‘Very recently, I’d say, from how much they stink.’
‘So what’s happened to the flesh?’
‘Someone’s stripped it off the bones. Using some pretty sharp cutting gear.’ Tom lifted out a long shanked bone, laying it delicately across both hands. ‘The femur. Thigh bone to you. You can see the scores left in the bone by the knife, or whatever it was he used. They’re quite deep, and broad, so it was a heavy instrument.’
MacNeil looked at the cuts and grooves in the bone, most running parallel, and cut in at an angle, as if from a repeated sideways chopping motion. ‘Not an expert, then?’
‘I don’t know who I’d describe as an expert in cutting flesh from bone, but it’s a pretty crude job.’ Tom ran a long, delicate finger around the bulb of the joint. ‘You can see the hash they’ve made of the disarticulation, and these dried-out remnants of tissue and ligament that they couldn’t get off.’
MacNeil looked into the bag again and carefully lifted out what looked like the curve of a small rib. He cocked his head and looked at it curiously, running his fingers along the smooth white bow of it. ‘How did they manage to get the bones so clean?’
Tom shrugged. ‘Washed them, likely. I’ve done it myself from time to time, when I’ve wanted to clean up a skull. Boiled it up with a little bleach and laundry detergent.’
‘Wouldn’t that kill the smell?’
Tom crinkled with amusement again. ‘The marrow’s still going to rot, whether you’ve cooked it or not.’
MacNeil slipped the rib back into the bag and stood. He peered up at the faces leaning over to try to catch their conversation, then looked down at Tom. ‘Can you tell what sex?’
‘Not right now. But I’d put the age at somewhere between nine and eleven.’
MacNeil nodded thoughtfully, and wondered how you performed an autopsy on a disarticulated skeleton.
Almost as if he’d read his thoughts, Tom stood up beside him and said, ‘Naturally, I can’t do any kind of real autopsy. All I can do is lay out the bones and look for clues.’ A stray strand of blond hair was caught in the elastic of his plastic shower cap, and his corn-blue eyes held MacNeil in a gaze so direct that the older man had to look away. ‘Of course,’ he said, ‘I’m not much of an expert on what goes where. I can sort out the ribs, but not in the correct order. I can separate the finger bones, but not necessarily which goes to which hand. We really need an anthropologist for that.’
MacNeil forced himself to meet the pathologist’s eye. ‘Is that a problem?’
‘She’s sick.’
‘Oh.’
‘But I can make a general assessment, spot any major bone injuries and missing parts, recover tissue from the marrow and order up some toxicology.’ He paused. ‘I’d suggest we get Amy in. She’s good with skulls, and she’s done a lot of work on human ID.’
MacNeil felt his heart skip a beat at the mention of her name, and he wondered if it showed in his face. A slight blush, perhaps. He sensed Tom watching him closely, as if looking for some sign, but if he was it did not betray itself in his eyes. ‘Sure, if that’s what you think,’ MacNeil said. He turned and reached up a hand to be helped out.
‘Careful,’ Tom said quickly. ‘Some people think it’s dangerous to turn their back on me.’
MacNeil turned his head slowly to look at him. It was a dark, dangerous look that needed no words.
Tom smiled. ‘You’re so butch.’
Silence hung over the site, like a low-lying fog. It was extraordinary, really, here in the very heart of the Capital. No traffic noise, no voices raised in casual communication or amusement, no overhead roar of jet engines as planes circled towards Gatwick or Heathrow. Just the plaintive cries of the seagulls which had flown up the estuary to escape the stormy weather in the North Sea, fragments of white wheeling overhead, for all the world like vultures waiting for death.
Death had already come, but there was nothing left on the bones to pick.
MacNeil was aware of all the faces watching him. The man from the ministry stood off, arms folded across his chest. ‘Well?’
‘I want everyone off the site,’ MacNeil said. ‘We’re going to seal it off and make a search.’
The man from the ministry tilted his head to one side. Only his eyes betrayed his anger. ‘There’ll be trouble,’ he said.
‘There’ll be trouble if anyone doesn’t do as they’re told.’ MacNeil raised his voice so that everyone on the site could hear him. ‘This is a murder scene.’
II
‘What the fuck did you say to him?’
‘I told him it was a murder scene and we were going to search the site.’
Laing looked at him sceptically. ‘Well, whatever you said, he’s pretty pissed off. You any idea what kind of shite’s coming down on me right now?’
‘I can imagine.’
‘Can you?’ Laing glanced at his watch, then picked up the remote to turn on the TV on the filing cabinet. ‘You know, when I came down to the Met from Glasgow thirty years ago, I thought I’d left cowboys like you behind. People are better mannered down here, know what I mean?’
‘Yeah, they threaten you more politely.’
Laing glared at him. ‘I never imagined for a minute I’d be haunted by some Highland hard case just as I’m looking forward to retirement.’ He turned up the sound on the television. They were reporting again on the death of the Prime Minister, and Laing clearly wanted to hear it.
MacNeil glanced at the framed photograph of the DCI and his wife which sat on the bookcase behind his desk. They were an odd couple. Laing came from the old school of working-class Glasgow cop. He swore, he made crude jokes, he was physically aggressive. He wore Brylcreem in his hair, and slapped Old Spice freely on to shiny, shaved, drink-veined cheeks. You smelled him before you saw him. His wife, on the other hand, was a genteel lady, a doctor’s daughter from Chelsea who liked opera and theatre and lectured in English and drama at the Queen Mary University of London. They lived somewhere out west, in a large, terraced town house. Laing was a different man in her company. MacNeil had no idea what she saw in him, but whatever it was, she brought out the best in him. Some people did that to you. MacNeil reflected that while Martha might not have brought out the worst in him, she certainly hadn’t brought out the best. He envied Laing his relationship.
He glanced through the open door into the detectives’ room. There were only a couple of DCs on duty, and a handful of uniform and administrative staff. The pandemic had taken its toll here, too.
Something on the news caught his attention, and he turned to see a line-up of dark-suited men sitting at a table groaning with microphones. They all wore masks, as did the journalists firing the questions. Centre table was a man whose face had become familiar during these last few months, even behind the mask. He had large, dark eyes, beneath thick black eyebrows that contrasted with blond, crew-cut hair, and wore distinctive silver-rimmed oval spectacles. He had a creamy, smooth voice which spoke English with just the hint of a foreign accent whose origin was impossible to define. His name was Roger Blume, and he was the doctor in charge of Stein-Francks’ FluKill Pandemic Task Force.
‘Fucking leeches!’ Laing’s expletive echoed MacNeil’s unspoken thought. ‘I see their share price is up again.’
Stein-Francks was the French-based pharmaceutical company whose antivirus drug, FluKill, had been singled out by the World Health Organisation during the run-up to the pandemic as the remedy most likely to be effective against the bird flu, should it ever become transmissible from human to human. The WHO had also warned that such an eventuality was inevitable. As a result, those countries around the world who could afford it had placed more than three-and-a-half billion euros’ worth of orders. Britain alone had bought nearly fifteen million courses of the drug to treat a quarter of the population. Health and law enforcement workers were to be the first in line to receive it. Not that it was a cure. The best that could be hoped for was an amelioration of symptoms, and a shortening of the course of the flu, making survival more likely. And with a mortality rate of nearly eighty per cent, anything that could improve your odds was in huge demand.