here at about three thirty. You can take me to the post-mortem.’
‘I’ll be here,’ Donnelly assured him.
Sean tugged his jacket on and headed for the door, Sally in pursuit. ‘And remember,’ he told Donnelly, ‘if anyone asks, this is a straightforward domestic murder. No need to get anyone excited.’
‘Having doubts?’ Donnelly managed to ask before Sean was gone.
‘No,’ Sean answered, not entirely truthfully. For a second he was back in the flat, back at the scene of the slaughter, watching the killer moving around Graydon’s prostrate form, but he saw no panic or fury in his actions, no jealousy or rage, only a coldness – a sense of satisfaction.
Donnelly’s voice snapped him back. ‘You all right, guv’nor?’
‘Sorry, yes I’m fine. Just find me the boyfriend – whoever he is. Find him and you’ve found our prime suspect.’
‘I’ll do my best.’
‘I know you will,’ Sean told him as he watched him stride back into the main office.
3
Late Thursday afternoon
Sean and Donnelly walked along the corridors of Guy’s Hospital, heading for the mortuary. They were accompanied by Detective Constable Sam Muir who would be acting as exhibits officer – taking responsibility for any objects the pathologist found on or in the body during the post-mortem. Sean wondered if he would bump into his wife, Kate, one of the all too few doctors attending to the never-ending flow of patients through the Accident and Emergency department – the sick and injured from the surrounding areas of Southwark, Bermondsey and beyond. Some of London’s poorest and most forgotten, living in council flats where violence and crime were seldom far away, yet all of their degradation and suffering going unnoticed and unseen by the swarms of tourists wandering around Tower Bridge and Tooley Street. If only they knew how close they were to some of London’s most dangerous territory.
His mind returned to the victim’s parents. He and Sally had called at the small terraced house in Putney. A desirable neighbourhood on the whole, but boisterous on weekend evenings. Sally had done most of the talking.
Daniel had been their only child. The mother was devastated and didn’t care who saw her fall to the floor screaming. Her despair was a physical pain. When she could speak, all she could say was the name of her son.
The father was stunned. He didn’t know whether to help his wife or collapse himself. He ended up doing neither. Sean took him into the living room. Sally stayed with the mother.
They knew their son was gay. It had bothered the father at first, but he grew to accept it. What else could he do other than push the boy away? And he would never do that. He said his son worked as a nightclub manager. He wasn’t sure where, but Daniel had been doing well for himself and had no money problems, unlike other young people.
He hadn’t met any of his son’s friends. Daniel hadn’t kept in touch with his old school friends. He came home quite often, almost every Sunday for lunch. If he had a boyfriend then neither he nor his wife knew about it. Their son had said he wasn’t interested in anything like that. They hadn’t pressed him.
The father had asked what they were to do now. His wife would be finished. She lived for the boy, not him. He knew it and didn’t mind − but with the boy gone?
He wanted to know who would do this to his boy – who would do this to them? Why? Sean had no answers.
As the three detectives entered the mortuary they could see Dr Simon Canning preparing for the post-mortem. A body lay covered with a green sheet on what Sean knew would be a cold, metal operating table. Water continually ran under the body to an exit drain as the pathologist did his work, so that the whole thing resembled a large, shallow, stainless-steel bathtub.
Some detectives could detach themselves from the ugly reality of post-mortems, bury themselves in the science and art of the procedure. Unfortunately, Sean was not one of those detectives. For days to come images of his own post-mortem would blend with the memories of his shattered childhood. Meanwhile Dr Simon Canning was busy arranging his tools – bright, shiny, metal instruments for torturing the dead.
‘Afternoon, detectives.’
‘Doctor. Good to see you again,’ Sean replied.
‘I doubt that,’ said the pathologist. Canning was pleasant enough, but businesslike and succinct. ‘I hope you don’t mind, Inspector. I’ve started without you. I was just having a bit of a clean up before continuing. Right then, shall we get on with it?’
The doctor pulled back the sheet covering the body with one quick movement of his arm. Sean almost expected him to say, ‘Voila!’ like a waiter lifting the lid off a silver platter.
The hair on the back and side of the head was matted with blood − it looked sticky. Sean could clearly see the gashes in the side of the head and the small stab marks all over the naked body.
‘Seventy-seven,’ Canning told him.
Sean realized he was being spoken to. He glanced up at the doctor. ‘Sorry?’
‘Separate stab wounds. Seventy-seven in total. None in the back of the body. All in the front. Made by some form of stiletto knife, or an ice pick, but it’s the first blow to the head that killed him. Eventually.’
Dr Canning pointed to the head wound. Sean forced himself to lean closer to the body. ‘One can see the ear is missing. Not cut off, but more a case of the victim being hit so hard that whatever he was hit with crushed the skull and still had enough energy to tear the ear away as the swing of the object carried through.’
‘Nice,’ was all Sean said.
‘And the victim was on his knees when the first blow was struck,’ the doctor continued. ‘We can see the cut to the scalp is angled downwards, not upwards. The killer swung low, not high.’
‘Or he was hit from behind?’ Sean offered.
‘No,’ Canning told him. ‘He fell backwards, not forwards. Look at the stains from the flow of blood. They run to the back of the head, not towards the face.’
He looked at the detectives, making sure they were concentrating on what he was saying and not what they were seeing. He had their attention.
‘But that’s all straightforward. The interesting thing is the angle of the stab wounds. Bearing in mind of course that our friend here has wounds from his ankles to his throat, I can be almost positive the victim was already prostrate on the floor when he was stabbed. That in itself isn’t unusual.’ The doctor paused to catch his breath before continuing his lecture. ‘The interesting bit is this − most of the stab wounds are at the wrong angle of entry. You see?’
‘I’m not quite with you, Doctor.’
‘It’s like this.’ Canning looked around for a prop. He found a pair of scissors. ‘Firstly, I know the killer is probably right-handed. The angle of the stab wounds tells me that, as does the fact the victim was hit on the left side of his head. Now, imagine I’m the killer. The victim can play himself. In order
