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above the cut-and-shut merchants working out of yards in the dodgier parts of Tottenham and King's Cross. His body had been discovered by his mother, who lived a couple of streets away. Despite the fact that her son was a reasonably successful small-businessman, old enough to have his own grandchildren, she'd still popped in to collect his dirty washing once a week or so.
    This information had been fed to Thorne and Holland by phone, as they had driven towards Enfield. Thorne had decided that, despite what Brigstocke had said, it would be a good idea for someone from the team to get themselves on site as quickly as possible. He'd dropped Holland off at 32, Halifax Road, told him to get in there and make his presence felt, and said that he'd try to get back to pick him up after the post-mortem. Then he'd pushed on towards Hornsey, hoping that it would prove to be worth the effort.
    The arm of the Specialist Crime Directorate that handled murder cases was divided into three areas, with those bodies turning up in the London Borough of Enfield being dealt with by one of the teams from Homicide East. It would be Russell Brigstocke's job to liaise with the DCI on whichever team had caught the Tucker case. In turn, each would speak to his chief superintendent, who would then pass the final decision on to the commander. He would weigh up the relative merits of each team - or toss a coin, depending on how many meetings he had on that day - and allocate a senior investigating officer to the case.
    All working together for a safer London . . .
    The mortuary was located two floors below Hornsey Coroner's Court. As if the place were not spooky enough, proceedings were routinely disturbed by the guttural rumble of Piccadilly Line trains on their way to and from Bounds Green station. On arrival, it hadn't taken Thorne long to see that the team from Homicide East would not be putting up much of a fight for possession of the case. He'd listened to his opposite number bitch about his workload. He'd watched him smoke a cigarette to the filter in half a dozen desperate drags, and decided that these boys were not exactly gagging to get after Raymond Tucker's killer.
    'Help yourself,' DI Steve Brimson had said. 'I can't remember what my missus looks like as it is.'
    The part of Thorne that relished a decent scrap had felt rather disappointed.
    Convoluted as it could be, there was at least a method for the allocation of officers among the Homicide Squad. No such system existed to decide who might have the honour of slicing up the corpse. As quickly as Thorne had read the lie of the land, Phil Hendricks had marked down the Coroner-appointed pathologist as someone rather less keen on any accommodation. He'd read it in the man's handshake; in the widening of the eyes when they'd first encountered the spike through Hendricks' eyebrow and the stud through his tongue. So, Hendricks too had been forced to stand and observe while the body of Raymond Tucker - such as was left of it - had been opened and gone through as dispassionately as luggage in a customs hall.
    Thorne had seen countless post-mortems, many conducted by Hendricks himself, but they'd never been part of the same audience before. Glancing across at Hendricks, standing between himself and Steve Brimson, he'd wondered how involved his friend was getting with the procedure. He'd caught the occasional scowl and an involuntary twitch of the fingers. He'd been curious as to how far Hendricks had been mentally deconstructing his colleague's work while he watched; critiquing the other man's delicacy when weighing a liver, or his technique with a bone-saw.
    'He wasn't too bad,' Hendricks said. 'But he's clearly not in my league when it comes to good looks. You know, basic sex-appeal.'
    They were sitting in a greasy spoon a few minutes' walk from the mortuary. It was the sort of place that served a fried breakfast all day every day, but hungry as he was, Thorne couldn't quite manage a full English