tiles covered the walls and floor, glinting cutting tables sat beneath polished extractor fans, the room lined with pristine work surfaces. Logan changed into the compulsory white over suit with hood and blue plastic booties before pushing into the sterile area. The guest of honour was already laid out, flat on his back in all his pasty, bloodstained glory while an IB photographer clicked and flashed his way around the body, documenting everything as another technician used sticky tape to remove any trace evidence he could find. A slow-motion dance complete with disco strobe.
Doc Fraser was slumped over one of the other cutting tables, a copy of the P&J spread out on the stainless-steel surface in front of him. He looked up, saw Logan walking in and asked him for an eight-letter word beginning with B.
‘No idea. Who’s SIO?’
The pathologist sighed and started chewing on the end of his pen, ‘God knows; I’m just corroborating today. The Fiscal’s about somewhere, you can ask her if you like. No one tells me anything.’
Logan knew the feeling.
He found the Procurator Fiscal out in the viewing room, pacing back and forth, looking as if she was talking to herself until he saw the little Bluetooth headset attached to her ear. ‘No,’ she said, fiddling with a palmtop computer, ‘we need to make sure the case is airtight. I don’t want to be fielding questions when I’m working on my tan. Now what about those Bridge of Don burglaries? …’ He left her to it.
It wasn’t long before the answer lurched through the morgue doors, hauling at the crotch of her SOC coveralls and coughing as if she was about to bring up a lung. DI Steel, their senior investigating officer. A five-foot-nine, wrinkly, middle-aged disaster area, smelling of stale cigarette smoke and Chanel Number Five. ‘Laz!’ she said, grinning as soon as she clapped eyes on Logan, ‘This no’ a bit fresh for one of your corpses? Thought you liked them a bit more ripe?’
Logan didn’t rise to it. ‘He was found outside A&E last night, bleeding to death. No witnesses. Something horrible’s happened to his backside.’
‘Oh aye?’ The inspector raised an eyebrow. ‘Medical horrible, or “I was hoovering naked and fell on a statue of Queen Victoria” horrible?’
‘Queen Victoria.’
Steel nodded sagely. ‘Yeah – I wondered why they gave me this one. We about ready to get started? I’m bursting for a fag.’
Doc Fraser looked up from his crossword, pulled the pen out of his gob and asked Steel the same question he’d asked Logan. The inspector cocked her head on one side, thought about it, frowned, then said, ‘Buggered?’
‘No, it’s got an S in it. We’re waiting for Dr MacAlister.’
DI Steel nodded again. ‘Ah, it’s going to be one of those post mortems.’ She sighed. ‘Come on then, Laz: let’s hear it.’ So Logan talked her through the statements he’d taken last night while the victim was in surgery, then the paperwork that had come down from the hospital with the body. ‘What about the CCTV?’ she asked when he’d finished.
‘Nothing we can use. The car’s number plates are unreadable – probably covered with something – driver wore a hooded top and baseball cap.’
‘Ah, thug chic. Got a make on the car?’
‘Fusty-looking Volvo estate.’
Steel blew a long, wet raspberry. ‘So much for an easy case. Well, maybe Madame Death can tell us something, presuming she ever bloody gets here!’ Ten minutes later and the inspector was threatening to start singing Why Are We Waiting?
Dr Isobel MacAlister finally lumbered into the morgue at twenty past ten, looking flushed. She ignored DI Steel’s derogatory round of applause and cry of ‘Thar she blows!’ and scrubbed up, needing help to get into her cutting gear, the green plastic apron stretched tight over her enormous stomach.
‘Right,’ she said, clicking on the Dictaphone, ‘we have an unidentified male – mid to late twenties …’
It was weird watching a heavily pregnant pathologist at work. Even weirder: the thing growing in her womb could have been Logan’s, if things had turned out differently. But they hadn’t. So instead of being filled with paternal pride, he was standing here watching Isobel slice up yet another dead body, feeling a strange mix of regret, and relief. And then nausea as she got her assistant to heft out the corpse’s urogenital block for her.
They finished with tea and biscuits in the pathologists’ office, with Isobel sitting behind the desk and complaining about the heat, even though February was putting on its usual performance outside the window, hurling icy rain against the glass.
‘Looks like something pretty big’s been repeatedly forced inside him,’ she said, checking her notes, ‘between four and five inches in diameter, and at least fourteen inches long. The sphincter’s extensively damaged and the lower intestine was torn in four places. He lost too much blood, pressure dropped, heart stopped. Death was due to severe shock. There was nothing the hospital could have done.’ She shifted in her seat, trying to get closer to the desk, but her pregnant bulge got in the way. ‘Some of the burn marks on the torso have a crust of wax, but there’s half a dozen cigarette burns too. Most of the contusions are superficial.’
DI Steel helped herself to a Jaffa Cake, mumbling, ‘What about the ligature marks?’ with her mouth full.
‘Looks like thick leather straps with metal buckles. There’s quite a bit of chafing about the edges, so I’d say he struggled a fair bit.’
Steel snorted, sending crumbs flying. ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? Someone turns your arse inside out.’
That got her a scowl and a chilly silence. ‘I’ll need to wait for the blood toxicology to come back,’ Isobel said at last, ‘but I found a significant quantity of alcohol in the stomach and partially digested pills as well.’
‘So, whoever it was got him pissed and doped-up first, then strapped him down and buggered him to death with a Wellington boot. And they say romance is dead.’
Isobel’s scowl got twenty degrees colder. ‘Any other startling insights you’d like to share with us, Inspector?’ Steel just grinned back at her and polished off another biscuit. Then the Procurator Fiscal confirmed that they’d be treating this case as murder, before telling them all about her upcoming holiday to the Seychelles. A substantive depute would be in charge while she was away soaking up the sun and cocktails, but they were to try not to break the girl, or there’d be trouble when she got back – looking pointedly at DI Steel. The inspector pretended not to know what she was talking about.
‘Bloody hell!’ Steel said as they ran up the stairs from the morgue to the rear podium car park, sploshing through ankle-deep puddles, making for the back door to FHQ. ‘Why can’t they open the internal door when it’s pishing with rain?’ There was only one indoor route through from the main building to the morgue, but it was reserved for victims’ relatives and the Chief Constable. The rank and file had to brave the weather.
She shook herself like a terrier, then ran a hand through her unruly hair, spraying water onto the linoleum. At forty-three she looked sixty-five – wrinkled, pointy face, saggy neck like a turkey, hair designed to startle old ladies, fingers stained a fetching shade of nicotine yellow. ‘Come on,’ she said, leading the way towards the lifts, ‘you can get the teas in while I have a fag. And get some bacon butties too – I’m
