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wounds, but the skin was what he described as ‘curdled’ after being in the water for so long, and smelled like a blocked drain. There was nothing more he could tell, but he gave her a last glance and thought what a shame it was to have died so early. The thought made him shudder for a moment. The fairly recent death of his wife, Kate, zipped through his mind.
    He swallowed back his emotion and packed it away in a separate brain compartment, then turned to the bags into which the dead woman’s clothing had been placed.
    As the constable had recorded it, he had also gone through the pockets and found nothing.
    Henry gave each piece a quick squeeze and was satisfied: nothing.
    â€˜Should I wash her down?’ the technician asked brightly.
    â€˜No, let’s wait until the pathologist has had a look first . . . he’s somewhere, not far away.’ At which point Baines entered the mortuary, having parked his beloved E-type at the far end of the car park and purposely across two bays to discourage others from pulling up too close. He was already removing his jacket and replacing it with a green overall, walking across to the body and circling it for the close visual inspection. He was recording his observations via the mike fitted to his ear.
    Henry watched and listened, although the man’s voice was fairly quiet, and eventually Baines turned to him.
    â€˜Nothing of real note, certainly nothing I wouldn’t expect to see on someone who has drowned in such circumstances.’
    Henry nodded. He was glad this was getting a little further away from him, still hoping it would turn out to be a tragic but ultimately run-of-the-mill death that the uniformed branch could deal with. Nothing to bother him.
    Baines moved to the woman’s head, placed a hand carefully under her neck and tilted it backwards, using his hand as a fulcrum. Her mouth sagged slackly open. With his other hand he pulled her jaw wider and looked inside, pulling her cheeks wide and inspecting her teeth.
    â€˜Nice set,’ he commented. Then frowned. Something caught his eye, so he tilted her head slightly to the right to get the light working better for him and said, ‘Fancy.’
    â€˜Fancy what?’ Henry said.
    Baines shrugged. ‘Gold filling in a pre-molar.’
    â€˜And?’ Henry shook his head.
    â€˜And . . . don’t know yet, maybe nothing,’ Baines said, but Henry could see the man’s mind flicking through its internal Rolodex.
    â€˜Anything for me?’ Henry said.
    â€˜Hard to say yet . . . need a closer look.’
    Henry pouted with disappointment. He was going to say something, but his words were cut short when the muzzle of a gun was screwed painfully into the back of his neck at the point where his skull balanced on his spinal column.
    The gun was removed. The man holding the weapon backed off, keeping it aimed at Henry, who turned slightly and saw there were two of them, both armed, having entered the mortuary through the public entrance which should have been locked.
    They arced their guns threateningly across the four people in this section of the mortuary – Henry, Baines, the PC and the technician.
    The gun that had been jammed into Henry’s skin was a large-calibre pistol of some sort; the other gun was a black, ugly looking machine-pistol, very deadly in this enclosed space, capable, with one short burst, of cutting them all down.
    The men were dressed in black jeans, black zip-tops, trainers and balaclava masks, with latex gloves on their hands. Henry thought there was something familiar about them.
    â€˜What the . . .? Henry started to utter angrily. He’d not yet had the chance to get frightened.
    But then he wished he hadn’t opened his mouth.
    The man with the handgun, a big, heavy-framed guy, stepped quickly forwards and slammed the pistol across his face like he was doing a backhand smash in tennis.
    Henry’s head