Page 12 of First Blood

‘You see that there?’ she said to her left-hand side.

Bryant looked to where she was pointing. To what she had thought was simply the dark stain of blood beneath his neck. But it wasn’t red. It was black, like soil.

As though she could see through his throat to the ground.

She looked towards the pathologist. ‘Has this man’s head been removed?’

Keats nodded slowly.

‘Yes, I’m afraid to say that this poor fellow was beheaded.’

Chapter Nine

Kim just wanted an approximate time of death and another look at the tattoo before heading away from the crime scene when DS Dawson put in an appearance, looking more like she would have expected.

The suit was fresh, the shirt was clean, the tie was more subdued and the face was shaven.

He looked at her expectantly. She said and offered nothing. She was not into congratulating someone for turning up to work appropriately attired.

She was more impressed that his younger colleague had chosen to walk back with him and take another look at the scene.

‘You got a close-up of that tattoo?’ Kim asked the photographer.

He nodded but she took one with her mobile phone anyway. There was something familiar about it.

‘Well, he got his dick handed to him on a—’

‘Time of death, Keats?’ Kim asked, cutting off Dawson’s smart-arse comment. She was all for gallows humour. It often kept people in their profession sane, but there was a golden rule: it had to be funny and not just inane.

‘Liver probe tells me it was 11.45 and twenty seconds,’ he answered, with the hint of a smile.

She didn’t smile back. She simply waited.

Dawson continued to walk around the body with his hands in his pockets. Tracing the exact route she had.

When he reached the area of the dismemberment he crouched down and took a closer look.

‘I’d place his death between 11p.m. last night and 1a.m. this morning, and if you want any closer than that I suggest you ask the murderer when you catch him.’

‘Oh, I will,’ Kim said, as Bryant returned from speaking to the person who had found the body.

‘Jerry Walker, guv,’ he said. ‘Twenty-nine years old. Runs this way every morning come rain or shine. Still in shock but got his details for follow-up.’

‘Anything off?’ she asked.

Bryant shook his head. ‘Don’t think so. Seemed legit to me. His address and the route make sense but…’

Yeah, they’d check him out anyway.

Dawson’s circuit had ended and he had come to rest behind them.

Keats looked up at the four of them standing together.

‘I say, how many detectives does it take to screw in a light bulb?’

As already noted in her own mind, gallows humour was supposed to be funny.

‘Post-mortem time?’ Kim asked.