Page 70 of Happily Never After
Angus’s shoulders sag. ‘OK, I get it,’ he says. ‘For what it’s worth, I truly am sorry. If I could go back and change it, I would.’
‘I know. But you can’t, and I’m not sure you should. Whatever you feel now doesn’t change what drove you to leave in the first place, and part of that was me. I don’t regret our time together, and maybe I’ll come to feel fond of you in time. But it can never be more than that. We both need to move forwards, not backwards.’
He looks completely defeated now. ‘You’re right,’ he says miserably. ‘I’m sorry. Do you think we’ll be able to be friends, at least?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him honestly. ‘I’m not ruling it out, but sometimes a clean break is better for everyone. There is one thing you can do to improve the chances though.’
‘Oh, yes?’
‘Stop bloody apologising all the time! It’s getting really annoying.’
He laughs, as I knew he would.
‘You’re right. I’m sorr— Oh, bollocks. I’ll try.’
It’s all I can do not to breathe a sigh of relief. I think he’s finally got the message.
25
‘Victim is male, around twenty-eight to thirty years old. I’m sure it will come as no surprise when I tell you this is homicide,’ Alicja, the pathologist, told DI Harrison and DS Rogers matter-of-factly as she led them through to the post-mortem examination room. Despite living in the UK for over thirty years, her English still carried a strong Polish accent.
‘We kind of figured that, given the location of the body,’ DS Rogers replied with a half-smile.
‘Hm.’ Alicja’s stony-faced expression gave no clue about whether she’d picked up the hint of sarcasm in DS Rogers’s remark. Normally, DI Harrison would take pleasure in the exchange; DS Rogers was famed at the station for his ability to mimic the severe Alicja. However, she’d barely slept a wink last night, waking several times to find her sheets drenched in sweat. Eventually, she’d given it up as a bad job and got up at around four in the morning, with the result that her headache was still very much present and she was feeling tired and drained today.
As the station’s leading murder detective, with a stellar track record, DI Harrison had seen her fair share of dead bodies over the years, but she was still unprepared for the sight that met her when Alicja pulled back the sheet.Darren’s body was effectively reduced to a skeleton, with the occasional clump of hair and a few scraps of material that she could just recognise as being remnants of the clothes he was wearing when she and her dad had bundled him into his improvised sarcophagus. Beside her, DS Rogers recoiled, covering his mouth with his hands.
‘If you are going to vomit, please use a cardboard receptacle from over there,’ Alicja told him unsympathetically, causing DS Harrison to wonder for a moment whether she knew she was the object of his ridicule. Normally, she’d make a mental note to follow up. There’s nothing guaranteed to make a detective’s work more difficult than a hostile pathologist. Today, however, any tension between Alicja and DS Rogers was so low on her list of things to worry about that it simply didn’t register.
‘OK,’ Alicja continued, pulling a laser pointer from her lab coat pocket and aiming it at the back of Darren’s skull. ‘There are hairline fractures here, consistent with victim being struck with a blunt object.’
‘Like a hammer?’ DS Rogers asked from his vantage point pretty much as far away from the body as it was possible to be without leaving the room.
‘No,’ Alicja replied dismissively. ‘Hammer would cause a different pattern. This is something wider, like the flat side of a spade. Something like that. Anyway, victim did not die from this.’ She smiled mirthlessly. ‘Very nasty headache. No more.’
‘So what did kill him?’ DI Harrison forced herself to ask.
‘This.’ Alicja moved the pointer to Darren’s neck. ‘Look closely,’ she commanded. ‘Can you see these marks here? Abrasions consistent with knife wounds. Victim has them on both sides. Whoever stabbed him did so many times, with considerable force.’
‘So probably another male?’ DS Rogers asked, evidently trying to score at least some points for deduction.
‘Would have to be very small man,’ Alicja observed. ‘Angle of blade is upward, meaning assailant was shorter than victim. Victim is only one hundred seventy-five centimetres. Attacked by midget, maybe, but more likely that assailant was female.’
‘But you mentioned considerable force.’
Alicja sighed in the way that people do when they have to explain something to an imbecile. ‘Assailant was probably very angry woman, DS Rogers. Angry women are surprisingly strong, you know?’
‘A crime of passion?’ DS Rogers continued, seemingly desperate to redeem himself now.
‘Vot do I know? My job is simply to work out how victim died. Your job is to work out who and why, isn’t it?’
‘Fine.’ DS Rogers was looking distinctly unsettled now. Alicja had definitely wiped the floor with him today. ‘Have you been able to calculate, based on the wounds, roughly how tall the assailant would have been?’
‘Of course. I am scientist. These wounds speak to me as clearly as you do, DS Rogers. Assailant is around one hundred sixty centimetres tall.’
‘What’s that in real money?’
Alicja sighed expressively again. ‘One day, English people will learn to use proper measurements, like grown-ups. Conversion chart is on the wall there.’
