Their footsteps grated on the concrete floor, which was criss‐crossed with aluminium gutters so that the room could be sluiced. Each dissection table was in polished steel. Mobile surgical lights provided an almost unbearable blaze of electricity over each occupied table, driving away shadows where shadows should be.
Dr Kazimierz leant on one of the tables, her weight on one leg, the other shoe raised behind her so that she could tap the concrete with the toe.
‘OK. I said I’d walk you through what we’ve got. That was before the latest on Styleman’s Middle. So I’ve got even less time than I thought. I’ll start the internal autopsies with the first victim tonight – bit later than I thought – seven thirty. Be prompt.’
‘We appreciate it,’ said Shaw.
‘Right. Let’s start with the latest, shall we? Not much to say.’ She swished a plastic sheet back from the first table. The man from Styleman’s Middle had been unfolded,
‘So no prizes,’ she said, sliding on forensic gloves. ‘A blow to the head here…’ She placed both hands on the skull, turned it to one side, revealing the bruised wound. Shaw’s stomach shifted at the plastic sound of a click from the neck. Valentine took a step back. ‘This would have resulted in unconsciousness certainly – perhaps for several hours,’ she said. ‘Weapon? Wound’s odd – considerable force, but a cushioned effect. A blunt instrument wrapped in something, perhaps – or a rubber mallet, one of those you use to knock in tent posts? The prints are difficult to lift because of the saturation of the skin – but I’ve got a set. We’ll check them on records. Clothes are expensive. The polo shirt is interesting – it appears to be much older than the trousers, shorts, socks. Tom can do some more work on that. I’d say 1970s. The badge on the collar is Royal Navy.’
‘Just that,’ said Shaw. ‘Not a ship?’
‘No – just the badge.’
Shaw looked at the face, trying to memorize the features. The neatly layered hair, the unblemished skin, the fine bones, the unscarred fingers, the burnless tan. He might have been handsome, he’d certainly had money. Royal Navy – that rang a bell, a ship’s bell, but he couldn’t place it.
‘Other than being dead he’s a healthy specimen,’ added the pathologist. ‘He’s taken a whack around the liver, but nothing too serious. We’ll need to get the lungs out to be
Dr Kazimierz went to move on.
‘Can you get me a set of shots?’ asked Shaw. ‘Black and white, frontal?’
She filed the request in her head, then let the lab assistant who’d been working at one of the computer screens draw the plastic sheet back over the body. Shaw liked the gesture, a nod to the value of life, even when someone had succeeded in brutally destroying it with a single blow.
‘This is much more interesting,’ said the pathologist, her fingers interlaced, then free, then laced again.
The corpse from the child’s raft was as pallid as it had been when Shaw had dragged it ashore on Ingol Beach. The shadow of a tan perhaps, but one that had faded since an English summer. He lay as if asleep, the white sheet drawn up halfway across the chest, both arms extended down and over the plastic. A crusader, laid to rest in stone. Shaw had noted the muscular physique on the beach, but here, under the laboratory’s unforgiving lights, it was even more apparent that this man’s body may well have been his business. The shoulders were wide and muscle tissue largely obscured the angle where the neck met the flesh of the shoulder blades.
Dr Kazimierz stood, contemplating the face, a smile on her lips.
‘You’ve got a passport?’ said Shaw. ‘Prints?’
She touched a small metal cabinet where a red light winked. ‘The paper’s virtually disintegrated so Tom’s
Shaw studied the face of the victim again. The hair was black and thick, dark stubble on the chin and neck, blood vessels broken in the nose and cheeks. The brown eyes were flat and fish‐like, the nails on the fingers and feet grimy despite the scrubbed skin. There was a signet ring on the right hand. A black stone with a carved surface. Shaw bent closer, trying to see it clearly.
‘It’s the figure of a man,’ said the pathologist. ‘With a dragon’s tail.’
‘Chinese?’ asked Valentine. He sniffed, aware that some chemical in the room was attacking his sinuses. The presence of the corpses on the mortuary tables was making it difficult for him to think. He needed something inanimate to focus on. The pathologist slipped the ring off the finger and dropped it in a metal dish. Valentine prodded it with a wooden spatula.
‘You’ll get a picture of it, ‘ said Kazimierz.
‘Cause of death?’ asked Shaw, turning back to the body.
Beside the table stood a spot lamp and a large magnifying glass mounted on a flexible arm. ‘Here.’ She lit the lamp by switch and poised the glass over the wound on the arm. ‘It’s a match for his teeth, by the way, so it is his bite.’
Shaw and Valentine leant in together, the DS retreating just in time to avoid a collision.
Two interlocking sets of teeth marks – the top and bottom sets – had come together to lift the skin. The wound was an inch deep at its heart, revealing the muscle
Shaw was unsettled that he’d missed it at the time. ‘And here,’ said the pathologist, resetting the lamp and glass.
Another little colony of pustules, perhaps six inches from the wound, further up the arm.
Shaw saw again the toxic yellow oil drum and readjusted the dressing on his eye. ‘A burn – chemicals?’
She shrugged and took a phial from her lab coat. A few drops of an almost colourless liquid, perhaps slightly blue, lay within. ‘I got this out of the wound and we did run all the industrial tests… but it turns out to be organic. Analysis of the organs may give us more. I’ve got some samples from the drum for comparison and we’ll run it through the spectrometer. But my guess is it won’t be a match. Do you know what I think this is?’
They shook their heads like schoolchildren.
‘Venom.’
‘A bite, then,’ said Shaw. ‘And he knew, didn’t he? So he tried to suck it out, stop it getting into his bloodstream.’ He imagined the pain, the panic which would make a man drive his own teeth into his flesh. ‘From what?’
‘Certainly nothing native to the British Isles. There are two small fang marks at the centre of the lesion, so I’d say a snake. But which one? That’s more difficult.’
‘Are there any databases for this sort of thing?’
‘Ill try London Zoo. And Traffic, the wildlife charity.’
‘Maybe,’ said Shaw.
‘I should tell Hadden,’ said Valentine, searching for the radio in the raincoat over his shoulder. ‘He’s got people out on the beach.’ Above them they heard snow sloughing off the roof, thudding on to the cars parked up in the lee of the old chapel.
‘But it won’t be alive,’ said the pathologist. ‘Whatever it is. The venom that killed him is tropical. Ten minutes in zero temperatures would be enough to kill whatever animal bit him.’
‘But then if he’s smuggling it in – and there may be more than one – he’d have it in something to keep it alive,’ said Shaw. ‘That’s what we need to look for, George. A canister, something that would retain the heat.’ Shaw’s skin crept.
Valentine retreated to the office beyond the partition. Shaw stepped back from the corpse, trying to get the death in perspective. They heard the clock at St Margaret’s chime the half hour. The pathologist took it as a cue to move on.