sergeant’s flashlight when he fixed it on the occupant of the driver’s seat.
‘Dental records or a DNA match, I think.’ A soft female voice came from behind them. They turned, as one.
‘Professor,’ Pye exclaimed. ‘Don’t you have a junior you could send to a job like this?’
‘Yes,’ Sarah Grace replied, ‘but two dead bodies in a burned-out car is very rarely a job for a postgraduate assistant. How much do we know, Sammy?’
‘The car was taken from the park at Queen Margaret University this afternoon. The suspected thief is the owner’s brother, who’s wanted in connection with the abduction and death of the child the gaffer found at Fort Kinnaird this morning.’
‘How sure are you?’
‘Percentage scale? About ninety-five.’
‘And the other occupant? I’m not even prepared to take a guess at the gender at this stage.’
‘Look at the feet, boss,’ Sauce Haddock said to Pye, training the beam on to the passenger. ‘Those things, those shoes, or what’s left of them. We’ve seen something like those tonight, somewhere else. Long heels, platform soles.’
Pye nodded. ‘The standard footwear in Lacey’s, it looks like . . .’ He looked back towards the pathologist. ‘We think she’s Anna Hojnowski, also known as Anna Harmony, or by her nickname, Singer. She was the driver’s girlfriend. Everybody told her he was no use, but she wouldn’t listen.’
‘It’s not a mistake she’s going to get over,’ Sarah murmured.
‘No, but she’s left us a few questions. First and foremost, what were she and Dino doing here?’
‘Maybe they were having one for the road,’ Haddock suggested, bluntly.
The DCI snorted. ‘That would have been an odd sense of priorities for someone on the run from a potential double murder charge. And second question, why were they at this spot? It’s pretty far off the road. We need to clear the whole area, Sauce, to let the CSI team look for evidence of a second vehicle here around the same time.’
‘Which leads us to the most obvious question,’ Sarah said. ‘Why didn’t they get out of the car after it caught fire? Sauce, can I borrow your light?’
She leaned into the car, focusing the beam of the lamp on the blackened head of the thing in the passenger seat. She studied it for almost a minute, then dug into a pocket of her tunic and produced a magnifying glass, which she used to examine a small area above what had been an eye socket. After a few minutes she straightened up and faced her companions.
‘She . . . assuming you guys are right . . . appears to have been shot through the head. If so, it’s a safe bet that he was as well. They were executed, both of them.’
‘Will they be able to recover the bullets?’ Pye asked.
‘A small calibre soft-nosed bullet might still be in there. But if I can’t find it at the autopsy, you should be able to. It’ll be embedded in something, either in the fabric of the vehicle or the ground around it.’
‘How soon can you do the post-mortems?’
‘How soon can you let me have the bodies?’ she countered.
‘The crime scene team are on their way here. As soon as they’ve been photographed and filmed in situ, we’ll get them to you.’
‘For identification I’m going to need DNA samples,’ she said.
‘That shouldn’t be a problem, as far as the driver’s concerned. We think that overwrought fireman by the appliance is his brother-in-law, so we can arrange to take a sample from his wife. As for Anna, we know where she lives; with a bit of luck there will be something in her room that’ll give us what we need, hairbrush, leg shaver, whatever.’
She nodded. ‘All good. In that case I’ll head for the city mortuary and wait for the bodies to arrive. I’ll call in my assistant, we’ll do both autopsies tonight and get the DNA matching under way.’ She handed the flashlight back to Haddock and headed for her car. She had gone only a few steps before stopping and looking back at them.
‘Given that Bob has a loose interest in this,’ she called out, ‘can I discuss it with him?’
‘Of course,’ Pye replied. ‘If he wants to know anything else, tell him to call me.’
The detectives watched her leave. ‘A change from Joe Hutchinson,’ Haddock observed.
‘She’s just as good,’ his boss said. ‘She’s always been better tuned into our wavelength than Master Yoda, given her police connection through big Bob. She’s right about this being an execution. It was a bloody efficient