It was hot July day, Detective Inspector Donal Crinigan sat in his eight floor office at New Scotland Yard, with a telephone in his hand, looking dumfounded.
‘What just happened there?’ he thought as he replaced the receiver. ‘This appears to be becoming like something from the X-Files.’
“Rock!” he hollered through his open office door
“Yes sir,” said Detective Nathan Rock from the workstation outside.
“Get me the number of Mulder and Scully you little bollix,” he shouted, much to the amusement of the other detectives in earshot.
“Pardon sir?” queried Rock.
“Nothing, get back to work” said Crinigan as he got up, closed his office door and reflected on recent events
The body from Cambodia had arrived the previous afternoon and taken to the Morgue. O’Donnel and his forensics team had started work on it immediately and carried out another post mortem examination.
O’Donnel had called Crinigan to the morgue first thing the following morning. Donal hated the morgue as it always left him stinking of Hycaline and formaldehyde, which lingered on his clothes. However O’Donnel had insisted that he should attend before a report was filed.
Crinigan walked out of the metropolitan Police main building and into the forensic section at the rear. He was met in the corridor by O’Donnel who escorted him to the morgue and informed him that they had been mistaken. They entered the morgue through large vulcanised rubber swing doors. The forensics lab in the Metropolitan police is one of the world’s best, it contained all the most modern up to date analysis machines available. The walls of the large morgue covered in blue cobalt ceramic tiles, which gave the feeling of being in an immense bathroom.
“Wrong about what?” asked Crinigan.
“The samples,” said O’Donnel, “they do come from the same body and not two as we first suspected,” he led Crinigan to an autopsy table, where a large operating theatre light hung central, which shone onto a body of a Caucasian male. The torso had been splayed and the internal organs dissected and either in sample jars or on plates of analysis machines. Crinigan noticed the face of the corpse was contorted with a look of pure terror.
“I thought the body had been in a dry well for ten days before being discovered” commented Crinigan, “this body looks fresh,”
O’Donnell knew the shrewd detective would pick up on this fact straight away and stated
“The Internal carotid artery seemed to have exploded, brought on by some kind of shock and the brain has been dead for at least two weeks,” explained O’Donnel “but the cells in the body were still active and reproducing, albeit now very slowly.”
“How is that possible?” Crinigan asked
O’Donnel went on to explain how the blood cells had been someway altered to carry their own supply of synthetic oxygen that didn’t die; however, at the rate they were now replicating they should die soon. He showed Crinigan a photo scan of the femurs bone marrow, which looked like a honeycomb. This was not a natural structure and neither were the cells. O’Donnel explained that as far as they could figure out, the bones of the skeleton are the oldest things in the corpse, and went on to tell the intrigued detective that, according to the tests they had performed on the bones they had dated them to be a few months old
“Nothing about this corpse was usual” said a puzzled O’Donnell.
“Have you got an identity for me so we can at least inform someone’s next of kin,” said a still confused Crinigan.
“O’Donnel handed him a medical folder and an identification sheet.
“Not exactly,” said O’Donnel and went over to the side wall, to the x-rays light boxes.
“The DNA, blood and fingerprint suggest this person,” he said and pointed to an identity form, with a name address date of birth, occupation and next of kin.
“But” he said, “these are this man’s Skull and dental x-rays” pointing to the identity form
“However” he said as he slid a small dental x–ray next to the first x- rays
“This is our friend’s here,” he said as he pointed to the corpse. “
“So unless his teeth grew back, they don’t match” noticed Crinigan.
O’Donnel opened another envelope and produced two x-rays’s and put them onto the light box.
“Our John Doe here is this one” he said and pointed to an x-ray.
“And this one,” he said and pointed to the second “we obtained from the medical records of the man to whom we assume it to be” he said and again tapped on the identification papers.
Crinigan studied the identical x- rays of a shoulder. He picked noticed one had signs of a fracture on his right clavicle. O’Donnel then showed Crinigan an accident and emergency photograph taken December 2007, at Pattaya Bangkok Memorial Hospital, which showed a small shaven section of a scalp with ten sutures.
O’Donnel went over to the head of the corpse
“According to the photographs and diagnostic casualty reports, it should be right here” and pulled the hair away from the spot marked.
Crinigan looked.
“No scar,” he said.
“Correct,” said O’Donnel. “And, no indication of any childhood disease or any illness, in fact if you want me to put an age on this body, despite how it looks, I would say this man to be several months old”
Crinigan was baffled as Brendon continued
“I know it sounds crazy, but it appears as if this man has been made, or at least genetically altered.
“Is it a hoax?” asked Crinigan clutching at straws, “Did this person actually live?”
“I think only briefly,” said O’Donnel.
“What was the cause of death,” inquired Crinigan.
"“All we can presume is that due to some unimaginable shock, his internal carotid artery literally exploded as he appeared to have died terrified of something.”
“So,” said Crinigan “You’re telling me that a...” Crinigan looked at the notes from O’Donnel and continued,
“A thirty-six year-old man with a body a few months old died of fright.”
O’Donnel corrected him, “A modified or created body of a few months old. . . . Yes.”
“What a load of old bollocks” shouted Crinigan, “little green men, conspiracy theory?”
“I honestly don’t know inspector,” said a confused and mystified Coroner. “It has baffled us all,” and added, “This level of genetic engineering could not have occurred during present day,” he went on “we haven’t the technology to sequence, replicate and grow a human. This technology would be centuries, probably millennia away”
“What about that new CAIN process that the computer world has gone crazy on?” asked Crinigan.
“That supposedly enhanced computers to the next level of evolution, or so they boast.
O’Donnel thought for a moment and replied
“That has only been developed a short time and they still don’t know the possibilities for that. This technology seemed to far advanced, maybe even for CAIN.
“So,” said a now perturbed detective, “We are back to little green men?” he glared at O’Donnel.
“Maybe”, said O’Donnel “or Frankenstein, we just don’t know”.
“Let me get this straight,” said Crinigan, trying to condense the facts.
“Little green men travelled the stars, spent light years getting here, grabbed a…..” He looked at his papers and continued, “Grabbed a 36 year old builder’s labourer from Brighton, genetically altered him, and dropped him off in a well inside an ancient Cambodian temple. Then scared the bejesus out of him and left him dead for us to find.”
He looked at O’Donnel, who stared back at his Irish colleague and stated
“Donal, I have given you the facts and that’s all I can do.” He continued “You are the detective, you piece it together. My official report will state that this man died of a ruptured Berry aneurysm of the internal carotid artery in the circle of Willis, blood vessels in the base of the brain.”
Crinigan looked at the I.D. papers in front of him. He studied the next of kin details.
“Right,” he said “It’s time to do some real detective work then isn’t it?” Crinigan then strode out of the morgue and walked back into the main building and back into his office,
“Rock,” he shouted.
“Yes sir,” shouted detective Rock.
“Bring me a coffee and come in here, you may be useful for once in your life,” hollered the inspector.
Rock brought in the coffee and they both sat in front of Crinigans’ crime computer.
“Right,” he said “Here is our problem, we have a body, possibly a homicide, no motive, don’t know what opportunity , and we don’t have a murder weapon, in fact we have sod all, so where do we begin?” he waited for a response, which came surprisingly quickly for Nathan Rock
Detective Rock took the ID information from the folder.
“We have a next of kin name and address sir, how about we start with that?” he said and tapped the name and address into the computer
“Good lad, we will make a copper out of you yet,” laughed Crinigan.
A name, address and phone number along with other information flashed across the screen.
Crinigan studied the screen and wrote down a telephone number.
“Make yourself scarce lad, this could be the difficult part” said Crinigan and detective Rock left his office.
Crinigan composed himself and dialled the Brighton Police station and spoke to the chief constable, and then he dialled the number he had written down.
“Hello,” said a lady’s voice.
“Hello,” said Donal “Is that Mrs. Lorraine Stephenson?”
“Yes” said Lorraine “Who is this, and you had better not be selling anything.”
“This is Detective Inspector Donal Crinigan of the Metropolitan Police and I am afraid I have some bad news for you. We have a Mr. Nicholas Godfrey on report as staying at your address is that correct?” asked Crinigan.
“Nick? Yes he’s my brother, he stays with me and my husband; why what has he done?” asked Lorraine.
“He has done nothing, Mrs Stephenson, I am afraid I have some bad news for you. I am afraid your brother Nicholas is dead” he pauses “I am truly sorry,
Donal, as expected hears no reply, so continues
“We have your brother’s body with us here and I have sent a female constable to your address to counsel you and arrange for you to visit us here in London. You have to identify the body, and we have some questions that you may be able to help us answer.” said Crinigan with remorse in is voice. “I am sorry to have to break the news over the telep……”
“Hang on” said Lorraine interrupting the Detective.
“Nick!” she hollered then silence
“Nick!” she shouted again, “Get your arse down here. One of your numb nut mates is on the phone and wants to speak to you and don’t worry it doesn’t sound like those two. This idiot sounds Irish”