Page 10 of The Lovers (Echoes from the Past #1)

FIVE

London, England

On Monday morning, Quinn dutifully presented herself at the morgue where the skeletal remains found in Mayfair had been taken for tests.

Over the weekend, she’d scanned all the information available online about the find but learned little more than she already knew from Gabe.

The only thing that offered any clues as to the time period of the murder was the picture of the chest taken by one of the workers on the site, but she needed a closer look to ascertain the period in which it might have been crafted.

Truth be told, Quinn was glad to be in London.

Having spent her first weekend on her own, she was more than ready to leave the house and grasp the distraction of this case with both hands.

She thought that she’d accepted the idea of Luke’s desertion, could forge ahead without him, but the time alone proved her wrong.

They’d spoken about the future shortly before she left for the dig in Jerusalem.

Luke had even hinted that he was ready for the next step, and she’d dreamed of a Christmastime proposal, but she could never have imagined that the next step for Luke would be a professorship in America.

Quinn was ready for marriage and thought that Luke had been too.

And she had been eager to start a family, although she hadn’t mentioned that to Luke before she left.

One step at a time was the way to go with Luke.

She’d never known him to be impulsive. Luke was a planner, a list keeper.

He wouldn’t have been open to having a child right away, but she would have talked him round sooner rather than later.

Luke liked kids and mentioned his desire for a family a few times over the past few years.

It had been Quinn who’d been apprehensive.

She’d spent years focusing on her career and making a name for herself in academic circles, but now, at thirty, she seemed to melt every time she saw a sweet baby gazing at her from a passing pram and longed for the feel of chubby arms around her neck.

There was a time when having a child seemed like a burden and an unnecessary hindrance to her success, but at this moment, she would give up all the ancient bones in the world for the comforting weight of a baby in her arms. But the promise of family had suddenly been snatched away from her, and she found herself mourning the loss of something that had been within her grasp only a few months before.

Quinn blanched as the smell of strong disinfectant assailed her senses.

It failed to disguise the note of putrefaction hovering in the air.

In fact, it only served to bring attention to it.

Dr. Scott was in the middle of an autopsy, his apron covered with substances Quinn didn’t care to name.

He gave her a wave through the Plexiglas window and held up his splayed hand, indicating that he’d be done in five minutes.

Quinn took a seat outside, reserved for family members coming in to identify their loved ones, and stared out the window.

The on-and-off rain that had stuck around all weekend had stopped, giving way to a glorious autumn morning.

Everything was painted in shades of orange, crimson, and gold, the colors brilliant against an azure sky, the outside a stark contrast to the atmosphere of the morgue, where death ruled with an iron fist.

Dr. Scott finally came out, thankfully sans apron.

He’d removed his latex gloves and shook Quinn’s hand, surprising her with the firmness of the handshake.

Colin Scott wasn’t tall, but he was lithe, with graceful hands that looked as if they should be holding a paintbrush, not a scalpel.

His long sandy hair was pulled back into a bun while he worked, and Quinn was fairly certain that he was fully aware that his surgical cap exactly matched the shade of his eyes.

Had she met him at a social function, she would never have taken him for a pathologist. An artist maybe, or a musician, even a writer, but never for a man who dissected cadavers for a living.

Dr. Scott’s sensual lips stretched into a warm smile as he released her hand.

“Dr. Allenby, a pleasure to meet you. Gabe told me you’d be stopping by.”

“He strong-armed me into taking on this case,” Quinn complained good-naturedly as she smiled back at the doctor, who didn’t seem the least bit affected by the fact that he’d just autopsied a woman who appeared to be in her early forties.

“Me as well, but I was secretly pleased. Unlike those of us in the trenches, the administrators always have to worry about where their funding is coming from. I’d rather get my hands dirty any day rather than panhandle to endless bureaucrats in exchange for measly handouts.

Come, let me introduce you to our ‘lovers.’”

“Well, since you put it that way, lead the way,” Quinn said and followed Dr. Scott down the corridor.

“Actually, Sarita Dhawan, my assistant, is performing most of the tests, but she’s very thorough, I assure you.”

They entered a separate room, where a young Asian woman was tapping away at her computer, her huge dark eyes reflecting the screen in front of her. She looked up in greeting, a smile transforming her narrow face from serious to radiant in an instant.

“Good morning, Dr. Allenby,” Sarita called out from her perch as she gave Dr. Scott a questioning look .

“Can you finish up for me, Sarita?” he asked as he inclined his head toward the room he’d just come from. “Just close her up. I’ll enter the results once I’m finished in here.”

“Sure thing, boss,” Sarita answered as she slid off her stool and reached for an apron and a pair of latex gloves.

“What was it that killed her?” Sarita asked.

“Intracerebral hemorrhage,” Dr. Scott replied, his attention already on the metal slab in the middle of the room.

Sarita nodded and left the room with some reluctance, casting a look of pure longing at the remains.

Whatever Dr. Scott said would be more interesting than closing up a body after an autopsy, a pathologist’s version of grunt work.

“Shall we begin?” Dr. Scott asked as he walked briskly toward the slab, rubbing his hands in childish anticipation.

Two skeletons were laid out side by side, the chest they’d been found in discreetly stored in the corner of the room and wrapped in clear plastic to prevent accelerated decay caused by exposure to oxygen and sunlight.

Quinn would examine the chest later, but for now all her attention was focused on the remains.

Even if she had not known that the skeletons were those of a male and female, she would have been able to guess just by looking at them.

The male skeleton was much longer, raw boned, with large hands and feet.

The female was dwarfed by the male, her bones narrow and delicate by comparison.

She might have been mistaken for a boy were it not for the wider pelvis.

“So, what have you discovered?” Quinn asked as she accepted a pair of latex gloves from Dr. Scott and approached the slab with some trepidation.

She always felt a pang of anxiety when confronted with human remains.

These individuals had died years before, but her heart turned over at the sight of them.

They’d been living, breathing people once, people who loved and hated and worried about things just as any person did today.

They had names and people who cared about them, but now they were just two anonymous skeletons lying on a cold metal slab in a twenty-first-century morgue, their bones almost translucent beneath the merciless florescent light coming from the fixture above.

Dr. Scott didn’t seem to share Quinn’s bout of sentimentality as he reached for a manila folder containing the test results.

Unlike her, who dealt with death in a more academic manner, he faced down death every single day and was immune to the ugliness and decay that immediately followed the passing of a person.

Dr. Scott was more interested in the physical aspects, whereas Quinn longed to know about the actual person and the life they’d led.

“We’ve conducted the usual tests: carbon-14 dating, mineral analysis, degree of bone calcification, and isotope mapping to determine the paleo environment and reconstruct the paleo diet of the subjects.

What we have here are the skeletal remains of a male and a female, and they are roughly four hundred years old.

The male was in his mid-twenties. Judging by his height and the condition of his teeth, I’d say that he came from a well-to-do background and enjoyed adequate nutrition for most of his life.

There are bony ridges on his right wrist, so he likely did some type of work that required prolonged use of his right hand; I can’t ascertain what kind, but he might have been a craftsman of some sort or a blacksmith—a workingman, at any rate.

He’d sustained broken ribs and several broken fingers on his left hand, but they were well healed by the time of his death. ”

“How did he die?” Quinn asked, staring at the man’s grinning skull as if it might offer up some clue to his fate.

“There is no indication that he was murdered before being placed in the chest. His skull is intact, and there are no nicks from a knife on any of his bones. It’s possible, of course, that someone could have slid a knife under the ribs and into the heart, but I doubt that was the case since we found no traces of blood, which would have been there had he suffered a violent death. He most likely died of asphyxiation.”

“And the woman?”

“The woman was younger, possibly in her late teens or early twenties. Only two of her wisdom teeth had come in, and clavicle fusion hadn’t occurred yet.

There are no obvious signs of violence, so she likely died in the same way as her mate.

I can say, however, that she’d had at least one child, possibly more. ”