The Last Party (DC Morgan #1)(44)

Kieron Tackley was standing by a bus stop. Head down, hood up, but definitely Tackley. Leo switched off the music, pulled in behind a parked car and reached for his police radio.

‘You put the job before your own son,’ Allie says now. ‘It’s quite obvious where your priorities lie, and they’re not with Harris.’

Leo walks out. What’s the point?

‘Wait!’

He turns, and Allie thrusts an envelope at him. ‘Here you go. Saves me a stamp.’

Ffion’s getting out of her car when Leo pulls into Brynafon mortuary. She doesn’t wait for him, and by the time he catches up she’s with Izzy Weaver. Leo has the distinct impression Ffion is avoiding being alone with him. He wonders if Seren’s told her about their exchange on Cwm Coed high street.

‘I gather you’ve got a tenner on the wife offing him with his own sleeping tablets?’ Izzy says, as he joins them in the morgue. The technician, Elijah, is tidying up from a previous autopsy.

‘It’s just a hunch,’ Ffion says. ‘She was definitely weird when we showed her the list of medication.’

‘Well, I can’t comment on the wife, but toxicology showed no trace of the tablets, I’m afraid, so DC Brady’s quids in.’

‘Are you sure?’

Izzy gives Ffion a withering look. ‘No drugs at all, in fact. Your man was relatively healthy.’

‘Then why did he die?’

‘Much as we pathologists like to think we’re God, post-mortems are often more about elimination than diagnosis: narrowing down the clinical signs until they point to one thing.’ Izzy takes off her glasses and hooks them on to the top of her gown. ‘In this case, the assault itself appears severe but in fact it’s relatively superficial. There are no cerebral contusions, no subarachnoid or subdural haemorrhage. Not enough to kill him, but enough to bring on the heart attack that proved fatal.’

‘Witnesses say he was completely out of it at the party,’ Ffion says. ‘Everyone assumed he was drunk.’

‘That would fit with the early stages of heart failure, especially in otherwise healthy patients. We know from the health app on his watch that his pulse was erratic for most of the afternoon, becoming dangerously slow in the evening. That drop in blood pressure alone would have triggered symptoms of confusion.’

‘And vomiting?’ Leo asked. ‘A witness saw him throw up outside.’

‘It’s not uncommon.’

‘Ask if they had mushroom canapés at their party,’ the technician says. ‘And who made them.’ Like Izzy, Elijah is in a disposable gown, with blue plastic bags over his shoes. He wears small round glasses, his long hair pulled into a high bun. ‘Even a small amount of death cap will make you feel sick in a matter of hours.’

‘Elijah is midway through a toxicology degree,’ Izzy says. ‘Which apparently makes him an expert.’

‘The symptoms would fit,’ Elijah says mildly, ignoring the barb.

‘But death cap mushroom poisoning would also cause kidney and liver failure, neither of which I found in our chap.’ Izzy turns to Ffion and Leo, effectively dismissing Elijah. ‘Practically all poisons leave their mark. Corrosives burn the digestive tract, paracetamol shows as jaundice in the whites of the eyes, arsenic gives the stomach lining a velvety texture.’

Leo feels a bit queasy. He feels sorry for Elijah, who has gone back to his tidying, and he wonders if the technician really doesn’t mind Izzy’s rudeness, or if he’s quietly plotting her downfall. Sometimes, when Crouch is being particularly unpleasant, Leo imagines his boss falling from a great height, or afflicted by uncontrollable diarrhoea.

‘Izzy Weaver’s a bit much, isn’t she?’ he says, once they’ve left the mortuary and are safely out of earshot.

Ffion leans against her car. ‘I like her.’

Leo checks his emails. Twitter has finally released the IP addresses attached to some of the threatening tweets Lloyd received, and Leo is expecting results on the trace. Had Lloyd’s stalker travelled from somewhere else to confront Yasmin at the family home, or did she live in London? If she murdered Lloyd, how did she get to The Shore? The mystery stalker is still their prime suspect, and the sooner they identify her, the better. They might even find her prints at the crime scene. The thought reminds him of Seren Morgan.

‘I bumped into your sister—’ he starts, but Ffion talks over him.

‘The Met’s been looking into Rhys’s club. Number 36. They’ve had low-level intel on it over a number of years, and guess what?’ Ffion takes a drag of her cigarette. ‘It’s a brothel.’ She blows a slow plume of smoke. ‘A high-end one – whatever that is – but nevertheless a brothel. They’re pulling an operation together as we speak.’

‘Do you think Yasmin knows?’

Ffion grinds the butt of her roll-up beneath the heel of her boot. ‘That her husband was a cunt?’

Leo isn’t quite sure what to say. He refreshes his inbox and reads the incoming email with a slow smile. He looks at Ffion. ‘I think we’ve just found Lloyd’s stalker.’ Leo taps the number at the bottom of the email and puts the call on to loudspeaker.

‘I thought it wouldn’t take you long to get back to me.’ Gwen, from Major Crime’s tech team, sounds pleased with herself.