and see Finch.’
‘The only good thing about still having to work with you, Arthur,’ said Oswald Finch, carefully folding away something that looked like a body part in tin foil, but was in fact a liver-and-onion sandwich, ‘is that you’re now so fantastically old, you no longer have the energy to play disgusting practical jokes on me.’ Finch had been the butt of Bryant’s amusing cruelties for nearly half a century, and had thought—wrongly, as it turned out—that semi-retirement would protect him. Only last month, a whoopee cushion attached to a cadaver drawer had nearly given him a heart attack.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t bet on it,’ grinned Bryant. He usually only smiled when hearing of someone else’s misfortune. Consequently, most of his acquaintances had learned to dread the glimpse of his ill-fitting false teeth. ‘Look at you, though. Not in bad nick for an old fart. Exactly how old are you now?’
He watched as the ancient pathologist, so pale and serious that permanent misery-lines had formed on either side of his mouth, eased himself from the counter to search the cadaver drawers. He still had the spiky hair and raw bony hands of his youth. Even in his twenties the sight of Finch, with his long death’s-head face, his creaking knees and lab coats that reeked of chemicals, caused all but the most optimistic people to avoid him. He still worked part-time at the Central Mortuary in Codrington Street, but was available to certain small, specialized branches of the Met because younger pathologists were considered more valuable employees, and therefore not a resource to be spared to such an esoteric, pointless unit as the PCU. And he wasn’t thrilled about being dragged over to the makeshift mortuary at Mornington Crescent on a Sunday morning.
‘I’m eighty-four,’ he said. ‘Or eighty-three. There were conflicting reports from my parents.’
‘Last time you told me there was coffee on your birth certificate,’ said Bryant. ‘You don’t have to lie about your age any more, Oswald, they can’t fire you now. You’re so far past retirement age nobody even remembers you’re still alive. Do you have a body for me? Fire victim, filed under Tate but we’ve no idea of his real name. Probably died of smoke inhalation.’
‘You might let me be the judge of that. I thought you were going to send over Kershaw. I liked him. Don’t tell me you’ve driven him from the unit already.’
‘Incredible as it may seem, he’s still with us. I’m just keeping him busy. He’s still getting used to the idea of having to work a seven-day week.’
Finch grunted as he struggled with the drawer, then tugged back a slick grey sheet covering the corpse. ‘We’re testing this out—bloody clever stuff. Made of the same material they use to cover satellites. Stops the skin fragmenting in cases of extreme epidermal damage.’
The body was charred as black as barbecue embers. Very little skin remained intact, and his eye sockets were empty. Only his feet had been spared the flames; his ankles were bizarrely still sheathed in trousers, his socks and shoes intact.
‘He would have been in better condition if the developers had insulated their floors properly. It’s the same old story: corners cut and lives lost. It’s all very well to spray the walls with fireproof resin, but not much good if you’re going to leave cavities under the carpets without any batt insulation. Protective foam or loose fill would have worked just as well. The residents sneak in booze, you see, usually high-proof spirits because they’re smaller to hide, then after a few drinks—’ He slapped his hand against the steel side of the drawer, ‘—whoosh—they knock over the bottle and it soaks between the floorboards. Not enough to start a fire from a falling match, you understand, but over time . . . sounds as though this was arson, though. The lovely Longbright informs me that there was white-spirit residue all over the place consistent with someone splashing it from a bottle. Not my field of expertise, of course, I’m better off with the dead. Where’s my poking stick?’ He searched around for the car antenna he used for demonstrations. ‘Look at this.’ He wiggled the antenna through the tramp’s gaping jaw and carefully retracted it. ‘See on the end there?’
‘I haven’t got my glasses,’ Bryant admitted. ‘What is it?’
‘Soot. Burning is a common form of accidental death, rare as a method of suicide because it’s far too slow and painful, virtually unheard-of as a means of homicide, despite