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maybe even comforting— something more than the ease provided by his friendly, slightly snub-nosed face, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
    She opened her eyes as he reappeared beside her, holding two steaming polystyrene cups. Expecting institutional sludge, she tasted the tea, then looked at him in surprise. “Where’d you get this? It’s actually decent.”
    “My secret,” Will answered as he settled himself beside her.
    Kate Ling’s voice came clearly through the open door. “Of course, we were fairly certain from the blood velocity and external examination of the head wounds that we were looking at blunt force trauma, but let’s see what things look like when we get under the scalp.”
    In the silence that followed, Gemma cradled the warm cup in her hands, taking an occasional sip of tea. She knew that Dr. Ling would be peeling Gilbert’s scalp from his skull, folding it forwards over his face like a grotesque mask in reverse, but it seemed distant, not logically connected to the feel of the chair’s cold metal against her back and thighs or the faint shapes she fancied she saw in the distempered wall opposite.
    Her eyelids drooped and she blinked, fighting the fuzzy blanket stealing over her. But her lethargy had the overwhelming quality born of exhaustion and emotional stress, and Dr. Ling’s words floated disjointedly in and out of a haze.
    “...blow just behind the right ear... several overlapping blows nearer the crown... all slightly to the right... never be sure—some lefties perform gross motor skills with their right hand.”
    Gemma’s eyes flew open as she felt Will’s fingers against her hand. “Sorry,” he said softly. “You were about to tip your cup.”
    “Oh. Thank you.” She grasped it more firmly in both hands, making a huge effort to stay alert and concentrate, but the voice began again, its precise intonation as soporific as a warm bath. When Will took the cup from her slack hands a few minutes later, she couldn’t manage a protest. The words came to her now with a clarity and an almost physical presence, as if their existence outweighed all surrounding stimuli.
    “...most likely conclusion is that the blow behind the ear was the first, struck from behind, and the others followed as he fell. Ah, now take a look at this... see the half-moon shape of the indentation in the bone? Just here? And here? Let’s take a measurement just to be sure, but I’d be willing to bet that’s the imprint of a common or garden-variety hammer... quite characteristic. Nasty things, hammers, though you wouldn’t think it. Never forget a case I had in London—a little old lady living alone, never done anyone a moment’s harm in her life, opens her door one day and some bloke bashes her in the side of the head so hard with a hammer it lifts her right out of her slippers.”
    “Did they catch him?” Some part of Gemma’s mind recognized the voice as Deveney’s.
    “Within a week. Silly bugger wasn’t too bright, talked about it all round the pubs. Hang on a bit while I take some tissue samples.”
    Gemma heard a saw, and a moment later smelled the sickening odor of burning bone, but still she couldn’t reach the surface of consciousness.
    “…commander’s medical records, by the way, he was taking an anticoagulant. Had heart surgery two years ago. Let’s see how well things had held up.”
    In the silence that followed Gemma drifted deeper still. Muttered phrases such as “constricted arteries” and “type A personality” no longer had any meaning, then awareness of the postmortem faded away all together.
    When Will nudged her with a whispered, “They’re finishing up now, Gemma,” she jerked awake with a gasp. She had dreamed that Kincaid stood before her with his most mischievous grin, and in his hand he held a hammer, wet with blood.
     
    FOR THE FIRST TIME GEMMA SAW HOLMBURY ST. MARY IN FULL light. The pub faced on an immaculate triangle of green, with the