Kittyhawk Down

'Room temperature is eighteen degrees Celsius, slightly cooler than the outside temperature of twenty-two degrees Celsius. There is still good movement in the extremities but the stomach is beginning to show signs of rigor mortis.'

Pam knew from her studies that the body cools at three degrees per hour at first. Later, the rate is one degree or less per hour. Rigor works from the head through the body to the extremities, so presumably Dr Berg would test the head last.

Sure enough, the pathologist hoisted herself onto the bed, manoeuvred herself until she was at the bedhead looking down the body, lifted the skull gently off the pillow and attempted to turn it. 'The head is pretty well locked,' she said.

Finally Dr Berg pressed the end of her ballpoint pen against the bottom side of the torso, repeating the action from near the armpit to the waist.

'There is no blanching, the blood appears to be fully clotted.'

She swung off the bed again and began to remove her latex gloves, saying, 'The deceased has been dead for between six and eight hours.'

Pam glanced at her watch. It was midday now. The child, and the victim, would have been sound asleep at four or six that morning, when Ian Munro came in blasting. She was nearly going to say dead to the world.

The pathologist was speaking to her.

'Constable?'

'Sorry, yes?'

'If you could tell Inspector Challis?'

'Sorry, what?'

A note of gentle patience. 'It's never easy; it never gets easier, Pam.' Berg paused. 'Just tell the inspector that I'll try to do the autopsy later this afternoon or first thing tomorrow morning. Tell him I put the time of death at between four and six this morning, okay?'

Pam nodded.

'Where is he, anyway? He usually sticks around.'

Pam tried to clear her throat. 'We think the person who did this also shot those people over near Five Furlong Road, so Inspector Challis has gone to have a word with the Special Operations commander.'

'Never rains but it pours,' the pathologist said, grabbing her bag and leaving Pam there to her thoughts and the odour of the blood.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Special Operations police and their tracker dogs were searching open ground near both crime scenes, uniforms from Waterloo were doorknocking the neighbours, and Scobie Sutton had returned to the Munro farm. That left Upper Penzance for Challis and Ellen. The residents would have to be advised. They might also have seen something or somebody. After all, the miserable estate where the Pearces had been shot lay less than two kilometres downhill from Upper Penzance.

Ellen drove. As they approached Upper Penzance she said, 'Larrayne's been going out with a boy who lives up here.'

Challis shifted in his seat. This was small talk and required a response. 'How's she been since…'

He meant to say since her experience at the hands of that abductor last year, but found his voice trailing away. Ellen knew what he meant. She said, 'Fine, thanks. A lot quieter, though: more serious about things.'

Challis heard doubt in Ellen's voice and chided himself for thinking that she was engaged in small talk. There were things she needed to air, and so he prompted her. 'Except…?'

Ellen flashed him a glance, then returned her gaze to the twisting road. 'The boy she's been seeing is called Skip Lister, though his actual name is Simon. His father's name is Carl.'

Her tone was interrogative. Challis shook his head. 'The name doesn't ring a bell.'

'There's nothing on him,' Ellen said, meaning that she'd checked the national computer and asked around without result.

'But your antenna's up,' Challis said.

'My antenna is up.'

Challis watched her and waited. Gravel pinged against the underside of the car and Ellen braked once or twice for pigeons that flew into her path from the bracken at the sides of the road. She was a good driver, mindful of the possibility of oncoming vehicles beyond the blind corners, eyes flicking from the rear-view mirror to the road ahead and rarely glancing his way.

Eventually she said: 'For a start, Carl Lister is a bully. I don't mean physically, I mean in manner. He doesn't seem to care much what Skip gets up to. At Larrayne's party last weekend we discovered Skip passed out in the back yard. He could have choked to death on his own vomit if we hadn't found him. I rang his father, who implied that it wasn't his problem.' She went silent.

'Anything else?' Challis said, knowing there would be. Ahead of them was the first driveway, a stone outer wall with a locked gate and intercom grille on a brick pillar beside it. Ellen slowed the car and turned off the road, saying, 'He's the kind of man, you ask what he does for a living, he says "business". You ask what kind, he says "this and that" or "buying and selling". You never get a straight answer, so naturally you ask why not.'

'You think he's bent.'

'In a word.'

Ellen put the car into neutral and climbed out to announce herself through the intercom system. When there was no response she fished for a card, scribbled on the back of it and slotted it in the gate where it could be seen. She got behind the wheel again and buckled herself in, sighing, 'The joys of doorknocking. If it's not a weekender and therefore uninhabited, it's going to be empty because the owners are at work.'

Challis nodded. 'Maybe this Lister character will be home, so I can give him the once-over for you.'

'Your famous instincts at work.'

'Exactly.'

There was no answer at the next two houses, and then they came to a set of brick pillars and the name 'Costa del Sol' picked out on a board in chips of coloured glass and pottery, and Ellen said, 'The home of the Listers, father and son.'

'The mother?'

'Doesn't live with them anymore.'

Ellen got out and spoke into the intercom. Challis heard a crackling voice and a few minutes later a kid emerged from the distant house and came down the driveway toward them.

Ellen turned to Challis from her position near the gate and mouthed the word, 'Skip.'

Challis got out and stood to one side, intending to watch and listen. The afternoon sun had some autumn heat in it now, and as he stood there a sea breeze sprang up, stirring the leaves and chasing away some of the odours that subconsciously he'd been trying to identify: rotting vegetation, blood-and-bone mix from a nearby farm or garden, and something slighter and more fleeting, now gone even as he almost had it pinned down.

'Hello, Skip.'

'Mrs Destry.'

The boy was thin, nervous, untidy, unshaven, and therefore no different from a hundred thousand other male students in their late teens. Cargo pants, square-toed shoes and short-sleeved shirt worn loose, all in black. Chopped-about short hair with blonde tips. Nicotine on his fingers. Hollow cheeks, a hint of facial sores, restless: maybe genes, maybe the effects of long-term ecstasy use. Or maybe he's simply freaking out about his university work, Challis thought. And he remembered his own late teens, the mutual wariness and sizing-up between himself and the parents of the young women he dated.

It would have been worse if any of those parents had been coppers. Poor Skip Lister had a pair of coppers to contend with, so a little edginess was excusable.

'Anything wrong?' Challis heard him say.

'I'm afraid so,' Ellen replied, and the boy froze.

'Nothing to do with you,' Ellen hastened to add. 'Is your dad home?'

That seemed to make it worse. Skip Lister swallowed and glanced back along the driveway to the big house. 'Er, no, he's at work.'

So Ellen told Skip about Ian Munro. 'Call your father and let him know,' she went on. 'I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, but don't let anyone in, and call the police if you see anyone roaming around or signs that anyone's broken into one of the outbuildings. Better keep your doors locked at all times.'

Skip Lister's face cleared, as though a burden had been lifted from his shoulders rather than dropped onto them. 'No dramas,' he said. 'We've been careful anyway-you know, those escapees from the detention centre.' And then he was backing away from her, waving and turning to hurry back to his house.