‘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
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feet wide and weighing approximately half a tun/ said Mrs Van Doon.
‘Right.’
‘There arc a number of abrasions on the head, face, back and legs, probably caused by the body being dragged along the road surface (or 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.’
‘[ don’t suppose it made much difference to him by then.’
‘Not a bit. All the injuries I have mentioned were suffered postmortem.’
‘After he was dead.’
‘That’s usually what postmortem 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 JiJ 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 … ?’
‘I need 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.’
y v
‘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 wtn 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
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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 luckv that he had been dead for some time when the
j
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
I o O J ‘
an earlier wound which has been masked by the later one?’
e
‘Hxactly. At least, that is one theory I’ll be exploring. Th 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, it it hadn’t been tor 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 oi opportunity. And we have to be looking for a four-wheel drive vehicle of
o
some kind. No one in his right mind would have risked it otherwise. They could have found themselves stranded up
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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 tircdly. ‘You can deduce so much from a small amount of blood/ she said. ‘I agree with your inspector on that, at least. Blood JoT make a body rather more satisfactory.’
Ben Cooper escorted the visitors back down the stairs and along the corridor towards reception. Alison Morrissev walked
O I v
quickly, looking straight ahead, but Frank Bainc tended to linger, glancing curiously into the offices they passed.
