“you’ll observe the peripheral grazing to which I referred, at the proximal edge of the primary impact point: as the blow was struck, she appears to have turned her head away, so the weapon skidded along her skull briefly before achieving its full impact. Do I make myself clear?”

We all nodded. I glanced covertly across at Sam and was heartened by the fact that he looked like he was having a hard time, too.

“This blow would have been sufficient to cause death within hours. However, the hematoma had progressed very little, so we can safely say that she died of other causes within a short time of receiving this injury.”

“Can you tell whether she was facing towards him or away from him?”

Cassie asked.

“The indications are that she may have been prone when the harder blow was struck: there was considerable bleeding, and the flow was directed inwards across the left side of the face, with some pooling apparent around the central line of the nose and mouth.” This was good news, if I can use the term at all in this context: there would be blood at the scene, if we ever found it. Also, it meant we were probably looking for someone left-handed, and, while this wasn’t Agatha Christie and real cases seldom hinge on that kind of thing, at this point any tiny lead was an improvement.

“There was a struggle—prior to this blow, I may add: it would have rendered her unconscious immediately. There are defensive wounds to the 86

Tana French

hands and forearms—bruising, abrasions, three broken fingernails on the right hand—probably inflicted by the same weapon as she warded off blows.” He lifted one of her wrists between finger and thumb, turned over her arm to show us the scrapes. Her fingernails had been clipped off short and taken away for analysis; on the back of her hand was a stylized flower with a smiley face in the middle, drawn in faded marker. “I also found bruising around the mouth and toothmarks on the insides of the lips, consistent with the perpetrator pressing a hand over her mouth.”

Outside, down the corridor, a woman’s high voice was giving out about something; a door slammed. The air in the autopsy room felt thick and too still, hard to breathe. Cooper glanced around at us, but nobody said anything. He knew this wasn’t what we wanted to hear. In a case like this, the one thing you can hope for is that the victim never knew what was happening.