Caroline and Dexter stayed outside the inner cordon, the area that had to be kept forensically secure. Right from the start of any investigation, one of the main focuses had to be on ensuring they didn’t cause any potential problems further down the line. It had been known for defence briefs to get their clients off a charge based on the same officers having attended the crime scene and later arrested the defendant. When the police then stood up in court to claim forensic accuracy, the case would fall apart over the possibility of cross-contamination.
‘What sort of build?’ Caroline asked.
‘Runner’s build. You know the sort. Slim. Wouldn’t have lasted five minutes out here with the temperatures the way they’ve been. If it weren’t for the blood, I’d have said it looks like he’s sat down for a rest and frozen to death.’
They got as close as they could, watching as the body was moved to allow them sight of the back of the victim’s head, which was caked with dried blood.
‘Not much on the wall of the arch, is there?’ Dexter asked.
‘No, I was going to say,’ PC Hughes replied. ‘You’d expect to see a lot more, particularly with a head wound. There’s not much on the ground, either.’
Another car arrived at the cordon. Dr David Duncan, the pathologist, spotted Caroline and walked towards them. ‘Beautiful morning for it, isn’t it?’ he said, his smooth voice alone raising the temperature a couple of degrees.
‘Not for him, it isn’t,’ Caroline said, nodding her head in the direction of the arch under the viaduct.
Dr Duncan smiled, the grey bristles of his beard moving as he did so. ‘Well, we can’t please them all, can we? Still, he’s our client today, so I’d better go and make myself look presentable.’
Caroline and Dexter went and sat back in the car, Caroline switching the engine back on to circulate some heat.
‘I don’t think we should hang around any longer than we need to,’ Caroline said, rubbing her hands to try and keep warm. ‘But if he’s been killed then put in that position, we’re going to need to get the whole area searched. I don’t envy the poor buggers who’ll have to do that. Just make sure they wrap up warm, at least.’
Caroline’s phone rang, so she pressed to answer it through her car stereo. It was DC Sara Henshaw.
‘Guv, are you still down at Seaton?’
‘Ish. Middle of bloody nowhere, to be more precise. What’s up?’
‘We’ve just had a misper passed to us,’ Sara said.
Dexter and Caroline looked at each other. A missing person reported on the same morning as a body was discovered didn’t tend to be a coincidence.
‘Go on,’ Caroline said.
‘A woman called Sandra Forbes filed the report. Says her husband, Martin Forbes, has been missing since last night, when he went out for a run. Last seen leaving his house on the edge of Seaton.’
‘Let me guess the next bit. Late forties or early fifties, slim build, dressed in running gear?’
‘Got it in one. Not a bad start to the morning, eh?’
‘Not a bad start at all. Can you text the details over to me, please? We’ll wait for Dr Duncan to do his bit, then we’ll pop in and see Mrs Forbes on the way back.’
‘Will do.’
‘Cheers, Sara.’
Caroline ended the call and turned to Dexter. ‘There we are,’ she said. ‘Now what was all that worry about easing me back in gently?’
4
A short while later, Caroline and Dexter stood at the edge of the inner cordon and watched as Dr Duncan carried out his examination. They didn’t know anybody — apart, perhaps, from Dr Duncan — who particularly wanted to look at dead bodies close-up.
One of the underlying principles of forensic evidence was that of contact. When Locard said that every contact left a trace, this became the foundation on which forensic evidence as a marker of guilt was based. It was incredibly unlikely that a murder suspect had the victim’s blood on their clothing because a police officer had forgotten to wash his hands after attending to the victim, then accidentally or otherwise smeared it all over the suspect’s jumper. But ‘incredibly unlikely’ still didn’t cut it in a court of law whose threshold for conviction was guilt beyond all reasonable doubt. Anything which allowed a defence lawyer to introduce the slightest level of doubt in a jury could be catastrophic.
After he’d concluded his initial observations, Dr Duncan skipped back over to Caroline and Dexter, looking more like a man who’d just proudly completed a particularly challenging jigsaw puzzle than someone who’d spent the last few minutes poking a dead body.
‘Very interesting!’ he said, beaming. ‘This one’ll keep you busy.’
‘Go on. How bad is it?’ Caroline asked.
‘Well, he’s dead,’ Dr Duncan replied. ‘So pretty bad, from his perspective. In terms of the cause of death, there’s a pretty clear blow to the skull, towards the back but slightly towards his left-hand side. Impossible to say just yet whether he was facing the person who did it, but if he was I’d put money on them being right-handed. The opposite, if they were behind him.’
‘He’s fallen backwards against the wall, though, so does that mean he was facing them?’ Dexter asked.
‘Ah, no. See, this is where things get interesting. There’s blood matting in his hair, but next to nothing on the brickwork he’s propped up against. Certainly nowhere near the amount we’d expect to see if he ended up there immediately after the blunt trauma. Having said that, there are also signs of strangulation. There’s petechial haemorrhaging in the eyes, for instance. So it’s entirely possible the blow happened earlier but didn’t kill him, and he was then strangled. We won’t be able to say for certain until we’ve got him on the table. But there really isn’t anything in the initial indications that suggest
