Headstones pt 3

Njogu body lay on a cold cement floor besides many other more gruesome looking bodies. That was all that was in store for him no dignity but that wasn't so surprising considering he never had much use for it even while he trampled doggedly in life. Dignity was a word that he had no use for personally or for others. There lay bodies beside him on top of him stacked haphazardly, with deep cuts congealing with blood, some had various body parts missing though some of those limbs were strewn all over. It seemed a bad road accident had taken place and the casualties kept steadily rising expaining the bodies with huge cuts and missing body parts.
The city motuary was where all bodies of any questionable death were brought such as road accidents,murder or any where the cause of death was not known. Njogu had ended up here from Mukuru Kayaba where some criminals had been involved in a shooting with police officers of the dreaded isukuti squad. His body was riddled with suprisingly not bullet holes but deep cuts on his head, chest and upper torso. his face also bore a distinctive slash across the left side of his face from his left eye all the way to his jaw.
As his wounds were examined by the coroner for the cause of death and any evidence that might have been deduced for the cause of death was fairly obvious to a casual observer, he had died from a massive blood loss caused by the deep cuts to his head. The coroner wanted to answer the trickier questions of what kind of weapon was used, gather any evidence that was there and determine the time of death. His name was Notu and he used the recording function on his mobile to take notes as he worked. This was a government facility and even though they had recently received some new refrigerators and the old ones repaired by the parnership with the dutch embassy there was still a backlog of work bodies that needed to be autopsied and few skilled pathologists working here. He was over worked,under paid and his equipment was either non existent or not working.
Notu has a system whereby he worked as fast as he could on a body and moved on to the next one. It was a flash gordon kind of thing in and out like a pick pocket. He didn't bother autopsying bodies where the cause of death was fairly obvious such as the accident victims who were right now littering his floor. As soon as he examined the principal bodies he wrote a report on the whole crash and released the bodies for burial. This was technically unethical but his boss understood the magnitutde and tended to turn a blind eye on it. And anyway if anyone disputed his findings they could always hire their own pathologist to perform an autopsy. There were quite a few pathologists but majority worked in private hospitals where due to their limited numbers they commanded high fees. Notu was stuck working in the city mortuary not because he had no ambition or skill but rather due to unfortunate incident that had happened earlier in his career. He had been working for a private hospital as he did his residency when he stumbled onto a lucractive side offer. A nurse had approached him with the idea. She had a clinic in Kayole and she needed a doctor who wouldn't ask questions to work for her. Notu had been uninterested at first after all how much money could she possibly be making in Kayole of all places and he was a pathologist at least he would be in 2 years once he was done with his resisdency and one of the main reasons he had chosen to specialise in pathology was the fact he couldn't stand patients whining, with all sorts of smells and diseases.
When he had been doing his internship it had almost been his undoing when he had to work with patients. Luckily for him he was smart and he got away with it even though he still had to finish his year. Declining the offer Notu thought no more about it until one evening as he was leaving the hospital after shiftwhen the nurse cornerned him and invited him out for a drink. Not one to turn down a free beer he went along and they ended up in Kayole. Thinking that they were simply going to a bar that was cheaper Notu didn't question her even when they finally entered a nondescript building he simply imagined they were finally at the bar.
imagine his suprise when they entered what seemed to be a bar and instead of sitting down and ordering like the rest of the people there Njeri for that was the nurses' name led him towards the toilets and into a cubicle with a sign saying it was broken and into it where to his amazement there was a door along the far wall.
"wait a minute what excatly is all this you invited me out for a drink and now were in Kayole in a strange looking bar in their stinky,messed up toilets and now you want me to enter into a strange room?
" It will all be explained in a minute just follow me there is no time to waste as Njeri pushed him through the opening and shut the door behind them. they went down a flight of stairs which turned steeply to the left taking them into what appeared to be a basement.
turning the corner they came upon a man lying upon a table with what appeared to be a gunshot wound to his upper chest. As Notu attention was transfixed on the man lying there four men welding what appeared to be Ak 47s and a pistol moved into the light from the shadows. we need you to operate on him now a big muscled man said quietly. Everything you need is here pointing with the pistol to a tray full of instruments. If you don't save his life......... well get to work.
Notu for the first time noticed all the hospital equipment around him from the surgical knives still in their packs to the cotton pads. Someone with medical knowledge had carefully stocked this place and money had not been an issue. Going to a sink by the far wall he turned to Njeri and asked her to scrub in for he would require her help. He would figure a way out later for as far as he could tell this man had lost alot of blood and he would have to work fast and pray hard that the bullet had not lodged in a dangerous position or worse the patient went into shock due to the massive blood loss and died.
He cleaned the area around the wound as he worried about the surgery he was about to perform. As a first year resident barely finished with his first year he had seen a few surgeries first hand even assisted in one or two but his assistance had been limited to doing the stitches afterwards. The closest he had come to actually holding the knife was a c section he did when on rotation to the labor ward. A woman had developed complications suddenly and the obsetrician had required his help in the surgery and even then he still had not done much except cut through the two layers to get to the uterus. after that the obstrecian had taken over but for those few moments it had been the most terrifying and exurirating two minutes of his life.
Now as he chose a scapel he wondered what this men would say or do if he told them that this was his first surgery and he wasn't sure what to do. He almost blurted it all out but when he looked at the man who had spoken those chilling words to him yet so calmly he knew his only option was to do it and hope for the best.
He pictured the textbook on surgery trying to place what he was seeing on the table infront of him and what he was supposed to be seeing. The bullet had done alot of damage but it did not exit on the other side making it worse. He would have to dig it out but thankfully it had missed all the major organs.
It was the hardest thing he had ever done in his life and it diddn't help that he was doing it all by purely instint. Finally he got the bullet out but there was a complication he must have nicked something on his way out for the patient started bleeding out. trying to stem the bleeding it was a losing battle and he realised he needed to do something fast or he would die and with him all his hopes of getting out of here alive.
locating the cause of the bleeding, he fixed it and set to repairing the damage caused. "i need to give him a blood transfusion. Do you have any blood? Opening a tiny fidge that Notu had not even noticed Njeri took out some blood and set it up.
Needless to say the man lived and there began a partnership which profited them both. Notu after he got over his shock realised his value and drove a hard bargain. they hired him on a permanent basis making him understand that the only way he would leave would be in a wooden 6 by 6 box.
Notu got extremely wealthy working for them and he made a proposal to Kimende for he had been the man lying on that table on the fateful night. Gangstars could not go to hospital if they were injured for the law required the hospital to report any gunshot,knife or assault to the police before treating them. hence the simplicity of his plan why don't they offer medical services to thieves and gangs.
kimende didn't say anything about it but he liked the idea and set up meetings with various leaders of all the major syndicates in and out of the city to see what their reaction would be.
Many of them liked it but they couldn't see how it would be practical for this would basically be a hospital run and managed by the competion. what was to keep them from killing someone while they were being operated on. So kimende shelved the plan for the moment and had turned to other things.
Notu finished his residency a very wealthy man and was instructed to work for the government so he could cover up for them and release any bodies. That was how he ended up in the city morgue while his colleagues from medical school landed all this plumb jobs.
Which explained why he gave up his saturday to perform the autopsy on a lowly thug. This was strange as through the years he had risen to become the head pathologist which exempt him from doing any run of the mill autopysies.
But late last night he had received a call that he needed to take care of something for his partners. He didn't intend to do a full autopsy he meant to simply call the cause of death as blunt trauma to the head and close the file.
As he continued to take notes he got a call from one of his office assistant/resident. There was a man who was enquiring about Njogu body and upon hearing that an autopsy was going on had insisted on being present. The assistant had tried to stop him but he was on his way there. Even before his assistant finished giving him all the details, a man barged into the operating room.
Handing him a letter any protest Notu was about to make died on his lips. Come in and stay out of my way was all he said. With any luck the stranger would be nauseated and leave. The smell was not for the faint hearted. Coroners usually apply an ointment to their noses to somehow reduce the stench but it was still overpowering especially to someone not used to it. The broken air conditioning didn't help and with the bodies piled up outside the door the smell was something akin to raw meat with the sweet sickly aroma of blood intermingled and overripe fruit.
The man was tall, dark with a muscular build sort of like a bull and his demeneor brokered no argument for he seemed like he would snap your neck without raising as much as a sweat. The smell didn't seem to affect him in the least and he took a seat away from Notu's work space but close enough to see everything he was doing. Taking out a notebook he wrote down details and the answers Notu gave to the questions he asked.
Notu was starting to panic but he refused to let any of this show. He was irritated for now he would have to do a full autopsy and he had a golf game in two hours that he could not possibly make. But he wasn't worried about what he would find for Kimende had assured him that nothing out of the ordinary was there.
He mentioned the deep gash on Njogu's face which seemed to be a few days old, the trauma on his head, the deep cuts, any distinguishing marks on his body then he was ready to begin.
He examined the deep cuts on his head first. As he used a cotton ball in there he found some flecks of something that he could not identify. Taking a sample he put it into a sealed evidence bag and moved on to the gash on Njogu's face. In it were some flecks of something that looked metallic but he wouldn't know until he examined it under a microscope.
step by step he worked and five hours later he was finished with the autopsy. The man had stayed with him throughout not moving once simply writing in his notebook from time to time.
"Examine the flecks you found was the first thing he said to Notu after he finished up closing the body. After putting them under the microscope more detail was revealed. It wasn't just some flecks but they were some kind of industrial paint flecks of a substance used to coat pen knives.
"All pen knives? how common is it? "actually it is no longer used because it was getting to be to expensive and a cheaper method was discovered. So that narrows your search considerably. "And the other one? is the same thing? he asked. " No this ones are not paint flecks at all but wood shavings. My guess he was killed using something like a hockey stick due to the length of the blows, it rules out something with a shorter handle. "So he was basically clubbed to death.