The brightly lit room was full of white-overalled men, all going about their business quickly and quietly. Flashlights still popped, but already items were being bagged and tagged for removal. The bulky figure of Felix Norman, the pathologist, crouched over the corpse, carefully slipping plastic bags over Della’s hands. He was a rotund man, oddly pear-shaped with most of his weight in his backside, topped off with a shock of thick, gray hair and an unruly gray beard. Rumor had it that his half-moon spectacles had been held together by the same piece of sticking plaster since 1983, when a corpse he was dissecting suddenly reared up and thumped him. But it was just a rumor, started by Norman himself. It was his voice Shefford had heard muttering into a tape recorder.

He looked up and gave Shefford a small wave, but continued dictating. “Obvious head injuries . . . possible penetrating wounds, through her clothes, her neck, upper shoulders . . . Lot of blood-staining, blood covering the left side of her head and face. Room’s damned cold, about five degrees . . .” Norman broke into a coughing fit, but he didn’t bother turning the tape off. He bent over the lower end of the corpse, but Shefford could not see what he was doing. Then he glanced at his watch and continued, “Say two to three degrees when she was found, the lights and everybody tramping around must have warmed the place.” He winked at Shefford, still talking. “Window half-open, curtains part-drawn, no source of heat . . . Door to landing giving a strong draft, front door had been left open . . .” He felt the corpse’s arms and legs, examined the scalp, then began checking for a weapon or anything lodged in the clothing that might fall when the body was removed, without pausing for breath. “Complete absence of rigor, no hypostasis visible . . .” Again he bent over the body, then sat back, waving a thermometer. He squinted at it. “Deep rectal temperature . . . Can’t bloody read it for the life of me . . . Ah, time is two thirty-eight a.m., thirty-five point eight degrees, so assuming she started at thirty-seven that puts it back to . . .”

Shefford shifted his weight from foot to foot and swallowed hard. As Norman gently rolled the body over he could see the blood matted in the blond hair, and he had to turn away. It wasn’t the sight of the blood, he had seen enough of that in his time, but how small she seemed, small and broken.

Two white-clad men moved in to examine the carpet where the dead girl had been lying. Norman had another coughing fit and Shefford took the opportunity to ask how long she had been dead.

“Well, my old son, she would have cooled off pretty quickly in here, with that window open an’ no heating on . . . Any time between midnight, maybe a little later, and . . . at a rough guess, twelve thirty.”

“Was she raped, Felix?” Shefford asked, although he knew Norman wouldn’t answer.