He wore gloves for his own protection, not that of his patient. He positioned his microphone and tested it, satisfied that it worked properly, and began by logging the time. He was to perform the post-mortem on Ella Watson first. He double-checked her details with his assistant. It was protocol, to make sure they cut up the correct body.

He unzipped the bag. Samples of her clothes had been cut off and sent away in forensic packages. It was his job to remove the rest and discover what the police, CSI team and forensic experts could not see: micro fibres, hairs, residues and DNA material. Finally, he would delve deep inside the body, discovering what had happened to make the magnificent human organism expire. It took a lot more effort than people thought. In the movies, people got shot or stabbed and literally keeled over and died. It wasn’t like that in real life. The human body was tough as old boots and took time to die. Snuffing someone out was no easy task. The bodies that graced his metal operating table were the unlucky ones. If the emergency services couldn’t save you, then you must have been in a pretty bad way.

Ella’s body was laid out on her back. She looked drained of blood, like the victims of old vampire movies. The bulk of it from the crime scene had no doubt been collected and swabbed, and the rest of it washed away from the road so that the public could enjoy the scenery without being reminded of what had happened there.

As he’d told Kelly at the scene, there were two wounds. Both were gaping gashes, with subcutaneous fat bulging from within, as was wont to happen with a live victim. Post-mortem wounds didn’t bleed or split as much. He measured them both; as he had suspected, two different weapons had been used. He probed inside them, and found that both were longer than his finger could reach. He’d have to wait to see her organs to discover how deep the wounds went.

It had been a vicious assault. He could see, deep down, the severing of her femoral artery. It poked out into the wound like a plastic straw. The other wound was directly above her abdomen, where her aorta would be. It was a tragic coincidence and truly unlucky. The odds of two stabs slicing through two major arteries at the same time, from two different assailants and two opposing directions, must be a million to one. Those poor children had lost their mother in a lottery.