Playing With Fire

through in places. Glendenning worked away at exposing the tracheal area and bronchial passage, parts of which Banks could see were black with soot or charring, then he bent over the body again. “There’s definitely some thermal injury to the mouth, nose and upper airways,” he said, “but that’s not unusual, and it doesn’t tell us much.” He poked around some more. “There’s soot present, but not a great deal. In fact, in this case, there’s little enough to conclude that he was still breathing, but shallowly.”

“Was he unconscious?” Banks asked.

“Very likely.”

“So that blow to the head might have been administered prior to the starting of the fire? It might have caused the unconsciousness?”

“Hold your horses.” Dr. Glendenning bent over the body again. “I’ve already told you; that blow was more likely caused by the fire or falling debris than by human force. Deposition of soot on the tongue, in the nares, the oropharynx and the nasopharynx, all of which we have here, cannot be held to imply life during the fire.”

“So he could have been already dead?”

Glendenning gave Banks a nasty look and went on. “Traces of soot below the larynx would indicate that the victim was alive at the start of the fire.”

“And is there any?” Banks asked.

“A little. Right now, we need to dig deeper.” Glendenning gave the go-ahead and Wendy Gauge wielded her own scalpel and made the customary Y-shaped incision. The blackened skin, which had been dried by the fire and then wetted by the firefighters’ hoses, peeled back like burned paper. And there it was, the sickly smell of death. Cooked or raw, it amounted to the same thing. “Hmm,” said Glendenning. “You can see how deep the burning goes in some places. It’s never uniform, for a number of reasons, including the fact that your skin’s thicker in some places than in others.”

“Needs to be around you,” said Banks.

Glendenning pointedly ignored him. “There’s some exaggerated redness of the blood,” he said, “which indicates the presence of carbon monoxide. We’ll know the exact amounts when that incompetent pillock Billings brings the results back from the lab.”

Banks remembered the day he found his old chief constable, Jimmy Riddle, dead in his garage from carbon monoxide poisoning. Suicide. His face had been cherry-red. “How much carbon monoxide does it take to cause death?” he asked.

“Anything over forty percent is likely to cause impaired judgment, unconsciousness and death, but it depends on the person’s state of health. The generally accepted fatal level is fifty percent. All right, Wendy, you can go on now.”

“Yes, Doctor.” Wendy Gauge pulled up the chest flap and took a bone cutter to the rib cage, which she cracked open to expose the inner organs.

At that moment, the door opened and Billings appeared from the lab. The scene of carnage being played out on the stainless-steel postmortem table didn’t faze him, but he was clearly terrified of Dr. Glendenning and developed a stutter whenever he had to deal with him. “H-here it is, Doctor,” he said. “The c-carbon monoxide results.”

Glendenning glared at him and studied the report. “Do you want the short answer or the long one?” he said to Banks, after dismissing Billings with an abrupt jerk of his head.

“The short one will do for now.”

“He has a CO level of twenty-eight percent,” Glendenning said. “That’s enough to cause dizziness, a nasty headache, nausea and fatigue.”

“But not death?”

“Not unless he had some serious respiratory or heart disease. Which we’d know about if we had his medical history. In general terms, though, no, it’s not enough to cause death. And given the levels of soot and particulate matter in the airways, I’d say he was alive, but most likely unconscious, when the fire started, in which case the cause is probably asphyxia caused by smoke inhalation. And don’t forget, there are plenty of other nasty gases released during fires, including ammonia and cyanide. A full analysis will take more time.”

“What about tox screening?”

“Don’t try to tell me my job, laddie,” Dr. Glendenning growled. “It’s being done.”

“And dental records?”

“We can certainly get impressions,” said Glendenning, “but you can hardly check his chart against every bloody dentist in the country.”

“There’s a chance he may have been local,” said Banks, “so we’ll start with the Eastvale area.”

“Aye, well, that’s your job.” Glendenning glanced at the clock and turned back to the body. “There’s still a lot to be done here,” he said, “and I’m afraid I can’t promise you I’ll get to the second victim tonight. I might even miss my dinner engagement as it is.”

Wendy Gauge removed the inner organs en bloc and placed them on the dissecting table.

“Well,” said Banks, looking at Hamilton and Annie, “whether our victim was hit on the head, whether his brains blew out through his skull, or whether he had a bad heart and died of low-level carbon monoxide inhalation, we know from the evidence so far that someone set the fire, so we’re looking at murder. The best thing we can do now is try to find out just who the hell he was.” Banks glanced again at the loathsome hulk on the table, the charred and leathery skin, the exposed intestines and dribbles of reddish-pink blood. “And,” he added, “let’s hope we’re not dealing with a serial arsonist. I wouldn’t want to be attending any more of these postmortems if I could help it.”

“Isn’t this intimate?” said Maria Phillips, settling into her chair at a dimpled copper-topped table in a quiet corner of the Queen’s Arms. “Go on, then, I’ll be a devil and have a Campari and soda, please.”

Banks hadn’t asked her if she wanted a drink yet, but that didn’t seem to bother Maria as she set her faux fur coat on the chair next to her, patted her bottle-blond curls, then reached into her handbag for her compact and lipstick, with which she busied herself while Banks went to the bar. He had given her a ring at the community center that afternoon and discovered she was working late, which suited him fine. He was glad to be in a friendly pub after the ordeal of the postmortem and wanted nothing more than to be surrounded by ordinary, living people and to flush the taste of death by fire out of his system with a stiff drink or two.

“Evening, Cyril,” he said to the landlord. “Pint of bitter and a large Laphroaig for me and a Campari and soda for the lady, please.”

Cyril raised his eyebrows.

“Don’t ask,” Banks said.

“You know me. The soul of discretion.” Cyril started pulling the beer. “Wouldn’t have said she was your type, though.”

Banks gave him a look.

“Nasty fire down Molesby way.”

“Tell me about it,” said Banks.

“You involved already?”

“From the start. It’s been a long day.”

Cyril looked at the scratch on Banks’s cheek. “You look as if you’ve been in the wars, too,” he said.

Banks put his hand up and touched the scratch. “It’s nothing. Just a disagreement with a sharp twig.”

“Pull the other one,” said Cyril.

“It’s true,” said Banks.

“But you can’t talk about the case, I know.”

“Nothing much to say, even if I could. We don’t know anything yet except two people died. Cheers.” Banks paid and carried the drinks back to the table, where Maria sat expectantly, perfectly manicured hands resting on the table in front of her, scarlet nails as long as a cat’s claws. She was an unfashionably buxom and curvaceous woman in her early thirties, and she would look far more attractive, Banks had always thought, if she got rid of all the war paint and dressed for comfort rather than effect. And the perfume. Especially the perfume. It rolled over him in heavy, acrid waves and soured his beer. He took a sip of Laphroaig and felt it burn pleasantly all the way down. He didn’t usually drink shorts in the Queen’s Arms, but this evening was an exception justified by a particularly nasty postmortem and Maria Phillips both within the space of a couple of hours.

Maria made it clear that she noticed the scratch on Banks’s cheek, but that she wasn’t going to ask about it,