Traces: The Memoir of a Forensic Scientist and Criminal Investigator

by Patricia Wiltshire

But what about the imprint the landscape has left on you?

This is frustrating because you can never reach the summit. Nobody can. The climb is grindingly hard, and it continues forever.

Most of us do not like to acknowledge, and may never have even given it a thought, that the components making up our bodies and minds, the fundamental things that we think of as who we are, once belonged to something else and that, after we are gone, they will be put to another use.

Nature leaves her clues all over us, outside and within. We all leave our marks on the environment, but the environment leaves its marks on us too, and, although she sometimes needs to be coaxed, nature will invariably give up her secrets to those of us who know where to look.

There was a girl who went missing. In the world we live in, there are too many stories that begin like this,

There is too much superstition around. But I do not do magic. This is science.

I did not mean to become what I have become and this, of course, is how all the best stories start.

There was too much routine and too little opportunity to learn things that fascinate: I needed new challenges. I was like a pony pushing at the field boundary, wanting to know and sample what was on the other side. I wanted to learn what was out there.

It was the making of me and I loved it.

A body is just a body. It is flesh, blood, and bone.

And isn’t that part of science? To be curious and try?

I had thought I had known the natural world reasonably well, but the truth was I had barely scratched the surface. I had been overlooking so much, and the world, that was already so strange and full of wonders, seemed a little stranger and more wonderful still.

But I do remember; these moments are imprinted upon me.

Never underestimate a toddler – he or she might remember things you would prefer forgotten.

I still remember the screaming that seemed to be coming from somewhere else but was, in fact, coming out of my own mouth, going on and on and on.

They say the call of home is a strong one, and Wales often calls its sons and daughters back.

Nature, we often think, is over there, somewhere beyond the place where we are standing.

All living things live where they perform well, and different plants might all favour the same kind of habitat, though responding to different aspects of it.

The past is past and gone.

Focusing so intently on such tiny things is its own form of exquisite torture.

But when the pieces fit, and an idea of what might have happened suggests itself, the sense of discovery, of a puzzle having been solved, can be immense.

Your body is your own for only a short time; the elements from which it is made are only borrowed from the outside world, and you must give them back eventually. The entity that you recognise as you is a collective of ecosystems that many different types of microorganism call home. And although you might die – when your brain and circulatory systems have irrecoverably stopped working – the communities of bacteria and fungi, and even mites in your pores and worms in your gut (if you have any), will live on for some time.

I will never forget it, and I have the scars to prove it.

Plants build up and fungi break down.

Just look at a sunbeam streaming through the window and you will notice that it is full of little specks, floating and swirling with any little disturbance.

Every case is unique and must be treated as such.

Soil is remarkable. It is composed of part mineral and part organic material, and it is teeming alive with bacteria, fungi, and animals.

I stared in numb disbelief. I felt an electric shock and then the draining away of my insides. Not everything that left me ever came back. There is still an overwhelming void that nothing will fill or satisfy.

No disaster or misfortune would ever have the same impact, or ever hurt me as much.

Death is coming for all of us, for you and me, and everybody out there. Better, first, get a life.

Reading books is never enough.

It has all just happened to me; I have been reactive rather than proactive.

It has been an incredibly full life from beginning to now, and it is still too full. I have little time to indulge myself in what I want to do – playing the piano more, sewing, craftwork, painting, cooking, and gardening – all rather solitary pastimes but all with a definite outcome. They are antidotes to the flurry of meetings that make up so much of my life.

If there are things to do, do them.

If the ash is spread about in a woodland, that person will be truly reincarnated. Elements in the ash will be taken up by bacteria, fungi, invertebrates, and plant roots. One individual can spread throughout a woodland and become many. How wonderful to be reincarnated as a bluebell, an oak tree, and a lovely beetle all at the same time. It will certainly happen whether you like the idea or not.

Our ashes will be spread in the same place so we might even both end up in the same tree or bluebell. How marvellous! When the tree or bluebell die and their corpses decompose, our molecules may be released again and taken up by yet other living things. The elements that make up our bodies will exist as long as the Earth revolves around the Sun.

My words will live on, and rather than in a testament to sentimentality, which graveyards certainly are, evidence of my existence will probably be found in some dusty old library somewhere.