work. Webster shuddered to think what the blockage was caused by. Frost tapped the attendant on the shoulder. “The Ben Cornish post-mortem?”
“All over,” said the attendant, too engrossed in his work to stop. “The pathologist has gone, but Dr. Slomon’s in the office waiting to see you.”
In the office Slomon was pacing up and down, very agitated and worried.
As soon as Frost entered, he dashed over and grabbed him by the arm. “Thank goodness you are here, Inspector.” His worry increased when he saw Webster. “Who is this?”
Frost introduced his assistant. Slomon hesitated. “It’s a bit delicate,” he said, making it clear he wanted Webster to leave.
“If it’s police business,” answered Frost, ‘then he’s in on it.”
Slomon compressed his lips, checked the hall to make sure no eavesdroppers were hovering, then closed the door firmly. He lowered his voice. “We’re in trouble, Inspector.”
“I’m always in trouble,” said Frost, finding himself a chair. He didn’t like the way the doctor had said “We’re in trouble.” His tone seemed to imply that Slomon was in trouble but wanted Frost to share a large part of the blame. He listened warily to what the man had to say.
“No-one could examine a body properly in the conditions we had to cope with last night, Inspector. They were intolerable and if we missed anything it was through no fault of our own. It’s important that we each stress that fact in our reports. People are always too ready to point the accusing finger.”
Now Frost was really worried. What the hell had they missed last night? “What did the post-mortem show, Doc?”
“Come with me.” Slomon took Frost’s arm and steered him into the adjoining storage area with its neatly tagged refrigerated units set into the wall like filing-cabinet drawers. “Where are the frozen peas?” asked Frost. Slomon was in no mood for jokes. He tugged at one of the drawers, and a body, smoking with curling wisps of frozen carbon dioxide, slid silently forward on rollers.
The haggard, strangely clean face of Ben Cornish stared up, horrified as if in protest at the indignities the postmortem had subjected him to. “Look at this!” Slomon indicated a nasty-looking green-tinged bruise in the area below the corpse’s left eye.
Puzzled, Frost crouched over the body. “How come we didn’t spot this last night, Doc? It looks so bloody obvious now.”
“Last night,” explained Slomon. ‘he was covered with filth and vomit.
This only came to light when the body was stripped and washed clean.
There was no way I could have spotted it.”
He pulled the sheet down to expose the torso and upper legs. The dead man’s right arm was one angry mass of suppurating sores where he had been injecting himself. The chest and abdomen were vividly slashed with extensive autopsy wounds, which had been crudely restitched after flaps of flesh had been torn back to facilitate the removal of internal organs from the stomach cavity. The flesh of the stomach was one massive, sprawling, yellowy-green bruise.
Slomon traced the bruised area with his finger. “As you can see he was beaten up pretty badly just before he died.”
Frost’s heart dropped down to his own stomach cavity. He was beginning to realize what was coming. Did a fist do this?”
“Not a fist,” replied Slomon. “A boot. He was punched, knocked down, then, when he was helpless on the floor, his assailant brought up his foot and stamped with all his weight on the abdomen.”
Frost gritted his teeth and winced. He could feel the pain shooting across his own stomach. But Slomon hadn’t finished. From a stainless-steel cabinet in the corner he brought over two sealed specimen jars containing a mass of mangled human offal half immersed in a bloodied liquid. The sight of it made Webster flinch, and his stomach gave one or two protesting churns, but Slomon lectured dispassionately as if to students. “As you can see, his liver has virtually exploded. In the whole of my professional career I have never seen such terrible internal injuries. Further, the blows actually split the pancreas, and the main blood vessel to the heart is torn. Really shocking injuries.”
“And that’s what killed him, Doc?” Frost asked, fearful that the sheet might be pulled down to reveal further horrors.
“They would have killed him,” answered Slomon. “In fact there is no way he could have recovered from such injuries. However, the initial blows to the abdomen caused the expulsion of the stomach contents. He choked on his own vomit, so, to my credit, in spite of the appalling conditions, my diagnosis was perfectly correct.”
To your credit? thought Frost. No-one comes out of this with any credit, Slomon. He stuck his hands deeply into his mac pockets and swore softly to himself. Why the hell wasn’t any of this spotted last night? Damn bloody Slomon for not wanting to get his feet wet, and damn my own bloody incompetence. I was so keen to get away to that lousy party, I bungled the investigation. I should have insisted Slomon do a proper job.
“I don’t want the body touched further,” he said. “It’ll have to be photographed. I’ll send one of our blokes down… and I’ll need his clothes for forensic examination.” He looked again at the dead face and then recalled the scene in the toilet the previous night. The cubicle with the splintered door. He could picture the scene. Ben cowering inside in terror while his assailant kicked the door down, then dragged him out and stamped him to death. He draped the sheet over the dead face and pushed the drawer firmly shut. “Come on, son,” he said. “Work to do.”
“Don’t forget to emphasize in your report that we did everything possible last night,” called Slomon as they were leaving. Frost waved a vague hand. He would report exactly what happened, nothing more, nothing less. He had no doubt that Slomon’s report would dump all the blame on the police, but he hadn’t time to play such games.
They pushed through the swing doors and out into the mortuary lobby, where a side door had been opened to allow the two undertakers to carry a coffined body straight through to the waiting Rolls Royce hearse. Behind his desk the mortuary attendant was booking out the corpse and adjusting his stock records. He was whistling happily as if someone had tipped him a fiver. There was no sign of the death certificate on his clipboard.
Outside the air smelled marvellously fresh and untainted. As they waited for the hearse to move away, Frost said, “Why would anyone want to do that to a poor old sod like Ben?”
“Robbery,” suggested Webster.
“He had bugger all to pinch,” said Frost.
“Drugs?” was Webster’s next suggestion. “Another drug addict wanted Ben’s heroin so he killed him for it?”
For a few seconds Frost stared into space. Webster wondered if he had been listening, but then Frost turned and said, “I’ve been bloody stupid, son. I knew I’d missed something.”
“What?” Webster asked.
“His carrier bag. That’s where he kept all his worldly possessions food, odds and ends, his hypodermic. He was never without it. But it wasn’t with his body last night. Whoever killed him took it.”
He drummed his fingers on the dashboard, then leaned over for the handset and called Johnny Johnson at the station. He wanted to know if Wally Peters was still in the cells.
“No, thank God,” was the reply. “We kicked him out half an hour ago. Now we’ve got all the windows open, and we’re burning sulphur candles and scratching like mad.”
“I want him brought in,” ordered Frost. “Get the word out to all units.”
“Brought in, Jack? Why?”
“We’ve just come from the post-mortem. Ben Cornish was murdered.”
“Murdered?” gasped Johnson. “Why would anyone want to murder him?”
“Probably for the few bits and pieces in his carrier bag,” replied Frost. “It’s missing… and Wally was seen lurking about outside those toilets last night. So I want him.”
“Right,” said Johnny. “Consider it done. By the way, Jack, you won’t be long, will you? Mr. Mullett’s got Sir Charles Miller, his son, and his solicitor sitting in his office, all craving an audience with you about the hit-and- run.”
“Flaming hell!” cried Frost, “I forgot about them. We’re on our way shouldn’t be more than ten minutes.”
