Chapter 166
I told Xiaotao that we should take the body back to the station first. I then asked Dali to get some things for me like a spatula, bone powder, mung bean flour, slaked lime, fish gelatin, and a sewing kit.
“Bone powder?” asked Dali. “What the h.e.l.l is that? Where can I buy it?”
“It’s animal bones ground into fine powder,” I explained. “You can look for it where they sell bone carvings, or maybe even some plant nurseries. Some people use it as fertilizer.”
“What about fish gelatin?”
“It’s usually in the gelatinous fatty part of the belly of a fish,” I answered. “You can get it at the fish market.”
Dali then left and Xiaotao called for the forensics team to deal with the internal organs, but there was bad news. The coroner could not work on this case because he was busy performing autopsies on the bodies of the gangsters. At that point, the Black Panthers gang and the Blood Wolf gang were still at each other’s throat, and dead bodies would turn up here and there as a result of their conflict. Just the night before, another fight between the gangs had erupted, and the morgue was full of dead gangsters again.
“I guess we have no choice,” I sighed. “We have to call for Bingxin’s help.”
Xiaotao’s face fell. “Are you sure Sun Tiger will be fine with that?”
“Why don’t you ask him yourself?”
Xiaotao called Sun Tiger and after persuading him for a long time, he finally relented, on the condition that she be sent home before sundown. I was sure that Sun Tiger would agree anyway. This would be a great opportunity for Bingxin to learn, after all.
Xiaotao hung up the phone and said, “Your sweetheart will be here soon.”
I nodded and said nothing. I was too busy thinking about the case and was in no mood to joke around.
We hurried back to the police station. Just as we were about to enter the building, Bingxin arrived in a cab, and she jumped out of it cheerfully and gleefully shouted, “Xiaotao-jiejie! Song Yang-gege! What’s the case about this time?”
“Let’s go inside and see the body,” I answered vaguely.
Bingxin took my arm and jumped up and down joyfully like a little bunny.
“I’m so excited to work with you guys again!” she chirped. “I’ve been bored to tears with nothing to do these few days! I’m so glad you guys called for my help!”
Seeing that neither of us said anything in reply, she continued, “What’s wrong? Why do you guys look so down? Is it a really difficult case?”
“You’ll understand when you see the body,” Xiaotao replied curtly.
Xiaotao pushed the door to the morgue open, and the first thing Bingxin saw was the body sawed in half.
“Is that a human body?” she gasped. Then, with one close look at the internal organs and the bone structure, she understood everything. She covered her mouth and cried, “Who did this? What s.a.d.i.s.tic animal did this?!”
I briefly explained the details of the case to her. Tears streamed down her cheeks as she kept repeating, “It’s horrible! It’s horrible!”
When she calmed down, I told her to test the internal organs. Bingxin nodded, put on a white coat and latex gloves, then took the internal organs packed in plastic bags to another work table and started dissecting them.
I went back to the body and thought about what I should do first. I should get rid of the parts that did not belong to the victim, then rearrange the human body parts according to human anatomy to reconstruct the victim’s body.
Traditional Coroners often worked with dismembered corpses, but the ancients always made sure to reconstruct the body, otherwise they believed that the soul would not rest. Hence, there was a Song family technique called Corpse Reconstruction, which not only helped in solving murder cases, also allowed the soul of the dead to rest in peace.
I picked up a scalpel and started to work. I removed the pig ears and trotters, the transplanted tail, and the other surgical sutures, then rearranged the body parts according to human anatomy. The hardest part was the removal of excess fat. Once the liquid fat had solidified, they would turn into large white pieces of gelatinous ma.s.s. There was a clear line between the added fat and the original fat, and I carefully separated them.
Xiaotao looked a bit uncomfortable, so I told her, “You can wait outside if you like.”
“No,” she replied, “I’m fine. I never thought I’d see you dissect a body like a surgeon!”
“My method is a bit amateurish, though,” I laughed. “You can ask Bingxin about it. Thank goodness this scalpel is very sharp, which makes things much easier.”
At that moment, Dali returned with a big bag. He was overjoyed when he saw Bingxin there.
“Miss Sun!” he cried. “What are you doing here?”
“Song Yang-gege asked me for help,” Bingxin replied through the mask.
When Dali saw the corpse spread over the table, his face turned green. “Why did you cut the corpse into pieces, dude?”
“No time to talk,” I waved my hand. “Get me some hot water.”
I poured the bone powder, mung bean flour, and slaked lime into a metal container. When Dali returned with the hot water, I poured that into the container too. Once the mixture had cooled down a bit, I kneaded it with my hand till it turned into a paste. This sticky paste was called bone paste in the books.
I then mixed the fish gelatin and the pig fat that I had just sc.r.a.ped off the victim’s body into another metal container, then heated it with an alcohol burner. I waited until the mixture melted before adding starch to it and set it aside to cool.
I then filled the gaps between the bones with the paste and carefully trimmed the edges with the spatula. Bone paste solidified quickly once cooled, and it would feel just like bone to the touch.
This turned out to be quite a lot of work. From time to time, I would check the human anatomy poster on the wall. Eventually, I reconstructed the victim’s pelvis, ribs, teeth, and the bridge of her nose.
The skeleton was not complete, though. The forearms and the lower part of the legs were missing. Fortunately, this would not hinder me from solving the case.
At that moment, Bingxin was done dissecting the internal organs and was about to take them to the lab for testing.
I then covered the bones with the victim’s flesh and skin, and filled the body with the mixture of fish gelatin and pork fat. Finally, I st.i.tched it up with needles and threads. As a human body began to take shape, Dali exclaimed, “That’s awesome, dude! You really are worthy of being Song Ci’s descendant!”
I smiled and continued to work, now focusing on the victim’s head, which would take almost the same amount of time and effort as the rest of the body.
A person’s face was not just composed of a single piece of skin. The cartilage, muscles and teeth underneath the skin were just as crucial, if not more, in the attempt to reconstruct the victim’s face. The amount of fat underneath the skin had to be carefully adjusted to the right proportion in order to recreate what the victim looked like.
Bingxin then returned to the room and announced, “The tests are complete, Song Yang-gege…” She paused suddenly when she saw how I had restored the victim’s body to its human form. She gasped and was stunned speechless.
“Nailed it!” I exclaimed as I stood up. My back ached terribly from crouching for the past three hours.
The female corpse that lay on the metal table had no limbs, no hair, and no b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Her body was also full of st.i.tches, but her face had been convincingly reconstructed. Xiaotao, Dali and Bingxin looked on and gasped in disbelief.
“That’s amazing, Song Yang!” cried Xiaotao. “Even a 3D modelling software wouldn’t have done it better!”
“Some of the features on her face were just my guess,” I said, “but I’m sure her real face didn’t look much different than what I produced here.”
Xiaotao immediately called for the forensics team to come and take photos of the reconstructed corpse. They were all surprised when they arrived. They took pictures of the corpse from various angles and used them to find a match in the citizen registration database to identify the victim.
I asked Bingxin what she found from the testing. She looked at her test results report and said, “The victim is about 26 to 27 years old. Her blood type is B. She had no smoking or drinking habits. There was partially digested pig feed in her stomach. She probably ate it because she was starving. Apart from that, there was digested food matter in her intestines too. Judging by the degree of digestion, it was most likely left over from the last meal she ate about seven days ago. All her internal organs had lesions on them, and they seem to be quite recent. The liver lesions are particularly serious. I detected sedatives, anesthetics, and immunosuppressants in her liver. There were traces of hyaluronic acid and Botox in there too. These are drugs used in surgeries. I’ve made a specific list of drugs that were found in the victim’s body.”
“Is it possible to determine the dosage of the drugs used?” I asked.
Bingxin considered it for a while and answered, “I think I can calculate the rough estimates of those.”
“Great!” I exclaimed. “These would be key evidence from which we can find the criminal, not to mention that they can be used to convict them in court too. Thanks, Bingxin!”
Bingxin blushed and replied, “Don’t mention it, Song Yang-gege! It’s nothing compared to what you’ve done!”