Face Value

3

Monday Morning. Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire & Hertfordshire Major Crimes Unit, Huntingdon

HE picked up the receiver of his Cisco desk phone on the third ring. "Tri-County Major Crimes Unit, DCI Tony Reynolds speaking."

"Tony, it's Jeremy."

Reynolds checked the clock display on the phone console, "Jesus Jem, you're up early. I thought you pathologist types didn't get up before midday."

"Yeah, very droll, but you're right, a quarter to seven isn't my usual start time. That's why this is me actually knocking off."

"You've been working all night? What on?"

"Your post-mortem."

"Mine?" Reynolds sounded confused. He couldn't think what would cause the doctor to work through the night on such an obvious case. "You mean the one from Huntingdon on Saturday?"

"Yes. How many dead bodies do you think you have?"

"Well, no," Reynolds hesitated. "That's my only recent one. Just to be sure, we're talking about the druggie with the posh name and the great big knife wound to the head?"

"Yes. That's the chap. Manfield Bartholomew Hastings."

"But that shouldn't have taken you more than a couple of hours. Why did you pull an all-nighter on that?" Reynolds asked.

"Well, I got the call on Saturday morning but Shona was helping Professor Kennedy down in Uxbridge and I was over at a Norfolk road traffic incident. Given the on-scene assessment I thought it would be safe enough to put your chap on ice until I could get in on Sunday afternoon. Figured I'd get the PM done and have the report waiting for you when you came in this morning and all still within the time."

Reynolds knew the pathologist was referring to the normal 48-hour timeframe for a suspected murder post-mortem to be completed. "So what changed?" he asked. "I thought it was obvious."

"Yes, I'd normally agree and I did initially think that a large sharp force injury was quite persuasive as the cause of death. Especially given Mr Hasting's circle of influence."

Tony Reynolds couldn't help but smile. He had worked with Doctor Jeremy Rowlands as the main pathologist for the area for nearly ten years. Jeremy, or Jem to those he liked and Doctor Rowlands to those he didn't, had once been the pathologist for just Cambridgeshire. But now, with ever shrinking budgets, he was one of ten Home Office Pathologists assigned to cover the Greater London, South East and West Midlands area. He normally worked out of Cambridge and with Doctor Shona Johnston based in Chelmsford the two of them looked after the vast majority of the post-mortems needed within the counties of Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, Hertfordshire, Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. It sounded like a lot but the violent death rate for those counties was one of the lowest in the UK. The other eight pathologists in the group spent most of their time working inside the M25 and were substantially busier than Jeremy and Shona. It was his relatively light post-mortem workload that allowed him to continue to hold a number of teaching and research posts. Given his expertise and ability his peculiarity of never referring to any deceased's criminal activities by name was fully acceptable.

But Reynolds couldn't resist teasing the pathologist a little, "His circle of influence, Jem? You make it sound like he was a member of the Huntingdon Drug Dealer's Rotarian and Lions Club."

"Now, now. What the poor fellow got up to in life is not for me to judge in death. You know I just try to find out what brought him into my care."

"A large knife to the head was my guess," Reynolds said.

"Yes, well that was my initial assessment too. The rest of the PM was quite as one would expect. You know, collapsed veins, multiple needle tracks, a liver that was displaying late stage Cirrhosis, lungs that had put in quite a shift and were now the worse for wear. All quite normal given the lifestyle. However, there's something not right Tony. The fatal wound is the head wound obviously but I don't think it was caused by the knife you found. The bruising caused by the trauma to the temporal muscle is not consistent with a hand-delivered injury and the internal tissue shows a crater penetration. So I carried out a very thorough detailed sectioning and I've-"

"Back up a bit Jem, you've lost me."

"Sorry, right. Look, I'll get the report to you in full today but I think you should come over so I can show you. The gist of it is this Tony; the knife was used as a concealer. The fatal injury was not done by the butterfly blade but rather was a short stiletto shaped puncture surrounded by a much flatter and broader backing surface."

Reynolds considered what he'd been told, "So we're looking for a short stiletto bladed, broad hilted," he hesitated knowing how silly the idea sounded, "A sword? Are we looking for a short sword Jem?" he asked it with a trace of incredulity in his voice.

"Well, no not a sword. Like I said, I've looked a lot closer and I found some paint in the deeper sections of brain tissue."

Reynolds wondered what the pathologist was leading up to, but asked the obvious question, "What type of paint Jem?"

"That's what kept me up all night. It took quite a while to cross match the sample but I think we're looking for an actual stiletto."

"You mean a shoe, a stiletto shoe?" Reynolds asked it slowly.

"Yes Tony. I do believe Mr Hastings was killed by a very accurate and forceful kick to the head from someone wearing a red stiletto high heel."