‘You’re right, I suppose. I should restrict myself to the physical evidence and let you deal with the psychology.’
‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Fry, noting the pathologist’s defeated air.
‘It’s all right.’
‘And another thing. Are we supposing that he set off walking down the road and that the first people who came along were some opportunist muggers who just happened to be driving over the Snake Pass in a blizzard?’
‘I couldn’t possibly say.’
‘I’ll take that as a no.’
Fry glanced at the body. It had been cleaned and covered up. But the face of the man was still visible. He was aged about thirty, she supposed, a little thick about the neck but otherwise in reasonable shape. His hair was dark, cut short and tidy, with a few flecks of grey at the temples. The stubble growing on his cheeks looked wrong; he was a man who would normally have been close-shaven. She looked at his hands. They were strong, but free of calluses, and the nails were trimmed.
‘What about the injuries?’ she said.
‘There is one major ventral wound to the abdomen, which opened up the abdominal cavity and the lateral muscles and almost severed his left arm above the elbow.’
‘That was the blade of the snowplough, presumably?’
‘All I know is that it was a sharp metal object about ten feet wide and weighing approximately half a ton,’ said Mrs Van Doon.
‘Right.’
‘There are a number of abrasions on the head, face, back and legs, probably caused by the body being dragged along the road surface for a short distance. There’s plenty of bruising, and he also has two cracked ribs on the right side of his chest from a fall.’
‘A fall?’
‘All right, look. From the position in which he was found, I’d say that particular damage might have been caused by him being dropped by the snowplough on to some small rocks by the side of the road. He was found lying half on the rocks, and half off. A few inches to either side and he would have had a much easier landing – on snow or soft ground.’
‘I don’t suppose it made much difference to him by then.’
‘Not a bit. All the injuries I have mentioned were suffered post-mortem.’
‘After he was dead.’
‘That’s usually what post-mortem means. Otherwise, it would come as a bit of a shock to my customers when I remove their internal organs.’
‘The one million pound question, then …’ said Fry.
‘What did kill him, you mean?’
‘Of course.’
‘I’ll need to do some more tests,’ said the pathologist. ‘Contrary to your inspector’s impression, I do actually have the services of a modern laboratory to call on.’
‘But …?’
‘Ineed to study the configuration of the major wound more closely before I can be certain of anything.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean by that.’
‘Circumstantial evidence,’ said Mrs Van Doon. She pointed at one of the plastic bags containing the victim’s clothes. ‘Your inspector was also wrong when he said there was no blood. There was blood. Not much, but some. It wasn’t noticeable at the scene because it had been absorbed by his clothing. He was wearing a thermal vest, a shirt and cotton sweater. A small amount of blood had penetrated the layers of clothing to stain the inner lining of his suit jacket, which is why it wasn’t visible. It was lucky that he had been dead for some time when the snowplough hit him. If there had been a lot of bleeding from the major wound, I might not have noticed anything.’
Fry was listening carefully, trying to work out the direction of the pathologist’s thinking. ‘Do you mean you think there is an earlier wound which has been masked by the later one?’
‘Exactly. At least, that is one theory I’ll be exploring. The edge of the snowplough blade is regular in shape. I’m told it’s a new one, which is useful. But there’s an irregularity in the shape of the wound which matches the position of the bloodstain on the clothing. We need to do some matching. And I need to go deeper into the tissues to tell you more.’
‘Deeper? A knife?’
‘Possibly. My conclusions will be in my report.’
‘So he was stabbed, then dumped from a vehicle.’
‘If that’s the case, then it helps your time frame, too, doesn’t it?’
‘But he was already dead some time before he was found …’
‘Yes, but if he was dumped from a vehicle, when was he dumped? My impression from the scene was that the body would have been in full view of passing traffic, if it hadn’t been for the snow. But then, I suppose there was no traffic on that road after the snow had fallen.’
Fry thought carefully about what she was saying. ‘If somebody dumped him, it has to have been when it was already snowing heavily enough to have discouraged drivers from attempting the Snake Pass, so that there was no one passing to be a witness. Probably the snow-warning lights at the bottom of the road were already on, so drivers were turning back. We can check what time they were switched on. But it also has to have been before the road became completely impassable. In a heavy fall of snow, that can’t have been more than a half-hour window of opportunity. And we have to be looking for a four-wheel drive vehicle of some kind. No one in his right mind would have risked it otherwise. They could have found themselves stranded up there with a dead body in the boot. That narrows it down a lot. Thank you.’
Mrs Van Doon brushed a stray lock of hair from her forehead and smiled tiredly. ‘You can deduce so much from a small amount of blood,’ she said. ‘I agree with your inspector on that, at least. Blood does make a body rather more satisfactory.’
Ben Cooper escorted the visitors back down the stairs and along the corridor towards reception. Alison Morrissey walked quickly, looking straight ahead, but Frank Baine tended to linger, glancing curiously into the offices they passed. Cooper was eyeing the slim black briefcase that Morrissey carried. He would have loved to get hold of all the files that he had glimpsed in there, and to immerse himself in the details of the story whose surface they had barely scratched during the meeting. The LIO’s briefing had been good, but it didn’t tell him anything about the human dimensions of the tragedy, which he could see were what drove Alison Morrissey.
As soon as the thought crossed his mind that Morrissey might let him read the files if he asked her, Cooper dismissed the notion as mere escapism. There was more than enough for him to do right now. Just because something interested him, it didn’t mean it was his job to look into it.
As Cooper held open the security door for the visitors to leave, Morrissey turned to look at him. Her gaze was direct and disconcerting. He felt as though she were seeing him fully, reading everything about him from his face and his manner, in a way that people rarely did. Cooper self-consciously straightened his shoulders and felt the beginnings of a flush rising in his neck.
‘And what did you think?’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t you want to know what happened?’
‘It’s not my job to take a view on the subject,’ said Cooper. ‘I just do what I’m told.’
She stared at him, with a small, sceptical smile. He hadn’t been sure before, but now he could see that her eyes were pale grey. Cooper felt