‘Our killer must have used a shitload?’

‘Well, it was a twenty-five-gallon bathtub, and we estimate that there was about ten gallons of muriatic acid in there. That’s just a best guess for now, but I don’t reckon we’ll be far off. Generally, you can only pick up one-gallon containers in your local hardware store – so that might make it easier to find out who left him in there.’

Jo understood what Chen was driving at: someone buying ten one-gallon containers of muriatic acid was going to draw attention to themselves. She tried to think of the quickest way to run down that lead. Probably grabbing a Yellow Pages, getting the numbers for as many hardware stores as possible, and just phoning around until she got a hit. There was a caveat, though: it relied on the acid being bought all in one go and recently enough for someone to recall it. If the killer was smart, he’d have picked up the acid from different hardware stores over an extended period of time.

‘Did you manage to lift any prints?’ Jo asked.

‘No. The hands are too damaged.’

‘Dental?’

‘You might be able to get something from that. Forensics are coming over to take casts this afternoon. Bone takes longer to break down, so if we’re lucky our vic’s teeth will still be pretty good. I’ll let you know as soon as I’ve got anything else.’

‘I appreciate it. When are you cutting him open?’

‘Maybe tomorrow.’

‘“Maybe”?’

‘We’ve got three Night Stalker victims on the slab here, and half the suits in the city turning up later because everyone’s shitting their pants about how this is playing out in public. It’s a circus, but I just do what I’m told.’

‘All right, Danny.’

‘Sorry, Kader.’

He meant the apology, too, she knew that.

‘You know I’d rather be working with you, right?’

Jo smiled. ‘Who wouldn’t?’

She made light of it, but it was frustrating. Everything was subordinate to the Stalker. She understood it, but it hurt cases like hers and made them more likely to fail, because time frame was everything, always. The irony was, standing in a mortuary for eighty minutes was the last thing she wanted to do, but detectives were legally mandated to attend autopsies. And if she was going to have to watch the guy being carved open, she’d rather have just got on with it.

‘One last thing, Danny,’ she said. ‘What about the bullet wound?’

‘Ah, yeah. Stippling suggests the gun was close to the cheekbone when fired – an inch at most – and the bullet is a .22. But it’s damaged. You want a best guess?’

‘Always.’

‘Ballistics won’t be able to do much with it.’