“Your phone.” Ingeborg raised a thumb in approval. For once it had been turned on.
He looked at the display. “Keith, from the mortuary.” He jammed it to his ear, eager for the findings. “Is it over?”
“Only a tea break in the office, guv,” Halliwell told him. “This could be a late night. We’ve done the photographs and the external examination.”
“Is that all? What’s the story so far?”
“Broken bones for sure, as you’d expect with a body falling down a shaft. Bruising and cuts, but nothing like a knife wound or a bullet hole. And he thinks there may have been a struggle, He’s hopeful of getting DNA from under the fingernails. Did you hear that?”
“I did. I’m taking it in. No obvious cause of death, then?”
“Not yet. We’ll find out later if some of the injuries happened before death.”
“Make sure the clothes are sent to the lab as soon as possible. Sealy is quite capable of bagging them up and leaving them on a shelf until someone asks.”
“Hey-ho,” Halliwell said, “looks like they’re going back in. I’ll need to go. Do you want me to phone you when it’s over?”
“Depends. I’ve had a long day. No later than eleven.”
“Jesus, I hope it isn’t that late. I had a sandwich for lunch and that’s all. I’ll be ravenous.”
How anyone could be ravenous after witnessing an autopsy was beyond Diamond’s understanding.
27
At 10 p.m. Diamond was at home and talking to his cat. An early night was indicated after the tiring day he’d had. Getting to bed in his disabled state was a slow process these days. The problem was that Raffles worked to his own timetable, wanting to go out at 10:30 and return a few minutes after. It wasn’t wise for an elderly cat to stay out all night among younger toms eager to fight for territory. One orange tabby had come visiting several times through the cat flap and sprayed the kitchen, forcing Diamond to keep the flap secured overnight. He couldn’t lift Raffles and shove him out of the back door, so it was down to persuasion, which wasn’t working. Raffles sat eyeing him from across the room, indifferent to every appeal. More of a sit-in than a stand-off.
Twenty minutes later when the phone rang, Raffles hadn’t budged.
In this battle of wills, Diamond had forgotten Keith Halliwell’s offer to call.
“I hope I’m not too late, guv.”
“Too late? No. What time is it?”
“I only just got in. The postmortem finished twenty minutes ago.”
“Got you. And what was the cause of death?”
“Bleeding on the brain.”
“He’s sure?”
“There was nothing so obvious as a bullet wound or a stabbing.”
“You told me that already. So what are we talking about here — a crack on the head?”
“Right.” But there was a note in that one-word response that spoke of problems.
“You don’t sound confident.”
“The difficulty is deciding what happened before and after death. The brain injury killed him.”
“You already said.”
“But most of the damage was to the legs and pelvis because it seems they hit the floor of the quarry first.”
Diamond felt a twinge from his own bad foot.
“The head wasn’t such a mess,” Halliwell went on. “Sealy shaved off the hair and found this injury to the back of the skull, a fracture.”
“Blunt instrument?”
“No, he ruled that out. Hitting someone over the head produces a different kind of injury.”
“More of a dent, I expect.”
“Yes, usually circular, or else stellate — like a starburst. He called Pinto’s a simple linear fracture, like if you drop a hard-boiled egg on the floor.”
Diamond would have preferred not to be told about the egg so soon after supper.
“As he explained it,” Halliwell continued, “our skulls are lined with bony plates and that sort of impact puts pressure on the edges and they snap and look like the cracked egg, see?”
“I can picture it, thank you.”
“When he removed the brain, he found bleeding from the under-surface of the frontal lobes.”
“Hold on. You said he was hit on the back of the head.”
“This was from a secondary fracture at the front.”
“Now you’re losing me.”
“The brain sits inside the skull surrounded by membranes and fluid, so it’s not fixed in position. If it gets a big jolt, it will smack against the thin bone of the orbital roof and fracture it. He said this is called the contre-coup effect. It’s not unusual in traffic accidents.” Halliwell had attended so many autopsies on Diamond’s behalf, he could be excused for trying to sound like the pathologist he wasn’t.
“Can we cut to the chase, Keith?”
“He said it was typical of someone falling backwards and striking the ground.”
Diamond’s theories about the killing were being challenged. “Is that certain? We know Pinto had a fall, straight down the shaft.”
“Yes, but a long fall like that produces horrendous injuries if it’s head first. The skull and cervical spine are forced together and—”
“Spare me the details. If that didn’t cause the injury and he wasn’t bashed with a blunt instrument, what happened?”
“Like I said, a fall.”
“Above ground, is that it?”
“You can’t tell from the injury where it was done.”
“You’re starting to sound more and more like bloody Sealy. Was Pinto alive when it happened?”
“You can tell from the bleeding on the brain.”
“I’ll take your word for that — or Sealy’s. I’m trying to arrive at a likely sequence of events, Keith. It’s not impossible he was attacked above ground and killed outright and dropped down the shaft. But equally he could have got the brain injury from his head hitting the quarry floor, right?”
“Or the wall. The legs hit the floor first. That was obvious from the state of them. But the rest of his body felt the impact and you’d expect the head, being heavy, to strike something. It’s surprising the skull wasn’t more marked. I suppose it could have been protected by an arm or the chest.”
“Were there any other signs of a physical attack?”
“A cut and some bruising on the left cheek.”
“I saw when I did the ID.”
“Could have been caused when he hit the quarry floor.”
“Do bruises still appear after death?”
“Even I know the answer to that one,” Halliwell said. “I’ve been to autopsies where the bruise gets bigger as the day goes on.”
“I’ve got the picture, I think,” Diamond said to save himself from more titbits from the mortuary. “Is Sealy expecting anything from the lab tests?”
“Maybe, but don’t hold your breath. He took clippings from the fingernails. There was slight bruising to the knuckles of the right hand. If there was a fight, there may be some of his attacker’s DNA.”
“That would be a bonus. You left him in no doubt we need those results as soon as possible?”
“He’s aware of it.”
“Okay, I’ve heard enough for now.” Some gratitude was wanted here. “Well done, Keith. I appreciate this, as always. Did you get something to eat?”
“No, and I’m famished, but there’s some liver in the freezer. I’ll fry that with bacon and a couple of tomatoes.”
The man had a cast-iron stomach.
When Diamond put down the phone, his cat had moved and was waiting by the back door. It was 10:30.
Raffles had won.