Conversation · The Hanged Man

This is a trick. You've done it before. Pink is where the blood settled in the first hours postmortem. You can use it to see if the corpse has been tampered with -- does his position at the time of death match the discolouration?

Observe.

Only the lower extremities are pink with a dash of blue: his fatted hands, thighs and his neck, just above the noose. The rest of the corpse appears dark green in the cold spring air.

"His face and hands are pink. Thighs too."

"I see it." He adjusts his glasses. "His neck too, the lividity goes right up his chin. We have good, well-pronounced discolouration here..."

Relax your eyes.

The monster comes back into focus: an explosion of colour, coursing with dark marbled veins. His stomach appears pregnant with something -- black liquid streams down his thigh and onto his boot.

"So -- what do you think?"

I think he's dead -- and about to explode.

"He's beaten up -- see the bruises?"

"I do. Most of them are postmortem. Maybe even all of them. The delinquents have made our jobs harder with their little sport."

"Stop talking in riddles, coin slot."

"He means you fucked him up good, Cuno," the girl yells. "Fucked him up brutal-like."

"I think he's dead."

"I agree."

There are crows feet in his eyes, he's laughing silently.

His personality is no longer a part of the world.

"Totally dead."

No, better not to say that. Too heavy.

Sure. The corpse looks by, oblivious. Black decay liquid drops from his knee to his boot.

"Deadady-dead-dead-dead."

"Daba-doop-doop-dead," he says without a hint of melody. Not one muscle in his face moves.

"The world no longer stores his personality in its composition. There was a time for that -- and it ended seven days ago."

He nods in agreement with this advanced piece of conceptualization. Having mulled it over the lieutenant says: "That sounds about right, yes."

"This buster's not coming back."

"No sirree." He shakes his head.

"Totally."

"Absolutely."

"What is dead anyway?"

"He is." He points to the corpse.

"I think he was upright after death. His hands, feet and neck are discoloured."

"Agreed." He points to the belt. "Especially on the neck. The belt acted like a tourniquet keeping the blood in his head. The hypostasis supports a hanging."

You would still like the hypostasis marks in the neck to be a bit more pronounced.

"For some reason my brain would like the pink to be more pronounced, especially in the neck."

"Maybe it looks faint to you?" He leans closer, covering his nose: "It could be more pronounced, actually. Dûment noté."

"Maybe he was strangled by someone?"

"Yes, there's always a chance we're wrong. We should check for ligament marks on his neck to see if they're in tune with the belt. We'll have to get him down first..."

"Could it still be he was moved after death?"

"There's always a chance. We should check for ligament marks on his neck to see if they're in tune with the belt. We'll have to get him down first..."

"Yup. Seems like a lynching to me."

"Everything here seems to corroborate that assumption. But we should still get him down before assigning a probable cause of death."

"We know he wasn't hung, so I'd say he was treated. These markings were produced."

"To purposefully mislead us." He nods. "They must've hung him fast after that bullet hit. This is well done. It would have fooled me."

(Cover your nose.) "Something is coming out of him."

A pool of blood and faeces has eaten into the frozen mud below the man's feet. Purge liquid is dripping into it, drop by drop.

"The victim appears to have contained no more than half a kilogram of digestion at the time of death."

"The fuck he sayin'?"

"F****ts talkin' 'bout shit."

"We got lucky."

"Did we? I don't feel lucky."

"Maybe he went to the toilet some time before death?"

"Maybe." He doesn't really want to dwell on it too long.

"God damn right I'm a f****t!" (Turn around and yell.)

Malicious laughter erupts in the yard. Sounds like seagulls.

"Pig said he's a f****t."

The lieutenant's face is made of stone.

"Should we worry? His stomach looks like it's gonna explode."

"There's a..." his eye twitches for a moment, "a strong build-up of gases, yes. Rigor mortis becoming livor mortis. He'll be fully limp by tomorrow. I don't think he'll explode... I hope not."

For seven days the cadaver is quite well preserved. Surprisingly so -- there's no deflation, no apparent fly larvae in the abdomen.

Keep it to yourself.