Hawkins memorized the names as she eyed the slowly putrefying cadavers. ‘At least whoever’s responsible for this clearly doesn’t mind us knowing who these three were.’ She collected all the IDs in another evidence bag, which she passed to Amala, before turning back to Pritchard. ‘So, what actually killed them?’

The pathologist sucked in a long breath, huffed it back out. ‘I’ll have to get back to you on that one.’

‘We don’t need absolutes, Gerry.’

His expression soured. ‘We’ve checked all three bodies and—’

‘You can’t be certain,’ Hawkins said. ‘Fair enough. How many possibilities are there?’

‘That’s just it, Detective. I can’t give you a potential cause of death …’ Pritchard exchanged disconsolate glances with one of his team before going on, ‘… because we can’t find one.’

3

Hawkins stared down at the bodies, trying to fathom the implications of Pritchard’s statement.

No apparent cause of death.

The scenario was almost unheard of in crime scene investigation, especially with more than one body involved. It wasn’t unusual for murder victims to exhibit two or more potentially fatal injuries. Often the question wasn’t which would have killed the subject; just which had occurred first.

She regarded the pathologist. ‘How do you rule out somatic causes at this stage, when the bodies are so badly damaged?’

Pritchard swiped unsuccessfully at a passing fly. ‘Because everything you see here happened post-mortem, Detective. The deterioration is just nature reclaiming temporarily leased materials. As far as we can tell, all three bone structures are intact. There are no residual signs of physical assault, certainly nothing serious enough to kill.’

‘Drugs?’ Amala asked.

‘That’s possible, Sergeant, of course, but there are no needle marks on what remains of exposed vein-rich areas, nor powder traces in nasal cavities, indeed any signs of substance abuse at all. We found no vessels or packets in which drugs could have arrived.’

‘How about environmental toxicity?’ Hawkins pointed at the section of gas pipe inexplicably traversing one corner of the room.

The pathologist narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Also routinely explored. In this case we lack chemical burns to what’s left of airways. More convincingly, perhaps, carbon monoxide poisoning would be unlikely to have killed one of them, let alone all three. Unless they all happened to be lying here unconscious and stripped to the waist when such a leak occurred – a leak that has since corrected itself, by the way. This was no accident.’

‘OK,’ Amala said. ‘So how do we know it’s murder and not suicide?’