Kelly blushed under her mask. There was a rumble of interest around the room and she said awkward hellos to the strangers staring at her. She even gave a small wave, which she instantly regretted.

‘Sorry, I’m so proud of you,’ Ted whispered to her.

She patted him on his back and squeezed his shoulder. ‘How you doing? It looks awful in here,’ she said.

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that. This is what it looks like, I’m afraid. I worked on the Omagh bombing in ’98. You can’t imagine,’ he said.

Kelly knew he’d worked in Northern Ireland during The Troubles as a resident pathologist, and she couldn’t conceive what it might have been like. He’d seen all manner of injuries, and the depths to which humans can sink when they want to hurt one another. She bowed to his supreme experience in matters of trauma and surveyed the scene. He clearly had everyone working to a methodical set of procedures in the most extraordinary and calm way.

‘So, the thing is, Kelly, I’ve got very little for you. I’ve seen everything I would expect, and not a lot of what I wouldn’t. Ninety per cent blunt force trauma. Multiple fractures consistent with high speed impact, mainly facial bones, skulls, thorax and pelvic bones, as well as tibias. We’ve got plenty of lacerations and burns – that hydraulic vapour is evil when it catches, and the ’copter had full fuel tanks.’

Kelly had smelled the aviation fuel as soon as she walked in.

‘It’s all over everything,’ he said. ‘Then you have the damage to all major internal organs. It’s a tsunami at the moment. We’re trying to send DNA testing off for every sample, trying to match up whole bodies for the families, patching them up as best we can, to send back to the families.’

Kelly nodded.

‘We’ve had a breakthrough,’ she said.

‘Already? That’s good, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘They found a slit hydraulic line. And those things are tough. The helicopter was under three years old, so wear and tear is ruled out.’

He stopped working, and held a limb with his left hand, and a scalpel in his right, waiting.

‘They’re trying to confirm if it fed the tail rotor, which came off over Wast Water.’

‘Dear God.’ He put the appendage down on a steel slab. ‘Sabotage?’

She nodded again. ‘Toxicology?’ she asked.

‘It’ll take time.’ He turned to her, hands in the air, covered in blood, scalpel still in hand.

‘The AAIB discovered a bottle of brandy in the cockpit,’ she told him.

‘Oh dear. Well, the pilots are done. Their results should be first, you’ll be pleased to know.’

‘What about the passenger?’ She referred to Bartholomew Kennedy-Craig.

‘Yes, we’ve done him, so you should get the results you want in twelve hours, for those at least.’