your bosses are providing for me instead of a sterile laboratory. They’re meant for use in the field, and they’re bloody awkward. I have to stand on a stool in order to get my arms over the sides, and they’re sharp, too. Take a look.’
Bryant climbed up beside the pathologist and peered into the tray. He found himself staring at a fleshy white male, face-down. Lilac bruises had blossomed across his lower back like pressed flowers. In the folds of his neck, a black contusion erupted in torn crimson petals.
‘I wanted to get the back of his head open before you arrived,’ Finch complained, ‘but the caterers upstairs keep borrowing my tools. They used my cranium chisel to take the top off a jar of piccalilli yesterday. I’m not meant to be alone in here. I’ve got a part-time technician and no exhibits officer. No notes, no video, nothing. I’m having to share the photographer and police witness with the Met, and all this after promises of increased personnel.’ He gave the corpse a desultory flick with his forefinger. ‘Jack the Ripper’s pathologist had more technical expertise at his disposal. I have to tell you, Arthur, I’ve lost a lot of faith in the system in the past few years. We define a few addled souls as being worthy of removal from society, and everyone’s under such pressure that we consider the job done when we’re lucky enough to find a court that will shut them away. You know, doctors look for five main signs of mental disturbance in prisoners: personality disorder, psychosis, neurosis, drug dependence and alcohol misuse, and less than one in ten inmates is clean of all five. The prison population stands somewhere above 70,000, which means that over 5,000 of them are functionally psychotic. And all you do, every time you catch someone, is add to the problem.’
‘You’re right, Oswald, we should just leave them out on the street to slaughter each other. Have you seen the headline of this week’s Camden New Journal? “YARDIES TORCH TOT.” I’m surprised mothers don’t do the school run in armoured cars.’
‘There’s no need for sarcasm.’ With a quick slip of the scalpel, Finch exposed the back of Elliot Copeland’s neck to reveal damage at the base of his skull. ‘Take a look at that. A nasty crack, wouldn’t you say? It’s a large area. First and second cervical vertebrae have copped it, anterior and posterior tubercles crushed, so it came at him from the left side. Plenty of myofibril rupture, pretty straightforward. Was he hit with a large flat-edged rock?’
‘In a way,’ Bryant explained. ‘It was part of a paving slab, among other things.’
‘Hm. I assume the weight of it slammed him forward. Broken nose. You see this sort of thing in industrial accidents, except that there’s no bruising to his shins, so he had a soft landing. A manual worker, obviously, judging by the state of his hands. John phoned me and explained about the bruising. At first I thought the single blow had killed him, but that was before I cleaned him up. Mouth and nostrils blocked solid with earth.’
‘Hardly surprising. He fell face-down in a mud-filled ditch.’
‘Not the point, old fruit. He took a deep breath after he was hit. Do you remember the Aberfan disaster—ghastly business of the coal tip sliding on to the Welsh school? The nightmarish part of that was the coal dust, very fine. It poured in like water, suffocating those who had survived the collapse of the building. This is the same. Basically earth—fine particles of soot, clay, grit, vegetable matter and non-biodegradable stuff like polystyrene granules, held in a suspension of water—straight down into his throat. He couldn’t get up because of the weight on his back, so he choked to death. Nasty way to go, but at least it was fast. I ran a standard internal; judging by the state of his liver he was an alcoholic, which reduced his resistance to blood-vessel rupture. His stomach’s full of half-digested pizza, high sodium—heavy drinkers eat salt. What puzzles me is why he’s here. You usually only get me out of bed for murders.’
‘That’s exactly what it was,’ said Bryant, looking for something to put in his mouth. He finally located a tube of Love Hearts in his raincoat. ‘He was standing behind a truck that shed its load. Do you see anything contradictory to that?’
‘No, I suppose not. Except—’ He thought for a minute, resting his hand disconcertingly on Elliot’s