside the gate of Choi Fung Building vomiting all over the floor, while covering her face with a hand and turning her back to the cameras of the media outside the blockade line.
When a female police officer asks her for identification and prepares to question her, her face stiffens and she refuses to co-operate with the investigation. She even bends down to cross the blockade line and runs off in panic and stumbling.
"Hey, hey, stop!" The female police officer is startled and feels that there is something suspicious, so she hurriedly calls out to one of her colleagues and chases after her.
The prostitute is running desperately and is familiar with the streets and alleys in this area. A dash from here and a turn to there, she quickly distances herself and is about to leave the field of vision.
The two police officers do not have time to go back to drive the police car to catch up. When they see a taxi stopped by the roadside, with a young night-shift driver sitting inside eating cheap sandwiches, the two of them rush forward and knock on the window of the taxi.
" We are from the Serious Crimes Investigation Unit, please do us a favour and give us a ride! The suspect has just run away!"
" Sure, get in. I know this area well. Must be the woman who just ran ahead, right?"
The driver immediately puts away his snacks, opens the car door, and when the two police officers get in, he steps on the throttle without hesitation. The tyres rub against the surface of the road, making a sharp creaking sound, giving out a burnt smell, and the whole car dashes out like an arrow off the string.
He spins the steering wheel to make a swift and flashy turn, and then he accelerates his speed to the fastest possible, so as to let the car go like a swimming fish in streets and alleys. He even still has the time to look at pedestrians on the pavement.
"Wow, amazing driving skills!" The female police officer's colleague cannot help but raise his thumb. "Have you ever thought of becoming a traffic cop?"
The young driver replies, "Of course I have, but as you know, Sir and Madam, we grassroots often have tattoos and know some triad members. There is no way to be admitted to the police college, nor to be accepted in open recruitment."
After a quick ride in the tiny old district, he soon spots his target. Just as she is about to cross the road and escape from the old district, he runs the red light and brakes hard, stopping the car right in the middle of the road, and at the same time slams the steering wheel to sound the horn.
"Beep!"
"Ah!" The prostitute screamed, covering her ears and halting her steps. She stumbles and falls onto the ground.
The two police officers open the door of the taxi and rush out to subdue the prostitute and handcuff her.
"Get off me! Get off me! I've never killed anyone! I just don't want to be sent back!" The prostitute struggles and screams, "I've nothing to do with the death of that bitch!"
"Hmph, refusing to be investigated by the police and running away? And insulting the deceased? You're not the one who decides whether or not you've killed someone. We'll check you out later!"
The taxi driver opens the window and pokes his head out, "Hey, Sir and Madam, the fare's not yet paid. You can't just take a taxi for free even if you're an officer."
"Oh, yeah, for sure...The taximeter won't count for such a short distance, so it's 30 dollars, right?"
Before the taxi driver answers, he picks up a call, asking with a perfect balance of politeness and warmth in his voice.
"Hello Mr. Lee, glad to help! Just call me Tim would be absolutely fine. Where are you travelling to this time? Oh, when I was a kid, I also dreamt of flying over the Atlantic Ocean to the U.S.A., but I'll need more 'fortune' to make the dream come true! Haha... No problem at all, I'm just over there in the old district and will be at the Tourmaline Villa on Choi Wing Street in less than a minute," he said.
After the driver hangs up, he re-lifts the window, smiles at the two policemen behind the window, presses the accelerator, and leaves in a cloud of dust.
"Sir, Madam, I was just kidding. It's not often we get to experience a midnight car race to help officers catch criminals like in a crime film - just don't issue me a traffic ticket for breaking the speed limit!"
Meanwhile, a group of officers from the Serious Crimes Investigation Unit (SCIU) climbed up the stairs of Choi Fung Building.
It takes them quite a while to remove the huge mountain of obstacles piled up between the 6th and 7th floors. When they climb up to the 7th floor to enter Room C, they can clearly hear the squeaking sound of the bed shaking in Room C on the 8th floor above them.
The two upstairs are thrusting and shaking so hard that even the damaged paint on the ceiling of Room 7C is being shaken off. What's more, the continuous, deliberately exaggerated gasps with accents are so high-pitched that hurt everyone's eardrums.
"Oh man, it's so big and I really love that, oh yeah fuck me hard... ah... ah..."
"Oh my God, a rotten porno." A team member rolls his eyes.
Todd, the youngest member of all, is only in his early twenties and completely inexperienced. He blushes at the sound above.
"What the hell has they turned this residential building into? A brothel? This kind of 'room service' should definitely be reported to the vice squad of TCID (Triad Crimes Investigation Division)..."321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfptFiDzncQ
Todd says and scratches his head in confusion.
"Speaking of which, I just heard from the security guard that when a resident of 7C found the dead body, the scene, and the stench terrified the neighbours and sent them screaming and running away. How can the two upstairs still be in the mood to have sex? Are they that horny?"
Francis, who hasn't said a word since entering 7/F, utters in a faint voice.
"You don't understand. Life is hard, who would want to sell themselves? I've come across some cases in the UK where middle-aged prostitutes were not able to make any changes for a new life, so they could only fulfil the increasingly dangerous demands of their punters. One was strangled by a rope to the point that her head and neck were almost separated, and another one could no longer bear the torture and chose to drink bleach and slit her wrist to commit suicide. The punter in the latter case saw everything, abandoned the body, and left, and that's it. Prostitutes have been suffering throughout their whole lives."
Todd is shamefaced and keeps his mouth shut.
John gave him a slap on his head, "Learn from others! What do you mean by 'horny'? We have to mind our words and we call them "sex workers" now to respect them, okay? And don't be too chatty when the crime scene investigation is over - We will get into trouble if the media make news headlines from what we shouldn't have said!"
Todd pinches his nose and responds, "Yes Sir, got it, got it... Captain, why do you always love to pat other people's heads just like the old Captain? Anyway, it really stinks! How can these people upstairs stand it? I can't stand it any longer... arghhh!"
Before he can take a glimpse of the body, he can't help but rush to a corner and vomit just like the tenant who found the body.
John can also smell the strong stench of the corpse. He frowns and looks at Francis in a full set of protective clothing. Francis stands steadily without vomiting nor fainting and seems to perform slightly better than Todd this rookie.
John is a little relieved that Francis was not as much of a drag as he had imagined, so he beckons to the SCIU and Identification Bureau officers to pass the blockade line to take photos, scan fingerprints, and busy themselves with the collection of evidence in an orderly manner.
He and Francis crouch down next to the corpse to observe it.
John has seen many dead bodies before, but this is definitely the worst one he has seen since he joined SCIU. It makes his stomach churning and very uncomfortable.
The body is naked and her face is ruined from jabbing. Her eyeballs protrude, her lips enlarge and turn out while the tongue is sticking out. Her limbs are swollen, her skin is of a dirty green colour, and the skin of her hands and feet are like gloves and socks peeling off, which is extremely ugly, and is difficult for others to identify her appearance when alive.
Not to mention the filth that gushed out from the body's various openings, with flies resting on them from time to time, and maggots burrowing in and out of the body, enjoying the feast of decay.
The most fatal thing is that the witness kicked open the door of the subdivided flat of the victim and caused it to fall on the body's stomach. The door handle poked through the stomach which was ballooned up by the decayed gas - so everything blasts out and the outcome is indisputably disastrous.
Francis says in a low voice, "Giant cadaver. Generally speaking, bodies rot like this 15 to 30 days after death. Since the winter in Hecticity is not too cold and the humidity is relatively high, it is estimated that the victim has been dead for about 15 to 20 days."
"No way ... Why did it take so long for neighbours to find out?" John cannot help but have a bout of nausea again, and he immediately holds it back.
The answer is simple: Life is worthless here. No one cares what's going on next door until the body rots and stinks, and only when the smell is too nasty that someone who cannot bear it anymore goes and kicks in the door.
"Any observations?"John asks Francis.
Francis frowns and points to the line of body fluid and blood stains with messy footprints, trailing to the door of the subdivided flat and then to the main door of Room 7C. There are also pieces of intestines blown up all over the place and have been trampled on.
"The preliminary report before we came to the scene is right. The body and the scene have been severely damaged, I mean, accidentally. After all, any general person would have been terrified by a rotten corpse and would not think about preserving the evidence at the scene."
The body is in an advanced stage of decomposition and the head and abdomen are also severely damaged. In such conditions, the facial features, the cornea turbidity, and the fingerprints are all unidentifiable. Livor mortis (settling of blood shown as purplish red spots on the corpse) and algor mortis (the decreasing body temperature of the dead) are no longer of any reference value.321Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrpzmfCctja
Francis glances at John's distressed look and raises an eyebrow.
"What are you worrying about? Just by visual inspection, I can determine a few facts: strangled, female, and pregnant. You know what I mean right? That is -"
"I know. Bruise around the neck, tongue sticking out, hands above the neck, fingers flexed, all these signify strangling and struggle. Hmmm... as for 'female' and 'pregnant', how can you tell?"
"Wait, what?" Todd almost jumped out of his skin. "This is a case of one body and two lives?"
Francis half-lowers his eyes, looking somewhat sad under the mask. Like mourning, he takes out a pair of forceps and gently picks up a small piece of rotting flesh from the body's abdomen and puts it into a transparent plastic evidence envelope.
"This is not intestines, but the foetus expelled from the body after death. It's such a small piece of rotting flesh, and I'm sure it won't be any older than three months."
While John watches Francis remove the filth on the body surface for examination, he also spots something.
"Here... look at the blood on the wounds of the deceased's private parts. Pregnant women don't have menstruation, so obviously it's not menstrual blood. And there are no traits of splashing at all - I bet she was stabbed after death - what a scumbag murderer."
Francis cannot help but look a little puzzled when he hears the word "menstruation". He asks, "Captain Shaw, You seem to know quite a lot about women's biological features. Married, engaged, or dating?"
John is at a loss for words.
This Dr. To is quite a weirdo. A moment ago he looked slightly more reliable, and the next moment he is commenting that his superior is a bosom friend of ladies, and nosing into the status of his relationship at the crime scene.
Well, in fact, strictly speaking, Francis is not his subordinate...
A forensic consultant, holder of two doctorate degrees from a famous British university. Other countries and cities would have been eager to offer him a senior position, and all he needed to do would be only sitting in the office to analyse photos taken at the scene and the autopsy and give some advice. Yet, here in Hecticity, Francis is treated like any ordinary frontline staff that needs to investigate on-site.
The old Commander Burton Chow exclaimed several times that for such a young expert with such a bright future, it is so generous of Francis that he agreed to just be appointed as a special consultant with a standard salary just like ordinary officers of SCIU, saying that the salary and the short-term contract do not matter much. Burton was so impressed and was like almost wanted to recognise Francis as his second godson.
"Short-term contract"? How short is "short-term"? One year? Half a year? Three months?
It seems that when it comes to this Dr. To, John's thoughts will be drawn to him.
"Hey." Francis pulled him back from his wandering mind. "Back to the point. This is too early to conclude that the murderer is the one who stabbed her."
"Huh?" John is lost for a while before he comes back to his senses. "That makes sense. The stabs may not be the work of the murderer. It could be wounds of self-harm or that the deceased had a grudge against her neighbours, and the latter damaged the body to vent their anger when they found out that she was dead."
"Mm-hmm." Francis waits until a forensic technician finishes circling the outline of the body lying on the ground, then moves the body onto a disposable plastic sheet and lifts the upper half of the body. He examines the scalp and the ears with a magnifying glass and checks the private parts with an endoscope.
He does not seem to have any new findings, so he lays the body flat again. He gets a new pair of disposable plastic gloves, takes out the hemostatic forceps in the toolbox, and holds the lips to examine her teeth and tongue. After that, he holds the body's hand, scrapes the specimen from all ten fingers, and uses a puncture needle to extract urine from the bladder. He has not missed out on the filth that is spilling out of her mouth and nose and collects them as well.
Apart from collecting samples of flies and maggots and storing them in disposable bottles, he also picks up the scattered pieces of the intestines, classifies them, and packs them into the corresponding evidence bag. He does all these in a swift and neat manner, which means he is obviously very familiar with the process.
The specimens are disgusting, but John is impressed.
There are actually so many clues in the eyes of a forensic pathologist, even for a completely disfigured body!
Francis finishes collecting the samples. He stands up, coughing while saying, "The body will be sent away with the first batch of exhibits, right? I'll have the body taken to the autopsy room."
John asked uncertainly, "Do you want to take a break?"
"Oh, *coughing* I'm fine. I need to take time by the forelock for a body with such an advanced level of decomposition. Where is the autopsy room in the police headquarters building?"
"Room B3 on the underground floor of the West Wing. You will find the room when you walk out of the lift and turn left. It's a bit remote, but don't worry, that old fella Dr. Chan has checked and confirmed that it's well-equipped."
"Old fella? Is Dr. Chan a senior medical examiner on the team?"
"Oh...senior? Yeah, but he's not serving in the police force. He's been working in the public mortuary for a long time, and not yet retired at the age of some seventy."
"Then he IS a senior performing anatomy in Hecticity for many years. I will have a chat with him for sure... Alright, that's all, and now I must excuse myself," says Francis.
John is a bit concerned about Francis returning to the Police Headquarters on his own with this ill look on his face.
"Most of the residents here are women with special occupations, so sending a female police officer for an interview seems more appropriate. Toddler (nickname of Todd), you won't have to stay on the scene, please take Dr. To back to the Police Headquarters Building - Toddler!"
Todd is so relieved that he cannot wait to get out of this stinking scene full of flies, but at the same time he is not willing to get too close to Francis for fear of the body fluids on his hands and the stench of rotting corpses, so he only smiles and leads the way from afar, and even puts a wooden clip over his nose when he is driving.
It's a bit rude, but Francis understands and laughs it off.
Todd has just recently graduated from the police academy, and everything is new to him. As forensic doctors are incredibly rare in Hecticity, he has a lot of questions in his mind. His curiosity finally outweighs his disgust, so he starts asking Francis questions as he shows him the way in the police headquarters.
"Dr. To, if you're going to perform an autopsy later, can I watch, I mean, can I help?"
"No, you're not trained to be a forensic assistant."
"But then you won't have any assistants."
Francis stops in surprise.
"What? No assistant? Not even an intern to take pictures and hand out equipment?"
"Well... as this profession is quite 'special', the H City University doesn't offer such a course."
Francis shakes his head helplessly and again raises his step.
"Please tell that Commander that I NEED an assistant at least with some medical knowledge, he should not be so stingy with the expenses. Plus, he didn't tell me any of the follow-up arrangements. After the autopsy, will there be a meeting to discuss the next step, or should I wait for him to call? I don't even have a mobile phone for contact! Are you officers all so... random?"
The more Francis thinks about it, the more angry he gets.
Is this the way the Hecticity Police treat special guests? Arresting him for no reason, and investigating crimes like some random amateur detectives?
Hey Commander Shaw, what have you actually been doing while getting paid by taxpayers?
Todd, sensing the crisis, pats his chest and promises to pass on his opinion to the captain.
As soon as Francis enters the autopsy room and closes the door, Todd immediately takes out his mobile phone and types in the chat group "Wages Slaves of SCIU(Eastern District)".
Todd not Toddler: SOS! The newly appointed consultant has a grudge against the newly appointed commander! He is picking on us in every way, but we core members are going to work with him every day! How could weak creatures like me survive in the war of the gods? URGENT I'm online waiting for help!
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