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He opened the other door in the room. The familiar smell greeted him, one he hoped he’d never get used to.

The new post-mortem room looked state of the art. It was square and designed for efficiency. The expensive fixtures and fittings were robust and easy to clean. The floor’s channel gratings were in short, detachable sections so they could be removed and submersed in one of the large sinks fitted against the wall opposite. Even the ceiling looked as though it could be hosed down.

The wall on the right was lined with fridges. Poe suspected they would have doors on both sides so Doyle and her team didn’t have to enter the main post-mortem room to collect their cadavers.

The observation area they were in wasn’t enclosed. Instead, a tall, angled glass divider separated them from the business side of the post-mortem room. The observation area was above the dissection bench. They were so close that when Poe leaned over he could see the digital read-out on the weighing station. The observation area was spacious, at least twice the size of the previous one, and afforded excellent views of all parts of the post-mortem room.

Poe could feel air on the back of his neck. That made sense. It would be designed to flow from the so-called ‘clean area’ – the waiting rooms, the viewing and bier rooms – and into the designated ‘dirty’ areas: the body store, the PM rooms and the used instrument stores. It was the most modern post-mortem room he’d ever been in, and it was utterly cheerless.

An examination table with a hoist and adjustable lighting above it was in the centre of the room. Estelle Doyle was working on the cadaver of Howard Teasdale, the victim found in his bedsit. He looked even bigger on the slab. His pallid skin was waxy with a blue tinge. His chest and shoulders were marbled and his abdomen had a green tinge. Shrunken, milky eyes stared lifelessly at the ceiling. His bloated head was raised with a block. Poe could see a cut that started behind his ears and went over his crown, made so that Doyle could pull down the front of the scalp to expose his face, and the back to expose the skull. Removing the top of the skull with a Stryker saw was how pathologists accessed the brain.

Estelle Doyle had started without them.

Chapter 26

Estelle Doyle was bent over Teasdale’s neck, dictating as she worked.

‘The fatal wound measures three hundred and nine millimetres and is above the thyroid cartilage, in between the larynx and the chin. It has broken the skin in several places but not torn it.’

As she manoeuvred herself around Teasdale’s head, she saw them watching her. She took her foot off the splash-proof foot control that turned the dictation system on and off.

‘When I was told it was you who’d be attending, Poe, I assumed you’d be OK if I made an early start? There’s a lot of Mr Teasdale to get through.’

‘Not a problem.’

‘And who’s your little friend?’ she said.

‘Matilda Bradshaw, Professor Estelle Doyle,’ Bradshaw replied. Already paler than a cavefish, she’d blanched even more since entering the post-mortem room. Poe didn’t embarrass her by asking if she wanted to step out.

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p; Doyle removed her safety glasses and walked over to them.

‘I won’t shake your hand, Matilda Bradshaw, but can we assume that if I could I would?’

Bradshaw nodded.

‘I owe you a debt of gratitude,’ Doyle continued. ‘I gather it was you who dragged this temerarious man out of a burning building?’

Bradshaw said, ‘He’s my friend.’

‘Temer what now?’ Poe said.

‘Temerarious, Poe,’ Doyle replied. ‘It means recklessly confident. And I gather you’re also the one who made the links on the Jared Keaton case?’

‘Poe and DI Stephanie Flynn do all the real work,’ Bradshaw said. ‘I just help with the science.’

‘And what colour crayons do you use when you explain things?’ Doyle said. ‘I use blue. I find it calms him.’

Bradshaw giggled, then said, ‘He knows more than he lets on, Professor Estelle Doyle.’

‘Loyal too, Poe,’ Doyle said. ‘She’ll do, she can stay.’

‘You got your second room then, Estelle?’

She looked around and nodded. ‘Thanks in part to all the additional work you’ve been bringing across.’

Poe said nothing.