Bradfield rolled up the left sleeve of the frilled-cuffed shirt and saw the faint injection mark.
‘Fuck it, this is Eddie Phillips,’ he said, shaking his head.
‘I’m glad I called you then,’ Lawrence remarked with a sigh of relief.
Bradfield looked puzzled as he stood up and looked at Lawrence. ‘Baffles me where he got this expensive gear from when he hasn’t got a pot to piss in. And what’s he doing over here in Central London?’
‘Maybe he was doing a bit of dealing,’ Lawrence suggested.
‘Was there anything in his pockets?’
‘Loose change and a soggy bus ticket from Hackney, dated yesterday,’ Lawrence said, holding up a clear plastic property bag with wet items inside.
‘Have you any signs as to where he might have gone into the water?’
DS Lawrence pointed to two barges a few yards away. ‘He was wedged in there and a bit further up by the bench under the bridge I found some blood drops, and these.’
He held up another property bag and shone his torch on it. The bag contained the paraphernalia used to inject heroin; a syringe, a darkened burnt spoon, lighter and a trouser belt. Lawrence took Bradfield over to the bench where he’d found the items and suggested a possible-case scenario was that Eddie sat on the bench, shot up, and once the drug kicked in fell, hitting his head on the ground. He shone his torch on the concrete pavement before continuing.
‘As you can see there are some blood drops in one area, then a trail towards the canal. Those coupled with the blood on his shirt collar and back suggest he might have fallen, banged his head, stood up then staggered forward and fallen into the water between the barges.’
Bradfield said nothing as he followed the blood trail, shining his torch onto the murky water between the barges. He then returned and looked at the body’s arms.
‘I hear you, but I can’t see a clear fresh injection site and there’s no empty heroin bag, which could mean he got a whack round the back of the head and was dragged over to the canal and thrown in.’
‘Yeah, that’s possible. But the empty bag could have been blown into the canal and if he was dragged on his back I’d expect to see a smear of blood on the pavement. Any fresh needle marks would be hard to distinguish on a dead body, especially in light like this,’ DS Lawrence explained.
‘Shit, I need this like a hole in the head.’
‘Sorry to spoil your evening, guv, but it could turn out to be an accidental OD that caused the chain of events leading to his death.’
‘I bloody well hope so, Paul, but I need to bottom this out quickly so get his body taken to Hackney Mortuary and call out Prof Martin. I want a full post-mortem done tonight and toxicology done asap.’
‘I don’t think he’ll be pleased. I’ll see what I can do about the tox results, but usually it’s at least two weeks.’
‘I couldn’t give a toss about Martin. If he gets bolshie find another pathologist.’
Bradfield contacted DS Gibbs from a payphone near the scene. He told him to visit Nancy Phillips with WPC Kath Morgan to inform her that Eddie’s body had been found in the Regent’s Canal. He also instructed him to bring her down to the mortuary to do a formal ID before the postmortem began.
‘Bloody hell, guv, you know what time it is an’ I got a gig with me band over at Greenwich.’
‘Can’t you get someone else to do it?’
‘I’m the singer and—’
‘Just effing get on with it, Spence.’
‘OK, never mind — it’s just a poxy gig in a pub anyway.’
It was nearly eleven o’clock when a rather irate Professor Martin began the post-mortem on Eddie Phillips’ body. He wasn’t at all pleased about being called out so late at night, but made out he was doing everyone a favour. However, Bradfield suspected he hadn’t attended out of interest in the case, but rather for the extra money involved in an out-of-hours PM. Bradfield and Lawrence both noticed Martin smelt of whisky and was slurring his words. They knew Martin had a reputation for liking a drink and Bradfield would have been within his rights to get a replacement, but he didn’t want a stand-up argument and calling out another pathologist would delay everything.
Martin was given some strong black coffee as the body was washed and prepared for the autopsy. It was a long PM, as Martin took short breaks during which he consumed more coffee and a packet of ginger nut biscuits. It was over half an hour before Martin finally cut the body open to examine the internal organs. A short while later he looked up at Bradfield and Lawrence.
‘Right, my friends, there’s a considerable amount of water in the lungs and stomach of our chappie, which is obviously consistent with drowning. I would estimate, from body discolouring and slight bloating, that he’d been in the water since early morning.’ He burped loudly and excused himself with a loud, ‘Beggin’ your pardon, gentlemen.’
Bradfield was becoming irritated: he’d had a long, tiring day. ‘How could it take so long for anyone to notice the body?’ he asked DS Lawrence.
‘Well, because it was trapped and partially hidden between the two moored barges,’ Lawrence said, yawning.
Growing ever more impatient Bradfield lit another cigarette and looked at Professor Martin.
‘How do you think he got the injury to the back of his head?’
‘Well, in my opinion it occurred shortly before death and he may well have been unconscious when he hit the water. However, as we sometimes have to say in the trade... I can’t give you a definitive answer as to the exact mechanism of injury, but I can say he drowned.’
‘You’ve already told me that, Professor, but I need to know if the injury was deliberate and led to him drowning. Have I got a murder or an accident?’ Bradfield said, beginning to seethe.
‘Well, he could have received a deliberate blow from a blunt object, but pathologically I have no bloody way of being sure.’
Bradfield clenched and unclenched his fists as Martin, slurring his words, sprayed him with ginger biscuit crumbs as he spoke.
DS Lawrence gestured with his hand for Bradfield to calm down.
‘Len, my theory from the blood trail is that Eddie shot up, fell backwards, cracked his head open, got up and staggered—’
Bradfield shook his head and interrupted. ‘But it doesn’t rule out somebody else picking him up and throwing him into the canal whilst he was unconscious or in a drug-induced state, does it?’
Martin gave a long sigh. ‘Looks like he tired of injecting in his arm, even though the vein’s not collapsed. I found an injection site in the boy’s left groin and have taken blood and urine samples for drug and alcohol testing.’ He wafted his hand towards his samples tray.
Bradfield remembered using Eddie’s recent injections in his arm against him during interview. He watched as Martin prodded the dead boy’s left groin with his finger.
‘It’s fresh and the only one in this area, so if injecting drugs caused him to fall over he had time to pull his pants up.’
Lawrence glanced at Bradfield as he squeezed his cigarette out and put the fag end into his pocket.
‘Then that fits with how I saw it happening at the scene. I know it’s all speculation, but it seems logical to me.’
Martin took off his apron and chucked it aside.
‘If you don’t mind I would like to go home to bed,’ he said, and walked out.
Lawrence put his arm around Bradfield’s shoulder.
‘You look knackered, Len. Why don’t you take off and get some shut-eye?’
‘I’ll grab some kip back at the station. I’m gonna have to get all this down in a report for Metcalf, who’s already breathing down my neck.’
‘You can handle him, Len.’