‘Death came before the fire,’ the pathologist said in a clipped tone, as if her coolness was being assessed for its exact degree of disinterest. ‘Around forty-eight hours before, I’d estimate.’

‘How precise is that timeframe?’ Rita asked, notebook already out.

‘Eight hours either way, give or take. Some of the internal blood and organs were more or less intact. Death itself was by means of a pencil.’

She waited. New to the job she may have been, but she certainly had a sense of theatre.

‘A pencil?’ Joe asked, annoyed by her manner.

‘It was inserted through the right eye socket, directly into the brain. All the way in, seven inches to be exact. An entire pencil, pushed in as far as the cerebellum. That’s at the back of the head. It caused a lot of brain damage. Intracranial haemorrhaging and the associated mass effect caused by the penetrating object. What that means is…’

‘We know what it means,’ Joe said.

‘OK… So, massive trauma to the brain parenchyma. You’re know what…’

‘No, you can explain that one, love,’ Rita said.

‘Neurons and glial cells, the things that keep the brain going. There was severe damage. Given the assumed trauma, a pencil pushed right through the brain, it was probably sudden and forceful. There might have been some lateral movement too.’

‘Evidence of a struggle?’

‘Can’t tell. The pencil seems to have gone in cleanly, but the lesion certainly fans out a bit. That would have made things worse.’

‘How?’

‘The brain was so badly damaged that it bled out. Intracranial haemorrhage isn’t always fatal, but in this case he clearly didn’t receive any treatment.’

‘Could he have been immobilized instantly?’

‘That depends on many things, but essentially yes, it’s possible.’

‘No other injuries? Nothing before, or after?’

She shook her head. ‘Difficult to see in this state. But nothing I could find. No broken bones. Nothing showed up on his bloods. No drugs, no meds, no alcohol.’

‘Clean-living boy,’ Rita said, noting it all down.

Joe didn’t quite understand.

‘There was nothing about a pencil in the initial report.’

‘That’s because there was no pencil. But right at the back of his brain there was the tip from a pencil, just a bit of lead. It must have broken off. The lesion fits the dimensions of a pencil. Also, there was a small fragment of paint, again, from a pencil, I assume.’

‘And…’

‘Forensics have it. I sent everything up an hour ago.’

18

The operations room was quiet. Weekends are rarely busy in CID. And it doesn’t matter how long you’ve been in plain clothes, there’s one difference from uniform that always raises a smile: no hung-over troublemakers to process and turf out on a Saturday morning.

‘Ah, right,’ Joe said as they made their way across to his desk. ‘There’s Gwyn Merchant over there, he’s the deputy on the case.’