“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 and 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 fibers?”
“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 letterYsliced through skin and muscle, the briskness of the saw as it makes short work of the rib cage. 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 dryly. Ffion snorts. “If you take in water, it reacts with the protein lining your airways and produces froth. See the trachea, here?” Izzy points. “And the bronchi? Clear.”
“So he was dead when he went into the water?”
“Correct. The lake was merely a method of disposal.”
Leo looks at Rhys Lloyd’s mutilated body. The man had a squeaky-clean image. He’d gone to London to seek his fortune, then returned with a stunning wife and two beautiful daughters. He had given his time to charity concerts, had hundreds of thousands of fans. Yet someone had hated him enough to kill him.
“What now?” Ffion says. They’re standing in the mortuary car park, both having a cigarette. Leo has washed his hands and divested himself of his PPE, but the stench of death still clings to him, and tobacco feels like the lesser of two evils.
“Crime scene.” Leo blows a smoke ring. “Scenes.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “The location of the assault to the head, the boat—assuming he was in a boat—and wherever it entered the water. And potentially at least one other, given we don’t actually know what killed him.”
Izzy Weaver refuses to commit on the precise cause of death—toxicology and tissue samples will tell them more—but she has made the most important call. Rhys Lloyd did not die of natural causes. Crouch can press Go on the Major Crime Investigation team.
Leo’s phone rings. “Guess who?” He shows Ffion the screen.
Ffion shrugs. “Don’t answer it.”
“He’ll keep ringing.”
“I’m not going to the fucking briefing, all right? They bore the shit out of me.”
“They bore the shit out of everyone. We still have to go.”
“I work better alone.” Ffion grinds out her roll-up. “I do my own thing and I get results.” The ringing stops as Leo’s voicemail cuts in. Seconds later, it starts again, Crouch’s name flashing on the screen. “This wholeteamstuff—it’s not me. I’m like…” Ffion fishes for the thought, then snaps her fingers. “The Lone Ranger.”
“Right.”
“Just tell him I’m not coming. I’ll tell him myself, if you’re not man enough.”
The phone rings again. This time, Leo answers it, speaking before Crouch can get a word in. “Boss, I’m just finishing something up, but DC Morgan’s right here. I’ll pass you over.” He hands the phone to Ffion, who glares at him.
“Hi.”
Leo doesn’t know what Crouch is saying, but a deep crimson flush creeps across Ffion’s face.
“Yes, sir. Five o’clock? No problem. I’ll see you there.”