I threw off the sheet and stared hard at a man’s body the size of Schmeling’s bigger brother and the color of uncooked dough. Looking at him, you almost expected someone to shovel him into an oven and bake him back to life. The skin on his face looked like a hand left too long in the bathwater. It was crinkled like an apricot. Even his optician wouldn’t have recognized him. What was more, the pathologist had already been at work. A crudely sewn thoracic scar crossed the body from the chin to the pubic hair like a length of toy railway track. The scar traversed the center of the triangular mark on the man’s broad chest. Pinching the cigarette from my mouth, I went down for a closer look.

“Not a tattoo,” I said. “A burn mark. It looks a little like the tip of a flatiron, don’t you think?”

Bömer nodded. “Tortured?”

“Are there any similar marks on his back?”

“I don’t know.”

I took hold of a big shoulder. “Then let’s turn him over. You take the hip and the legs. I’ll turn the body. We’ll pull him toward us, and I’ll lean over and take a look.”

It was like moving a wet sandbag. There was nothing on his back except some lank hair and a birthmark, but as the body rested against our abdomens, Bömer swore uncomfortably.

“Too much for you, Richard?”

“Something just leaked out of his prick and onto my shirt,” he said, quickly stepping away from the slab and then staring in horror at a large brown-yellow wound in the center of his belly. “Shit.”

“Close. But not quite.”

“That was a new shirt. Now what am I going to do?” He pulled the material away from the skin of his belly and sighed.

“Haven’t you got a brown one in that trailer of yours?” I joked.

Bömer looked relieved. “Yes, I have.”

“Then shut up and pay attention. Our friend here wasn’t tortured, that much I’m sure of. Anyone using a hot iron on him would have used it more often than once if he’d meant to hurt him.”

“So why do it?”

I lifted one of the hands and bent the fingers into a fist as big as the fuel tank on a small motorcycle.