Izzy Weaver has already started the post-mortem when Leo arrives. ‘I’m still standing,’ she announces, inexplicably.
‘Morning,’ Leo offers in return.
‘Afternoon,’ Ffion says pointedly. The clock on the wall reads 12.01 p.m. Izzy continues her careful examination of Rhys Lloyd’s body, while the radio plays quietly in the background.
‘Which country does iconic pop trio A-ha come from?’
‘Norway,’ says Izzy.
Ah, Leo realises: that’s where ‘I’m Still Standing’ had come from. Elton John, obviously. 1983, if there’s a bonus point on offer.
‘What time did you finish up at The Shore yesterday?’ he asks Ffion.
‘What are you, my mam?’
‘I was only asking.’ Talk about prickly. Ffion’s scowling now, as though Leo was checking up on her, instead of simply making conversation. ‘Any cause of death yet?’ he says to Izzy.
‘Patience, grasshopper.’ Izzy examines the pulpy mess that was once Rhys Lloyd’s face. For a few minutes, the only sound in the room is the tinny noise of the radio quiz. ‘Dissection scissors,’ Izzy says, and Leo is just thinking I’ve never heard of them – who’s the lead singer? when the mortuary technician crosses the room and hands them to her.
Izzy hands them straight back. ‘Dissection scissors, Elijah!’ He ambles across to the trolley to find the right ones and Izzy rolls her eyes. ‘See what I have to deal with?’
‘Sorry,’ Elijah says, not sounding it. ‘Miles away.’
‘If only.’ Izzy looks at Leo. ‘Last week he sent the wrong bloods to the lab, and a sixty-six-year-old man with multiple organ failure came back pregnant.’
She circles her scalpel around Lloyd’s face.
‘These injuries were sustained prior to death.’
Ffion comes closer, to look. ‘Did they kill him? There are rocks in the lake beneath the decks – could he have fallen on to them?’
‘I’ll know more once I take a look at the brain, but there are no facial fractures, and if it were rocks, as you suggest, I’d expect more diffuse abrasions. What we’ve got here are more localised lacerations – more consistent with a sharp object.’
‘A weapon?’
‘Frankie Goes to Hollywood,’ Izzy says, to the radio. She bends over Lloyd’s face, poking at his injuries with a pair of long, narrow tweezers. ‘Interesting.’ She snaps her fingers and Elijah passes her a sterile pot from a stack on the trolley next to her. Leo wonders if working for Izzy Weaver is better or worse than working for Crouch.
‘What is it?’ he asks.
Izzy screws on the lid, then hands Leo the pot, at the bottom of which is a tiny, blood-covered dot. ‘A fragment of whatever was used to give your man his new look. I’ll clean it up and take a closer look at it when I’m done here.’
Leo holds up the pot to show Ffion. Beneath the blood, something metallic glints.
‘And if that isn’t enough to upgrade your unexplained death to suspicious,’ Izzy says, ‘take a look at this.’ She walks around the slab to where Lloyd’s waxy feet fall at ten to two, and points to the outside of each ankle. A faint indentation runs horizontally above the ankle bone.
Leo is beginning to form a picture. ‘Lloyd was restrained. Someone hit him over the head, bound his feet and then dumped him in the lake.’
‘A fair assumption. Although I don’t see the same marks around his wrists, which is interesting.’
‘Because the rope wasn’t to tie him up,’ Ffion says slowly. ‘It was to weigh him down. To drown him. Only the rope broke, or came untied, or whatever, and he floated back up.’ She looks at Izzy. ‘Any fibres?’
‘After a night in the lake? Come on, DC Morgan, this isn’t Netflix. The best I can offer you is a pattern match if you bring me the rope. Now, let’s open him up, shall we?’
Leo will never get used to the casual brutality with which a body is opened up. The clean letter ‘Y’ sliced through skin and muscle; the briskness of the saw as it makes short work of the ribcage. He keeps his eyes on the clock on the wall, until Izzy starts talking again.
‘Well, he didn’t drown.’
Leo peers into Lloyd’s chest cavity. ‘How can you tell?’
‘Five years at medical school, several years in histopathology, and twenty years as a forensic pathologist.’ Izzy says drily. Ffion snorts. ‘If you take in water, it reacts with the protein lining your airwaves and produces froth. See the trachea, here?’ Izzy points. ‘And the bronchi? Clear.’