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crypt. The body was sitting passively on the throne chair, the woman’s head still in its lap.
    “It’s a man, late fifties maybe, a woman about the same age,” the medical tech told him.
    Archer snorted. “You don’t need a medical license to figure that out. You have an estimate as to time of death?”
    “That’s for the pathologist. This is what I wanted you to check out. Put this on.” The medical tech handed Archer a plastic surgeon’s glove used in handling evidence. Archer stretched the glove over his fat fingers.
    “Feel here,” the tech told him, touching the dead man, “under the chin.”
    “Why?”
    “You want to know time of death? This will give you a clue.”
    Archer grimaced. He hated corpses. Not a poetic sort of aversion, life lost, love lost, but hated them because they reminded him of his own mortality. But he didn’t like to show a weakness to anyone for anything and he dutifully pressed under the man’s chin. “It’s hard.”
    “It’s frozen, ” the tech corrected.
    Archer felt farther under the chin. “What do you mean, frozen?”
    “Frozen as in meat freezer, frozen like your mother stored kippers in July.”
    It wasn’t registering with Archer and he swung around and glared at Kramer. “What the hell’s he talking about?”
    “You’re telling us that this guy’s been iced?” Kramer asked.
    “Been and still partly is. Same with his lap mate.”
    “It’s not cold enough outside or inside to freeze someone,” Archer said.
    “You need a detective’s license to tell that?” the medical tech chortled.
    “Bodies that have been frozen? What the hell did Dutton do? Kill them by sticking them in a freezer?”
    “This will play hell on time of death,” the medical tech said. “You may end up being given the month of death rather than an hour or day.”
    “What about the rest of the bloke’s body?”
    “Thawing.”
    “Why would someone keep a bloody body frozen?”
    No one had an answer.
    On the way out of the room, Kramer said, “You know there’s no way that Dutton—”
    “He’s caught red-handed.”
    “He was covering a story.”
    “That’s what he said, but where’s his source?”
    “You know why he won’t give up his source.”
    “He’s been caught with two frozen stiffs and won’t tell us who did it. As far as I’m concerned, that makes him the number one suspect.” Archer cracked three knuckles on his left hand in quick sequence. It registered like machine gun fire in the little room. “I’ll make the bastard tell us how this bloke got iced.”
    *   *   *
    A RCHER AND K RAMER CAME into the anteroom where they had left Dutton and the elderly guard. Archer’s hands were clenched into big fists as if he meant to use them.
    The pensioner was sitting alone on the bench.
    “Where the bloody hell is Dutton?” Archer asked.
    The old man nodded sleepily at a door marked MEN across the corridor. “He’s spending a penny.”
    Archer stared at the restroom door, an ugly suspicion forming in his mind.
    “Is there a window in there?”

7
    Heathrow Airport
    As Marlowe waited on the exit ramp, a tall, very thin young man about thirty or so was admitted into the area. He offered a handshake.
    “Philip Hall, Miss James, I’m an associate of Anthony Trent.”
    Hall gave a warm, firm handshake. If Marlowe had had to guess Philip Hall’s occupation prior to his introduction, with his pin-striped, dark-vested wool suit, old-fashioned bowler hat, and long black umbrella, she would have guessed he was a young Foreign Office official fresh from the Crimea with Churchill … apparently he was a young attorney who wasn’t afraid to capture the grace of another era in his dress and manners. Or maybe that was how attorneys dressed in London.
    “I’ve been permitted back by airport security to give you moral support as you wade through the news hounds from hell. For reasons that are inexplicable, Britain produces the most vicious newspeople on the planet.