‘I’m good, thank you. I’ll go and get dressed.’
Cleo led him through into the changing room, put her arms round his neck and kissed him, before pointing to a set of scrubs and a pair of white rubber boots. ‘I’ll go and get Mr Carmichael out for you — I’m afraid we’ve had a hectic morning.’
‘But not Rowley Carmichael — he’s just chilling, right?’
‘Naughty!’ She wagged a finger at him and disappeared.
A couple of minutes later Roy led Dr West through into the suite of two post-mortem rooms separated by a wide archway. To their right, three naked cadavers were laid out in the main room, two elderly men and an elderly woman, over whom Mark Howard, the youngest of the city’s team of pathologists, was bent, taking stomach fluid samples, attended by Cleo’s senior assistant, Darren Wallace, and his colleague, Julie Bartlett. All three greeted Roy.
Over to the left, Cleo had opened a door in the wall of fridges and was sliding out a tray on which lay a body encased in white plastic sheeting. ‘Do you need him on a PM table, Roy?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘The tray’s fine, thanks.’
As she began to unwrap Rowley Carmichael, Grace lifted his face mask up to cover his nose and mouth, and the professor did the same, as a normal precaution.
‘You do know he’s been embalmed?’ Cleo said.
‘Yes,’ Grace replied. ‘Unfortunately.’
The process of embalming involved replacing all blood in the body with a number of preservative chemicals, as well as dyes, to slow down the decomposition process and make the body look more lifelike.
Grace had already been through the detailed Goan toxicology report, and the cause of death, from the venom of a saw-scaled viper, was not in question. But from his earlier trawl of the internet, he had a couple of big questions that could help very substantially with this investigation — depending on what Dr West had to say.
Both of them looked down at the elderly naked man. The embalming had done its stuff and his flabby flesh had a pink hue, more that of someone sleeping than the usual alabaster colour of a person recently deceased.
‘So, OK?’ West said, turning to Grace. ‘You want my views on the bite?’
Cleo pointed to the man’s right ankle. There was a small blue oval, drawn with a chinagraph pencil. Inside it was one barely visible mark, the size of a pinprick.
As if he had stepped straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, West produced a fold-out magnifying glass and peered at the mark for some moments in silence. ‘Hmmmnnn,’ he said. Then he said, ‘Hmmmnnn,’ again, sounding more dubious. ‘Interesting.’
‘Is that a bite?’ Grace asked.
‘Hmmmnnn,’ the expert said for the third time, looking deeply pensive. ‘You know, detective, you are quite right to query this. Yes, it is a snake bite, just a single fang, uncommon but it does happen.’ He continued studying the mark, putting the magnifying glass even closer. ‘You see, what is bothering me is the lack of any sign of ecchymosis.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Well, in layman’s terms, local discolouration of tissue. Your toxicology report identifies all the symptoms of death by Echis venom. But post-mortem, I would expect to see signs of inflammation, swelling and ecchymosis around the bite mark from the fang. The puncture here is in character with a snake bite. But without the ecchymosis I’d expect.’ He turned and looked up at Grace. ‘To be honest, in my opinion, I doubt strongly that the venom entered the body through this bite mark. Where exactly was this unfortunate chap when he was bitten?’
‘That’s the second thing I wanted to ask you,’ Roy Grace said. ‘He was in the swampy area of the crocodile park in Borivali East, outside Mumbai.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes.’
West shook his head, his beard moving like the tendrils of an underwater sea anemone. ‘Not possible,’ he said. ‘I’ve been there, I know that place well. The Echis lives in open, dry, sandy and rocky terrain. Under rocks, in the base of thorny plants. This snake would not go near that swamp area.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Detective Grace, I’ve studied these creatures for much of my life. I could stand up in court and testify under oath that you would not find a saw-scaled viper in that particular area of that crocodile park.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Anything else you need to know?’
Grace smiled. ‘Not at this stage, no, that’s more than enough.’
‘Then I’ll head up to London, I ought to get back as quickly as possible,’ James West said.
‘Sure, I’ll drop you at the station.’
84
Wednesday 11 March
Reflexes in the animal kingdom are the key to survival. An instant decision has to be made. Friend, foe or food. Every creature develops the senses it needs for survival through natural selection. Saw-scaled vipers, like most snakes, have poor eyesight, and their hearing is pretty rubbish too. In common with all snakes they have forked tongues which are chemosensory, picking up minute scents on wet surfaces and taking them back into the roof of their mouths, the olfactory Jacobson’s organ. It is smell and taste combined; in effect that’s the survival armoury of this genus of reptile. The more anxious a saw-scaled viper becomes, the more its tongue flicks, and it makes its defensive sawing sound by coiling and uncoiling, rubbing its scales together. It can see only movement, in shades of grey, and cannot discern shape, unlike raptors, such as eagles, hawks and falcons, which can see eight times more clearly than the sharpest human eye. A golden eagle can identify a hare from a mile away and a peregrine falcon can dive on its prey at 200 mph.
Villains depend on heightened senses for their survival, too. Just the same way that the best cops develop a sixth sense for spotting them.
Out on the streets, one of the first things villains see is a police car. It’s like a magnetic force, drawing their eyes to it, and then to the cops inside. A good crim can spot an unmarked car from a distance just as easily as one in full Battenburg livery, decked out in blue lights. Cops sit in a certain way, look around in a certain way.
Roy Grace remembered, eighteen years ago, as a young detective constable, soon after his move from uniform to CID, travelling across lush Sussex countryside on a fine August day to a murder scene, turning to the highly experienced detective inspector who was driving, and asking him if he viewed the world differently from most people.
The DI replied, ‘Roy, you’re looking through the windscreen at a beautiful summer’s day. I’m looking at a man who’s standing in the wrong place.’
Grace had never forgotten that. As he drove away from Brighton Station having dropped off Dr West, he pulled up at the junction with New England Road, waiting for the lights to turn green. A Streamline taxi passed in front of him heading up the hill. And as if drawn by a magnet his eyes locked with those of the passenger slouched in the rear of it, wearing a baseball cap.
For just one fleeting instant.
Then an articulated lorry halted in front of him, straddling the junction and blocking his view of the taxi’s licence plate.
Shit! Shit! Shit!
He had a near photographic memory for faces, and he was sure the one he had seen in the rear of the taxi was the American hitman Tooth, although he was aware his mind might be playing tricks, as he’d spent most of the morning talking about him.
He pulled back the plastic cover on the dash that concealed the buttons for the lights and sirens, and hit the one for the pursuit blue lights, but not the siren, not wanting to alert his quarry. The lorry was still stuck in front of him, completely blocking his path.
‘Get out the bloody way!’ Grace yelled in frustration. But still the lorry didn’t move.