Baarda closed his eyes for a moment. Connie grabbed a nose and mouth mask from a dispenser, flipped the elastic over her head and stepped in to get a closer look at the face.

‘Her lips are weird. Like, really badly chapped. Is this weathering? Had she just come back from a ski trip or a desert hike?’

Ailsa Lambert folded her arms and peered over the top of her glasses. Connie decided it was like being watched by a mistrustful bird. The pathologist was tiny and probably old enough to have been her grandmother, and yet her energy felt more like it was coming from a high-functioning twenty-something.

‘Perceptive,’ Ailsa said. ‘You’re the American psychologist. While you’re very welcome, I was wondering how that came about.’

‘Intersection between politics and money,’ Connie said, picking up the stack of photos again. ‘So the drop of blood on Elspeth Dunwoody’s car was from this woman?’

‘Oh no,’ Ailsa said. ‘The blood on the car, while we know it’s from a male, has no identified source. Which you might think is unusual given how much of the same DNA was found at the scene of this woman’s murder.’

There was a pause, just two or three seconds, but the atmosphere in the room dropped notably even in the necessary chill.

‘I have to make some calls,’ Baarda said. ‘Excuse me.’ He left the room.

‘This is fascinating,’ Connie continued. ‘Cause of death? May I?’ She indicated the sheet that still covered the remainder of the body.

Ailsa peeled it back for her. ‘You’ve seen plenty of dead bodies, I take it. That’s a rare level of enthusiasm.’

‘God, I’m sorry, that’s not how I wanted to come across. Truth is, I envy you this. It’s where so much of the real work is done. I’d have loved your career. You guys make it possible to drag the beasts from their lairs.’

‘I’ve never heard it put quite like that.’ Ailsa gave a tiny wry smile as she held a magnifying glass over Angela’s lips. ‘What you identified as chapping is in fact burns. The skin is badly damaged, not just over the sensitive area of the lips, but also in the nasal passages, extending out as far as the chin and lower parts of the cheeks – I’m sure you can see the discoloration of the pigmentation that forms a rough circle.’ She motioned at the edges with the end of her pen.

‘Carry on,’ Connie said.

‘Cause of death was respiratory failure, although a cardiac event would have killed her anyway if her lungs hadn’t ceased to work first.’

‘Chloroform,’ Connie said. ‘So there’s a high probability this is our kidnapper. If this was his first intended victim, perhaps he just got the dosage wrong. Makes sense. He’d have changed tactics when he took Elspeth Dunwoody. Hopefully that means she’s still alive.’