want to taste it to find out. However, down in the bowl there’s a bag floating in the water and it’s stuffed with white powder too. I’d say the bag contains four ounces or so.’
‘A hundred grams? That’s several thousand pounds street value. Tends to suggest whoever killed this guy didn’t care for drugs.’
‘If it’s coke. Anyway, the stuff has gone in the bowl. Would you want to use it?’
‘Not really. Besides, red wine and caffeine are my drugs of choice.’ Savage moved back from the corpse to where Denton stood next to a row of urinals, her nose detecting a sweet smell of citrus lemon mingled with piss. ‘Who found him?’
‘The attendant. Came to unlock the toilets at eight-thirty this morning and found they were already open. He noticed water overflowing from inside one of the cubicles and went to investigate. He swears the body wasn’t in the loos last night when he closed up after the place had been cleaned. He’s sure the door was locked properly too.’
‘Well the victim didn’t squeeze in through a window, did he?’ Savage glanced up at the narrow slits above the urinals and at the overhead roof lanterns. ‘But then again he didn’t walk in here either. You saw the hand?’
‘I saw one hand.’
‘Exactly. I wonder what the pathologist will make of that.’
Minutes later and the white-suited figure of Dr Andrew Nesbit shuffled in, displaying his characteristic stoop and offering a little homily by way of a greeting as he glanced over the top of his glasses.
‘Wednesdays are all very well, Charlotte, but they are only two better than Mondays. Whether you like them depends if you are a glass half full person or not.’ Nesbit edged round a large puddle of water and peered into the cubicle at the body. ‘What have we here? A suicide?’
‘That’s what the toilet attendant thought when he phoned triple nine. But us amateurs guess not.’
‘Let’s see then, shall we?’ Nesbit put his black bag down in a dry patch and shuffled closer. He spotted the white powder. ‘Drugs OD?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Ah, no!’ Nesbit had seen the arm. ‘Silly me. Not a suicide either. I don’t think anyone would choose to kill themselves by cutting their hand off and if they did, my hunch is they would find it impossible to walk very far once they’d done so.’
‘Doc?’
‘He didn’t die here.’ Nesbit moved the left arm. ‘He’s in rigor, but he must have been brought here before the stiffness set in. And there is no blood, or very little. With both the ulnar and radial arteries in the arm severed, blood would be gushing everywhere. I can see some splatter marks on the man’s right leg but not much on the floor. The hand was removed somewhere else.’
‘How long before rigor sets in?’
‘A few hours, but look at the lividity in the lower legs and the left arm. Some blood has oozed from the right too. I’d say the body was moved shortly after death. One to two hours at the most. To sum up, before rigor mortis but prior to livor mortis.’
‘And the severing of the hand caused death?’ Savage asked.
‘Too early to say that, Charlotte, but it is possible.’ Nesbit stared at the body for a moment and then reached forward and pulled the man’s right sleeve up. ‘There’s something else here. Strange.’
Savage moved closer and Nesbit pointed at the forearm. There was a rectangle of skin marked with black and white stripes in a crude pattern resembling a zebra crossing.
‘Appears to be paint,’ Nesbit said touching the arm with a gloved finger. ‘Dry too. Never seen anything quite like it.’
‘Not a tattoo?’
‘No, this is on the surface of the skin.’
‘Can you get that thing out of his nose? The business card?’
‘Let’s see …’ Nesbit reached for the black tube and teased it from the nostril and then flattened the card and showed it to Savage.
‘Fastwerk Bookkeeping,’ Savage said. ‘Notte Street. That’s close to here, back down Hoe Road.’
Nesbit turned to Savage. ‘Can you pass me my thermometer and some wipes from my case please. An evidence bag too. I am going to take a rectal temperature reading, but I’ll need to clean up a bit first.’
Savage opened the bag and found the thermometer unit with its remote probe and a packet of wipes. She handed them to Nesbit. Denton grimaced as the pathologist began to wipe the excrement from between the man’s buttocks.
‘And I used to think nappies were bad,’ Savage said.
‘How’s Pete, Charlotte?’ Nesbit said in an upbeat tone, the question sounding the sort which might be posed at a dinner party. ‘I completely forgot to ask you on Monday. Rude of me, I know. I read in the paper he’d returned. Hero’s welcome, razzmatazz and all.’
The switch from professional to personal matters caught Savage off guard, but she knew Nesbit was prone to small talk in an effort to distract from the task in hand.
‘Fine. Getting cabin fever from being ashore, but the kids love him being back. I am trying to persuade him to swallow the hook.’
‘Hey?’
‘Meaning to give up his command. A desk job would be better for the children and my stress levels.’
‘Come on, Charlotte,’ Nesbit stopped wiping and turned to give her a quizzical look. ‘Pete giving up the sea would be like you giving up all this.’
Nesbit returned his attention to the body and shoved the white probe of the thermometer between the man’s buttocks.
Savage burst out laughing.
Budgeon played the pressure-washer jet across the concrete floor of the barn. Full power, red water sluicing away in rivulets, specks of white bone gliding along them until they disappeared down the drain. As he worked, a distant ache inched its way across his forehead, all the time diminishing until the feeling became not much more than a mild irritation.
It felt good. Fucking good.
At last, things were in motion and he’d made a start. Wheels were turning, the freight train on the move. Nothing was going to stop him now. Nothing.
The last of the fat bastard’s blood swirled around the drain cover, a gurgling echoing Frankie’s last sounds.
Please, Ricky, please!
He’d screamed plenty before the final words, blood spurting everywhere as he thrashed around like a fat, sloppy fish flapping on the riverbank. He’d talked too. Plenty. Facts and figures. Everything Budgeon needed to know about Big K’s business, from turnover to throughput. Budgeon had been impressed. Big K had quite an operation running and Budgeon’s South American friends would be keen to get some of the action.
Payday.
