Jennings listened to his WPC’s findings with a scowl. He’d been hoping by now that he could put this blasted case to bed, but the more his constable discovered about the victim, the less he liked it. Reluctantly agreeing to allow her one more day, he then tossed a hundred-weight of paperwork at her and told her to get on with it, and commented that if she expected to be paid overtime, she wasn’t as bright as she thought she was.

Trudy retreated to her desk with a respectful, ‘yes, sir,’ and rejoiced that the case was still hers.

*

That night Dr Douglas Carey rang Clement with news about the toxicology report he’d been asked to perform on the coroner’s road traffic fatality.

‘You were right about the barbiturates,’ he said jovially, once the preliminary hellos and mutually unflattering insults had been swapped. ‘Nothing exotic – just an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sleeping concoction prescribed by GPs and quacks the country over,’ he added unhelpfully.

‘Was the dose fatal?’ Clement asked, reaching for a pen and jotting down notes as the two medical men swapped facts and theories.

‘I wouldn’t have said so, no,’ Douglas said cautiously, giving him the technical details. ‘I think you’ll agree, if our chap was otherwise fit and healthy enough, that wouldn’t have polished him off. Can’t say for certain, of course, without the full autopsy – which I’ve now had to bump up as a priority,’ he warned his old pal, his tone now apologetic. ‘If our cadaver turns out to have a hitherto unsuspected heart condition or underlying asthma or any other number of nasty conditions – well, you know as well as I do, all bets are off.’

Clement grunted. ‘It’s all right, old man, you don’t have to protect your rear end with me. I think, on the whole, he’s likely to turn out to have been as fit as a flea, but you never can tell,’ he admitted. ‘All things being equal though – you don’t think the drug killed him – even with a fair bit of alcohol in his system?’

‘Unlikely, I’d say. But it would have made him woozy, and he’d have dropped off to sleep fairly soon after taking it. Maybe within fifteen to twenty minutes or so – depending on his constitution.’

‘Not ideal, that, if you’re behind the wheel of the car after a snowstorm,’ Clement said wryly.

His friend concurred.

‘So, he either took it by accident,’ Douglas said, ‘took it deliberately, the fool, or …’ He trailed off, leaving Clement to pick up the thread.