‘A hundred yards walk from the centre,’ he said, ‘hidden from the road by trees, very little traffic. I think we’ve found the spot, Winsome. It would have been very bad luck indeed if he’d been spotted here, and we can assume that he probably had a contingency plan. Professionals usually do. No prints. Car rented under an assumed name.’
Banks heard a car screech to a halt on the road behind his Porsche, then the sound of a car door slamming. Joanna Passero appeared in the entrance to the lane and started walking towards them. About the same time that Banks held up his hand and called to her to stay back, she went over on her ankle and cursed, then grabbed on to a roadside tree branch to keep her balance and cried out again. Thorns. Banks started to walk back towards the main road, still keeping close to the hedgerow. It wasn’t long before he came up to a fuming Joanna Passero standing, or rather hopping, at the entrance to the track, one leg bent up behind her, like a stork’s, grasping a shiny black shoe in one hand and wobbling dangerously. ‘Banks, you bastard! You just made me break a bloody heel! Do you know how much these shoes cost? What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’
‘Just doing my job,’ said Banks. He approached her gingerly and explained about the need for the killer to hide his car, and this being a likely spot.
As he talked, she visibly relaxed and leaned against his car, keeping her stockinged foot just above the rough surface. ‘You could have bloody warned me,’ she said. ‘That road surface is lethal.’
‘I’m sorry. I only thought of it when we got to the roundabout. It’s like that in a real investigation sometimes. Anyway, I think we should get the CSIs down here. We found some tyre tracks, and there may be footprints. We’ll stay here and protect the scene. Would you mind driving on to St Peter’s and asking the lads to send someone over asap?’ He glanced down at her foot. ‘Sorry about the heel. I’ve got some old wellies in the boot, if that’s any help, though they might be a bit big for you. How’s your ankle? Not sprained or anything, I hope? Can I help you back to your car?’
Joanna glared, as if she wanted to throttle Banks. She turned and hopped back to her Peugeot with as much dignity as she could manage and drove off in a spray of roadside dirt and gravel.
‘See what I mean?’ said Winsome, standing behind him, arms folded. ‘Childish.’
‘Who?’ said Banks, with a straight face. ‘Me or her?’
The mortuary, along with Dr Glendenning’s recently modernised post-mortem suite, was in the basement of the old Eastvale Infirmary. Banks thought it would be a good idea to take Inspector Passero along. She probably wouldn’t learn anything of relevance to her case, but if she was working with Banks, it was time she got used to the late hours. And the blood and guts. It was after five on a Friday afternoon, and a Professional Standards officer would likely be well on her way home by now, if not sitting back with her feet up in front of the telly with a large gin and tonic. Or was Joanna more the cocktail party and theatre type? Probably.
She turned up in a new pair of flat-heeled pumps that she had clearly bought that afternoon at Stead and Simpson’s in the market square. No fancy Italian shoe shops in Eastvale. The new shoes didn’t make as much noise as Banks’s black slip-ons as the two of them walked down the high, gloomy corridor to their appointment. The walls were covered in old green tiles. DC Gerry Masterson had told Banks earlier that Robbie Quinn had been brought in to identify his father’s body that morning, so the formalities were done with for the moment. Dr Glendenning had the coroner’s permission to proceed with his post-mortem.
Banks gave a slight shudder, the way he always did in the Victorian infirmary, and it wasn’t caused by the permanent chill that seemed to infuse the air as much as by the smell of formaldehyde and God only knew what else.
‘Something wrong?’ asked Joanna, her voice echoing from the tiles.
‘No. This place always gives me the creeps, that’s all. It’s probably haunted. There never seems to be anyone else here. And I can just imagine all the patients back in Victorian times, the primitive instruments and lack of anaesthetic. It must have been butchery. A nightmare. Corridors of blood.’
‘You’ve got imagination, I’ll give you that,’ Joanna said. ‘But you must have been misinformed. They had anaesthetics in Victorian times. At least they used chloroform or ether from the 1850s on, and I think it said over the door this place wasn’t built until 1869. I also think you’ll find the instruments were perfectly adequate for their purposes back then.’
‘University education?’ Banks said.
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, it still gives me the creeps. Here we are.’
They donned the gowns and masks provided by one of Dr Glendenning’s young assistants and joined the doctor, who was just about to begin.
‘Tut tut, tardy again, Banks,’ said Dr Glendenning. ‘You know how I hate tardiness. And me working late on a Friday especially to accommodate you.’
‘Sorry, doc. You know I’m eternally grateful.’
‘Who’s your date?’
Banks glanced towards Joanna. ‘This is Inspector Joanna Passero. Professional Standards.’
‘In trouble again, Banks?’
‘She’s here to observe.’
‘Of course.’ Dr Glendenning scrutinised Joanna, who blushed a little. ‘Ever been to a post-mortem before, lassie?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I can’t honestly say that I have.’
‘Aye... well, at least you’re a fellow Scot, by the sound of you.’
‘Edinburgh.’
‘Good. Excellent. Just try not to be sick on the floor.’
‘Now you’ve got the Scottish mutual admiration society well and truly off the ground,’ said Banks, ‘do you think you could get started, doc? We’ve still got a murder to investigate.’
Dr Glendenning scowled at Banks. ‘Sassenach.’ Then he winked at Joanna, who smiled. He adjusted his microphone, called over his first assistant and took the scalpel she handed him. Quinn’s clothes were already lying on a table by the wall. They would be searched and put into labelled paper bags — not plastic, which didn’t breathe and caused mould to grow on moist fabrics — and sent over to Evidence, signed for at every stage of the way to ensure chain of custody.
Before beginning his incision to get at Quinn’s insides, Glendenning studied the external details of the body, had his assistant take a number of photographs, then he leaned over and slowly pulled out the crossbow bolt, which had already been tested for prints, to no avail. There was no blood, of course, as Quinn’s heart had stopped pumping some time ago, but the sucking sound it made when it finally came out made Banks feel queasy, nonetheless. He glanced at Joanna from the corner of his eye. She wasn’t showing any reaction. She must be pretty good at hiding her feelings, Banks thought, though maybe you didn’t need feelings to work for Professional Standards.
Dr Glendenning laid the bolt down next to a ruler fixed to one of the lab tables. ‘A twenty-inch Beman ICS LightningBolt,’ he said. ‘Carbon, not aluminium, in my opinion. That’s fairly common, I should say.’
‘How do you know the make?’ Banks asked.
‘It says so right there, down the shaft. Now, a lot depends on the power of the crossbow your man was using, but you’re generally talking a hundred-and-fifty-pound draw, maybe even as much as two hundred pounds these days, so I think if I take the measurement of how deep it went into him and an average of the bow’s pressure, then we might get an approximation of the distance it was fired from.’