Daisy in Chains(65)

Latimer pulls out his phone and starts flicking through text messages. Mukerji remains silent until he looks up again.

‘Neither victim carried ID of any sort,’ she continues, ‘so it may be some time before we have complete identification.’

‘We’re working on it.’ Pete meets the doctor’s eyes briefly. Getting a complete ID, tracing next of kin, won’t be easy. When people become homeless it is often for good reason. They cut all ties with the lives they leave behind.

‘I didn’t attend the scene.’ Mukerji steps forward, so that her face and head fall into shadow. ‘But my colleague who did estimated time of death as sometime between zero hundred and zero four hundred hours. The outside temperature last night was minus four, I understand, which, combined with the blood loss, would have hastened the loss of basal body temperature in both subjects.’

Pete wonders how long before she realizes she no longer has the limelight. ‘Rina,’ he says, ‘there were people in and around the square until well after midnight last night. I checked with the landlord of the Crown. He went to bed at about twelve thirty, and he could still hear people milling around, getting into cars. It seems unlikely they were killed much before one o’clock.’

Mukerji doesn’t disagree.

‘And the milk float arrived a few minutes after four,’ says Pete. ‘I was down there twenty minutes later. They were stone cold by that point.’

‘As I say, their bodies would have lost temperature very quickly last night, but I agree, twenty minutes would seem unusually fast. If you want to work to a tighter time frame, between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. wouldn’t be far out.’

The pathologist takes a step back and light floods her face once more. ‘Both patients suffered from malnutrition,’ she says.

‘Seriously? She looks pretty well fed to me.’ Latimer is looking at Odi’s ample curves, covered but not hidden by the sheet.

‘She may have consumed a lot of calories, but they would have been in the form of cheap, fast food, with very little nutritional value. Chips, burgers, pies, pastries. Addictive food, food that made her feel better, gave her a bit of an energy boost, and all but lacking in essential nutrients. Her internal organs were not healthy. Her companion was less obese, but his lungs and liver were in a bad way. These weren’t healthy people.’

‘Not really in a position to fight back, you mean?’

‘Probably not, although just about everyone will put up a fight when their life is threatened. I mention it because, somewhat unusually, they did eat very well within a few hours of their death.’

‘They ate lamb stew,’ says Pete. ‘Maggie Rose gave it to them. She wanted to talk to them about a possible sighting of someone going into Rill Cavern last April.’

‘What?’ Latimer’s head shoots round to face Pete. ‘Why do I not know about this?’

‘It only came up recently, and as an eye-witness account, it holds very little credibility.’

‘I think that’s for me to decide, don’t you?’

Down in the examination room, Mukerji speaks up. ‘They also drank quite a lot of alcohol. Rum, at a guess, but tests will confirm that.’

‘It was rum,’ says Pete. ‘We found an empty half-bottle amongst their stuff.’

‘They probably drank all of it. They were quite inebriated. Would have been very difficult to rouse.’

‘But very easy to kill?’

Mukerji’s lips purse. ‘Odi died from exsanguination, after her throat was slashed twice with a sharp, smooth-edged blade about seven inches long. The first incision was deepest, severing the right carotid artery and the jugular vein. The second cut through the left carotid artery and the minor veins.’

As she speaks, Mukerji mimes the slashing of Odi’s throat, standing behind the corpse, but to one side, enabling the two police officers to see what she is doing. She makes a big, bold movement, twice, from Odi’s left ear to her right. Then she steps quickly to the other gurney. ‘Broon, on the other hand, choked to death on his own blood. His throat was slashed at least four, possibly five, times and his trachea was cut open.’ More miming. Pete thinks of the shower scene in Psycho, the repeated stabbings seen through a shower curtain.

‘I’m not sure this could have been done by one person,’ says Latimer. ‘Even if they were incapacitated.’

‘Possibly not. But you do have to take into account the head wounds.’ Mukerji moves to the top of the gurneys. ‘Both victims were struck over the head, just once in each case, but very heavily.’ She moves Broon’s hair to show them the mat of dried blood. ‘The wounds to each victim are similar and smooth in nature. I’d say they were struck with a hammer, some sort of instrument, rather than a rock or a stone. Probably one of those large club hammers. It was wielded with great force, again suggesting a hammer, something that enabled the perpetrator to get a bit of swing on.’

She demonstrates, swinging her arm back and up, bringing it down swiftly towards Broon’s head. ‘The blow didn’t kill either of them, there’s some evidence of bleeding in both cases, but it would have been enough, especially given the alcohol they’d drunk, and the fact that they were asleep, also very cold, to incapacitate them for long enough for the perpetrator to take a firm hold on their hair and slash their throats.’