administration and it was still fit for its purpose. We weren’t
looking for a high degree of sophistication. This wasn’t the
civilian world. We knew last night’s victim hadn’t slipped on a
banana skin. I didn’t much care which particular injury had
been the fatal one. All I wanted to know was an approximate
time of death, and who he was.
There was a tiled lobby inside the main doors with exits to
the left, the centre, and the right. If you went left, you found the
offices. If you went right, you found cold storage. I went straight
ahead, where knives cut and saws whined and water sluiced.
There were two dished metal tables set in the middle of the
room. They had bright lights above them and noisy drains
below. They were surrounded by greengrocer scales hanging
on chains ready to weigh excised organs, and by rolling steel
carts with empty glass jars ready to receive them, and other
carts with rows of knives and saws and shears and pliers lying
ready for use on green canvas sheets. The whole place was
glazed with white subway tiles and the air was cold and sweet
with the smell of formaldehyde.
The right-hand table was clean and empty. The left-hand table
was surrounded by people. There was a pathologist and an
assistant and a clerk taking notes. Summer was there, standing
back, observing. They were maybe halfway through the
process. The tools were all in use. Some of the glass jars were
filled. The drain was sucking loudly. I could see the corpse’s
legs through the crowd. They had been washed. They looked
blue-white under the lamps above them. All the smeared dirt
and blood was gone.
I stood next to Summer and took a look. The dead guy was on
his back. They had taken the top of his skull off. They had cut
around the centre of his forehead and peeled the skin of his
face down. It was lying there inside out, like a blanket pulled
down on a bed. It reached to his chin. His cheekbones and
his eyeballs were exposed. The pathologist was dissecting his
brain, looking for something. He had used the saw on his skull
and popped the top off like a lid.
‘What’s the story?’ I asked him.
‘We got fingerprints,’ he said.
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‘I faxed them in,’ Summer said. ‘We’ll know today.’
‘Cause of death?’
‘Blunt trauma,’ the doctor said. ‘To the back of the head.
Three heavy blows, with something like a tyre iron, I should
think. All this dramatic stuff is post-mortem. Pure window
dressing.’
‘Any defensive injuries?’
‘Not a thing,’ the doctor said. ‘This was a surprise attack. Out
of the blue. There was no fight, no struggle.’
‘How many assailants?’
‘I’m not a magician. The fatal blows were probably all
delivered by the same individual. I can’t tell if there were others
standing around and watching.’
‘Best guess?’
‘I’m a scientist, not a guesser.’
‘One assailant only,’ Summer said. ‘Just a feeling.’
I nodded.
‘Time of death?’ I asked.
‘Hard to be sure,’ the doctor said. ‘Nine or ten last night,
probably. But don’t take that to the bank.’
I nodded again. Nine or ten would make sense. Well after
dark, several hours before any reasonable expectation of discovery.
Plenty of time for the bad guy to lure him out there, and
then to be somewhere else when the alarms sounded.
‘Was he killed at the scene?’ I asked.
The pathologist nodded.
‘Or very close to it,’ he said. ‘No medical signs to suggest
otherwise.’
‘OK,’ I said. I glanced around. The broken tree limb was lying
on a cart. Next to it was a jar with a penis and two testicles in it.
‘In his mouth?’ I said.
The pathologist nodded again. Said nothing.
‘What kind of a knife?’
‘Probably a K-bar,’ he said.
‘Great,’ I said. K-bars had been manufactured by the tens of
millions for the last fifty years. They were as common as
medals.
‘The knife was used by a right-handed person,’ the doctor
said.
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‘And the tyre iron?’
‘Same.’
‘OK,’ I said.
‘The fluid was yogurt,’ the doctor said.
‘Strawberry or raspberry?’