her job. But she took the compliment with a formal thank you, sir, and she eagerly anticipated his immediate departure. He'd said Do keep me apprised, won't you, Acting Superintendent? and again the message was received as intended. Acting Superintendent. She didn't need reminding that this was her audition - for want of a better word - but it appeared to be the man's intention to do that reminding at every possible opportunity. She'd said that the news conference and its call for information from witnesses to anything suspicious was already bearing fruit and asked if he wanted a compendium of each day's phone calls, sir. He eyed her in a way that told her he was evaluating what lay behind her question before he declined the offer, but she kept her face bland.
He apparently decided she was being sincere. He'd said, We'll meet later, shall we? and that was that. Off he went, leaving her to the unfriendly gaze of DI John Stewart, which she happily ignored.
The house-to-house in Stoke Newington was in progress, the slow process of the cemetery search was continuing, phone calls were being fielded and dealt with, diagrams and maps had been drawn. They were bound to get something from the news conference, from the resulting stories on the television news and in the daily papers, and from the e-fit that had been provided by the two adolescents who'd discovered the body. Thus things were clicking along as they were meant to click. Isabelle was satisfied with her performance so far.
She had her doubts about the post mortem, however. She'd never been one for dissection.
The sight of blood didn't make her feel anything akin to fainting, but the sight of an open body cavity and the mechanics of removing and weighing what had so recently been living organs did tend to turn her stomach to liquid. For this reason, she determined to take no one with her to observe the proceedings that afternoon. She also skipped lunch in favour of emptying one of the three airline bottles of vodka she'd tucked into her bag for this precise purpose.
She found the mortuary without any trouble, and within it, she found the Home Office pathologist awaiting her arrival. He introduced himself as Dr. Willeford - "but do call me Blake ...let's keep things friendly, shall we?" - and he asked her if she wanted a chair or a stool
"in the event that the coming exploration proves rather more than you feel able to cope with." He said all of this nicely enough, but there was something about his smile that she didn't trust. She had little doubt that her reaction to the autopsy was going to be reported, Hillier's long tentacles reaching out even here. She vowed to keep upright, told Willeford she didn't anticipate any difficulty as she'd never had difficulty with autopsies before - an outright lie but how was he to know? - and when he chuckled, stroked his chin, observed her, and then happily said, "Right, then, here we go," she stepped right up to the stainless-steel trolley and fixed her gaze on the body that lay there, chest up and waiting for the Y incision, with her fatal wound making a bloody lightning bolt down the right side of her neck.
Willeford recited the salient superficial details first, speaking into the microphone that hung above the autopsy trolley. He did so in a chatty fashion, as if with the intention of entertaining whoever would do the transcription. "Kathy darling," he said into the microphone,
"we have a female before us this time. She's in good physical condition, no tattoos and no scars.
She measures five feet four inches tall - sort out the metrics, my love, as I can't be bothered - and she weighs seven point eight five stone. Do the metrics there as well, will you, Kath? And by the way, how's your mum doing, darling? Are you ready, Superintendent Ardery?
Oh, Kath, that's not for you, my dear. We've a new one here. She's called Isabelle Ardery" - with a wink at Isabelle - "and she's not even asked for a chair on the chance that just-in-case becomes the case. Anyway ..." He moved to examine the wound at the neck.
"We've got the carotid artery pierced. Very nasty. You'll be glad you weren't here, not that you ever are, my love. We've also got a tear in the wound, quite jagged, measuring ...it's seven inches." He moved from the victim's neck along the