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blood was the cause of death.Time of death tallies with the clock on the CCTV camera, which indicates between eighteen-thirty-two and eighteen-thirty-nine.Direction of blood splatter –’ she held up a photo of the interior of the car from the files they’d all been given by DCI Forrest’s office – ‘is consistent with the assailant kneeling across the rear seats.No arterial blood was tracked back to the front seats.The driver appears, and I stress appears, to have stayed put in the front during the attack.’
    ‘From other CCTV cameras,’ Ross noted, ‘it’s clear that the brake lights come on at several points during the time the car was stuck there, meaning that someone’s foot was still on the brake pedal, until a point which may coincide with the driver going to help the victim after the attack, as per his story.’
    Quill knew from what only his team could see that that was actually precisely true.
    ‘How interesting,’ said the pathologist.‘Not my department.’
    What she wasn’t talking about, because she couldn’t see it, was what Quill could see the others glancing at too.All over the corpse, from the grimace on his face to the ripped-up abdomen, there lay traces of the same shining silver substance they’d seen earlier.It looked like spiders’ webs on a dewy morning, or, and Quill stifled an awkward smile at the thought, cum.As the pathologist went into a more vigorous description of how the wounds had been inflicted – frantic slashing and then precise surgical cuts – he gave Costain the nod.
    Costain suddenly spasmed in the direction of the pathologist, knocking her clipboard from her hands, as if he was on the verge of vomiting.
    Sefton quickly took a phial from his bag and, while the pathologist was fussing over Costain, managed to get enough of the silver stuff into it.He screwed the top closed and dropped it back into the bag.
    The pathologist was helping Costain straighten up.‘If you’re going to do that, we need to get you out of here,’ she was saying.
    ‘No, no,’ Costain waved her away and abruptly straightened up, smiling at her as he handed her back the clipboard.‘Thanks, but I think I can hold it.’
    *   *   *
    They went to the custody suite and arranged an interview with Spatley’s driver.Brian Tunstall looked stunned, Quill thought, stressed out beyond the ability to show it, as if at any moment this would all be revealed as an enormous practical joke at his expense.He must be somewhere on the lower end of the Sighted spectrum – there were degrees to this stuff – because he hadn’t mentally translated what he’d seen into something explicable.But Quill supposed that, in the circumstances, doing that would have been quite an ask.There were still traces of the shiny substance on his shirt.It was odd to see an adult standing with such mess on him, not seeing it, and therefore not having attempted to clean himself up.
    ‘Listen,’ Tunstall said immediately.‘I want to change my statement.’
    ‘Now, wait—’ began Quill.
    ‘What I said happened was impossible.It couldn’t have gone like that, could it?One of the protestors must have got into the car—’
    ‘Mate,’ said Costain, ‘we believe you.’
    Tunstall stopped short.‘You what?’Then he slumped, a tremendous weight on him again.‘Oh, right, I get it: you’re the good cop.’
    Costain pointed to himself, looking surprised.‘Bad cop.’
    ‘Surreal cop,’ said Sefton, also pointing to himself.
    ‘Good cop,’ admitted Quill.‘Relatively.Which is weird.’
    Ross just raised an eyebrow.
    Tunstall looked between them, unsure if they were taking the piss.
    Being interviewed by this unit, thought Quill, must sometimes seem like being interrogated by Monty Python’s Flying Circus.At least they had his attention.‘Why don’t you tell us all of it,’ he said gently, ‘just the truth, as you saw it, and don’t edit yourself for something that’s too mad, because mad is what we