CHARLES DICKENS
“WELL, WE’RE NOT likely to get an accurate temperature on this one, are we?” Kate Ling said dryly. She squatted beside the body, balancing on the balls of her feet with an ease that made Kincaid envy her thigh muscles. On anyone else the position would have looked awkward, but the Home Office pathologist even managed to carry off her white crime-scene boiler suit with grace.
Kincaid had worked with Kate Ling on a number of cases, and found her not only good at her job but genuinely interested in helping the police with their investigation, a trait not every pathologist exhibited. Some of them seemed to become almost territorial about the bodies in their possession, behaving as if it were a point of pride to reveal as little information as possible.
Kate pulled on her thin latex gloves. “Anything to go on here? Witnesses? Missing person connected with the scene?” She probed the corpse gently with a gloved finger.
“Nothing so far,” Kincaid told her, with a glance at Farrell for confirmation.
“And no identifiers?”
“Nothing obvious.” Farrell squatted beside her, his notebook open. “Unless there’s something under the body. We’ll do a grid sift, of course, once you’re finished here.”
“Odd.” A tiny crease puckered Kate’s forehead. “I’ve seen clothing literally fused to the skin, but the condition of the body doesn’t indicate that sort of heat. Nor is there any jewelry that I can see.” She lifted what remained of the victim’s left hand, and Kincaid heard a stifled protest from someone in the group. “Some trace of a wedding ring usually survives a fire, even if the digits are completely destroyed.”
“Any guess as to the victim’s age?” Kincaid asked.
“Hard to say without X-rays and measurements. She seems on the slight side, but the heat can cause shrinkage as well.”
“Race?”
“The lab analysis will tell us, and I’d rather not speculate in the meantime.”
“A homeless person would explain the lack of jewelry,” Cullen suggested. “Someone sheltering from the rain, maybe starting a little fire to keep warm, not realizing the furniture was highly flammable.”
“When have you seen a rough sleeper without a bin liner or a shopping trolley full of possessions?” Inspector Bell said dismissively. “And surely someone would have noticed a naked person wandering the streets?”
“You’ve a better suggestion?” retorted Cullen.
“Any lividity visible?” Kincaid asked, heading off an altercation. He wondered if she was as sharp with her own officers – it was not the best technique for fostering confidence in the ranks.
Kate lifted one side of the torso gently. There was a distinct lack of charring on the floorboards beneath the body, but the underside of the corpse still looked dark to Kincaid. “There might be some bruising, yes, but I’ll have to get into the tissue to be sure. And there is something else,” Kate added, lowering the torso and edging her fingertips beneath the head. “It feels like there may be quite a severe fracture to the back of the skull, but there’s no way to tell whether it’s postmortem or antemortem until I can have a look in the lab. The heat alone can cause shattering of the skull.”
Kincaid knew that even if the pathologist could verify that the trauma had occurred prior to death, that wouldn’t rule out an accidental injury. His gut instinct, however, told him that this death had not occurred by chance.
With that knowledge came the realization that his likelihood of spending the weekend with Gemma and the boys was rapidly evaporating. They had planned a Saturday morning excursion to Portobello Market, weather permitting, with a particular mission in mind.
After having shared a bedroom with five-year-old Toby since they’d moved to the Notting Hill house, Kit had asked if he could move into the third bedroom, the room they had meant for the nursery. When Kincaid had started to object, Gemma had stopped him, saying, “That’s fine, Kit. We’ll do it up for you.”
“Gemma, are you sure-” Kincaid had begun, but Gemma had stopped him with a shake of her head. “No, it’s all right. Kit needs his own space.”
That was true, Kincaid had to admit. Since Kit had turned thirteen at the end of June, he’d been finding it increasingly difficult to share with Toby, and now, with the beginning of the new school term, it was becoming clear that he would need a more private space for his schoolwork.
Gemma had gone on brightly, throwing herself into planning and decorating the room, but to Kincaid her enthusiasm seemed brittle. It had been almost a year since her miscarriage, and on the one occasion he’d gingerly brought up the idea of trying again, she’d looked away and changed the subject. It was still too soon, he’d told himself, but now he wondered if her willingness to give up the nursery to Kit meant she’d rejected the idea altogether. The thought struck him with a fierce and unexpected sense of loss.
“I think that’s all I can do here,” said Kate Ling, drawing him back to his surroundings. “Let’s bag and tag, and I’ll get to the postmortem as soon as I can.”
Kincaid chided himself for letting his attention wander, and as he gazed at the charred remains of the body, he felt a twinge of guilt for his aggravation over the change in his plans, surely a trivial thing when a human life had been so brutally snuffed out.
“Can you rule out self-immolation?” Doug Cullen asked as Ling stood and stripped off her gloves.
Farrell answered, “Again, it seems unlikely unless we turn up some trace of clothing or a positive on accelerant. Let’s give the electronic sniffer a try,” he added, removing the bulky hydrocarbon detector from his evidence collection bag and taking Ling’s place beside the body. After running the collection nozzle over the remains and the surrounding charred area, he shook his head. “I’m not getting a reading.”
He motioned to Martinelli, who had almost completed the outer circuit of the room. “Jake, try over here, will you?”
The others edged out of the way as Martinelli brought the dog over, giving the team room to work.
Kincaid found himself standing beside Rose Kearny. The young woman stood with her hands shoved firmly in the pockets of her anorak, her shoulders hunched. “Is this your first body?” he asked quietly.
When she glanced at him in surprise, he saw that her eyes were a clear cornflower blue. “How did you know?”
He shrugged. “I’m not sure. I’ve seen a lot of coppers at their first crime scene.”
She seemed to consider this for a moment, then she looked back at the group surrounding the victim and said thoughtfully, “I’ve pulled people from buildings who I knew weren’t going to make it, tried to revive them. And I’ve worked my share of fatality road traffic accidents. But this is different, somehow. Maybe it’s not having a job to do. In a fire or a rescue, you only have time to think about what you’re going to do next.”
“It must have been bad in here.” As Kincaid looked round the ruined space, he realized that water was seeping into his shoes.
“The worst I’ve seen,” Rose agreed. “I didn’t realize how fast you could lose it, you know? One minute you’re on top of it, you’re in charge, then the next it all goes to hell.”
“Do you want to go back?” he asked, studying her, his curiosity roused by her candor.
An unexpected smile lit her face. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. There’s nothing like it.”
“No joy,” Martinelli called out, patting the dog, who looked as if she took her failure personally. “If anything was used here, it’s burned up. We’ll keep looking, but if there’s nothing at the seat of the fire, I’m not hopeful.”
The station officer appeared in the doorway and signaled to Farrell. “The mortuary van’s here, Chief.”
“About time.” Farrell turned to the others. “Let’s move out, let them get on with it. Try to keep to the same track you used coming in.”
Kincaid felt an unanticipated shudder of relief as they stepped out onto the pavement again. He realized he’d been tensing his shoulders as if personally preventing the ceiling from collapsing.
As the mortuary attendants and the white-suited crime scene specialists conferred with Farrell, he decided he’d grab the opportunity to ring Gemma. It was still raining, a steady and relentless drizzle. Ducking across the street, he sheltered in the doorway of an office building and dialed Gemma’s mobile number.
He’d been half expecting her voice mail, but she answered herself, a lift of pleasure in her voice. “I wasn’t
