The smell of death crept into her nostrils and filled her mouth. She swallowed, glad she had refused PC Simon Quick’s offer of breakfast.

Her first postmortem had been twelve years ago. Some of them had even wolfed down a fry-up first, filling themselves up with bacon and bravado. Three of them had been sick. Wildeve had kept down her coffee, but all these years later, she still couldn’t stomach the way her senses conspired against her, how she could breathe in the essence of the deceased, could taste it, even. The rawness of a butcher’s shop. Urine. Bleach. And that startling Jaffa orange of subcutaneous fat.

She dragged her eyes from the body resting on a metal tray atop the slab, and cast around for something to lessen the tension she could feel crawling across her skin, and the weight of her colleagues’ concerned stares. Music and laughter and chatter would usually lighten the grim task at hand, but this morning, there was silence.

“So, the fifth victim,” she said finally, prying Sheridan’s fingers from her arm, then squeezing them to show she appreciated his concern. “Bastard’s done it again. We knew he would. What have we got so far?”

The pathologist exchanged a glance with DC Sheridan, who cleared his throat.

“I don’t think now’s the time—”

“Are you trying to fob me off, Jim?”

“I know you better than that. But Mac’s pulling it together back at Rayleigh. There’s a briefing this afternoon. At five.”

“Thank you.”

“Wildeve—”

“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s get on with it.”

“I’m not sure—I don’t know—Mac asked me to come—there’s a protocol here—”

“Fuck protocol.”

The Home Office pathologist—Dr. Mathilda Hudson—opened her mouth. Shut it again. Shot another glance at Sheridan, who raised his eyebrows at her, asking an unspoken question. Hudson shrugged, then nodded. The constable looked like he might cry.

“If you’re sure,” he said in a voice that was anything but.

* * *

Adam always said there was something disconcerting about seeing a body in the mortuary. The skin was never as gray as expected. The dead looked like they might open their eyes and sit up.

The body lying on the tray still looked like a friend, a colleague, a lover.

Human.

Now that she was so close, Wildeve found she could not look away. Her fingers itched to touch the face, to smooth back the hair and to cleanse from this body the violence of its death. With a painful clarity, she understood the need of some cultures to wash and purify their lost. An act of worship and love.

The forensic pathologist cleared her throat. “We’ll carry on, then, shall we? But you’re here to observe, Wildeve. Any attempt to interfere with this examination and you’re out, and I’ll have no choice but to inform the coroner. Understood?”

Hudson didn’t wait for an answer, but bent over the body. AY-shaped incision ran from each clavicle, down the abdomen and finished at the pubic bone. The rib cage had been cut open and muscle and tissue peeled back to allow access to the internal organs, which were in the process of being removed.