out, do you want me inside the tent pissing out, or would you rather it was the other way round?’
‘Oh, go ahead,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll authorise DI Mann to cooperate with you. Mario says she’s a good operator.’
‘She is; very.’
I thought we were done, but he wanted the last word. ‘You’re not perfect yourself, you know, when it comes to women.’
‘I’m probably even more imperfect than you know, sunshine,’ I admitted, ‘but that cuts you no slack when it comes to my Alex.’
It crossed my mind that Andy might have shown up at the Hodgson post-mortem, but he didn’t. Neither did Mario, who was heading for Inverness to cast a beady eye over Northern Division CID. Lottie Mann was the senior officer present; indeed she was the only officer there, as Dan Provan had used me as an excuse to wriggle his way out of a singularly unpleasant duty.
The lead pathologist was a man I’d seen in court but never met. His name was Graeme Bell and he was the senior man in the Greater Glasgow area, although unlike Sarah he had no university responsibilities. He wasn’t the talkative type; he worked in silence while we looked on from a viewing gallery, happy to be screened from the action and the odour.
He worked away for two hours, cutting, measuring, extracting, probing his subject from head to foot. Once he had completed his initial examination and got down to detail, he paid particular attention to the head, and that interested me. Then he switched to the other end and that held my attention even more closely.
It was only when he was done that he acknowledged our presence, telling us that he’d see us in the briefing room once he’d cleaned up.
Sarah uses Chanel after a very messy one; Bell used the gentleman’s equivalent, liberally. As he joined us, and poured himself a coffee, suddenly he stared at me.
‘You’re Mr Skinner, aren’t you?’ he ventured, as he sat. I nodded. ‘I thought you were gone from all this.’
‘So did I,’ I acknowledged. ‘I’m here as a civilian observer, that’s all.’
‘Mmm. How’s Sarah?’ he asked.
I smiled. ‘Blooming.’ Clearly, word of our reunion had made its way through the pathology community.
‘What’s the verdict, doctor?’ Lottie Mann, not being one for small talk, asked abruptly.
‘He’s dead,’ Bell replied, winking as he took a sip from his mug.
‘We sensed that when we saw him yesterday,’ she sighed. ‘It’s nice to know we haven’t lost our touch.’
‘The subject died from a single gunshot wound to the head,’ the pathologist announced. ‘It was fired at close range, from the side and slightly downward. I’ve recovered a nice clean bullet lodged in the zygomatic ridge just in front of the right ear. That’s the only way I’ve been able to give you a cause of death; the body’s too decomposed for a straightforward autopsy.’ He hesitated. ‘How long has he been dead? That’s difficult to say for sure, but six weeks, minimum.’
‘No worries,’ Lottie replied, drily. ‘The mail we found behind his front door suggests that he died at the beginning of December.’
‘That’s probably right. The rate of decomposition isn’t an exact science. When I visited the scene I noticed that it was cold.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, it was. The central heating was oil-fired, but the tank was empty. We’re guessing it ran out after he was killed.’
‘I see. Lucky, in one way; in a warmer environment there would have been even more flies.’
‘Were there many pre-mortem injuries?’ I asked.
Bell nodded. ‘The plastic strips that secured his wrists and his left ankle to the chair were pulled so tight that they cut into the flesh. Painful, but by comparison to the other thing, insignificant.’ He paused. ‘If you were at the scene, you might remember that Mr Hodgson was barefoot. His shoes and socks had been removed.’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, there’s just about enough flesh left for me to be sure that he was tortured by burning. Something like a blowlamp was used on his right foot, extensively. It’s for you to determine, Inspector Mann, but I’d say that either this man had seriously upset someone, or whoever went to work on him wanted information, and wanted it very badly indeed.’
Forty-One
‘Do you want to come back to Pitt Street for a chat and a bite of lunch?’ Lottie Mann asked.
‘To the first, definitely not,’ I said. I’d seen enough of the former Strathclyde Police headquarters building to last me a couple of lifetimes. ‘Lunch is on the agenda, though.’
We settled on the public