Morrison let out a deep breath, as if it helped him to concentrate. ‘It’s impossible to say, but we’re talking about a large blade, capable of deep penetration.’
‘How large?’ Lynch wasn’t letting go.
‘Too soon to tell exact dimensions, but I’ll give you what I can once I’ve done a full examination.’
‘And the trajectory of the wounds?’
Morrison gazed at the detective, contemplating, Kate thought, whether or not he should reveal any more at this point. Finally he said, ‘The puncture wounds are relatively straight, possibly coming from above with the victim lying down.’
‘Any idea of time of death?’ Kate quizzed.
‘At least seven hours.’ Morrison pointed to the victim’s face. ‘The corneas, the clear covering over the pupils, are cloudy and opaque. If the eyes were closed, this could take up to twenty-four hours. The process speeds up when the eyes are open.’
‘Placing the time of death at around two a.m.,’ Lynch said.
Kate again looked at the victim’s eyes. ‘What are those dark marks around the pupils?’
Morrison appeared pleased with her question, replying with enthusiasm: ‘It’s called tache noir, one of the most important post-mortem changes in the eye. If the eyes are open after death, the area of the sclera exposed to the air dries out, which results in a yellowish, then brownish-blackish band, which is what we have here. This level of discoloration will appear around the seven-hour mark.’
Kate walked over to the windows, which looked out onto the hotel car park, then turned to face both men. ‘Ian, were the eyes forced open?’
‘I can’t be sure. As soon as death occurs, the muscles in the eye stop functioning. He could have died with his eyes open or they could have been opened afterwards.’
‘What about DNA?’ Lynch looked up from his notebook.
‘It would be tricky. Even if we could pull a sample, it’s unlikely we’d get enough to produce an adequate profile.’
‘Anything else?’ Lynch asked.
‘Yes, the concentration of potassium within the vitreous humour—’
‘The what?’ Lynch sounded irritated again.
‘If you didn’t keep interrupting me, Detective, I might be able tell you.’ It was Morrison’s turn to be irked. Kate smiled to herself.
‘It’s the thick jelly-like substance that fills your eyeballs. It increases slowly after death, but is already clearly visible here. Understandably, the body temperature has dropped too, from the normal temperature of 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. The body loses heat at a rate of 1.5 degrees per hour, but in a heat-assisted room like this one, it loses it a lot slower, yet our man’s has dropped over four degrees.’
‘I see,’ Lynch replied.
‘You’ll have to wait for the full autopsy report if you want any more than that from me. The only other obvious detail is a series of older tears in the skin, especially on the upper thighs and arms.’
‘And the cause?’ Kate asked.
‘They could be self-inflicted, but again, I’ll know more once I’ve had a chance to examine the body in detail.’
Kate turned to Lynch. ‘Were the room lights on or off?’
‘Off. Why?’
‘The curtains are open. I assume they were that way when you arrived.’
‘Correct.’
‘There’s plenty of lighting in the car park outside. It would have lit up the room if the drapes were pulled. The buildings opposite are at a lower level, so the killer may have felt they couldn’t be seen.’
‘What are you getting at, Kate?’
‘Perhaps he or she used the exterior light to prepare the victim, and there’s something else.’ Both men looked at her. ‘The lack of blood spatters and pooling beyond the vicinity of the bed is odd. It doesn’t look as if our victim put up much of a fight. Ian, did you find any notable signs of a struggle on the body?’
‘No obvious ones. I’ll be running full pathology tests for possible drug intake prior to death. We’ll pull fluid from the eyes too. It’s the last fluid in the body to peak. If the victim was drinking prior to death, the vitreous alcohol level will tell us if our dead friend was on his way up or on his way down.’ Morrison pointed to the eyes again. ‘We can also look to the vitreous for any signs of Fentanyl or 6-Mam, both derivatives of heroin, as we won’t find these or their metabolites in the blood samples.’
‘What about cocaine?’ Lynch pointed to the corpse. ‘As well as increasing aggression, it’s used as a sexual stimulant. Our friend here hired an escort before he snuffed it.’
‘Thank you for your scientific observations, Detective.’ Morrison didn’t sound appreciative. ‘That will all come out in the toxicology reports.’ He turned to Kate. ‘If the victim was compromised prior to death, in other words, if he was drugged with any form of sedative substance, and wasn’t physically able to defend himself, it would explain the localisation of the blood spatters. It would certainly have made him more susceptible to having his throat slit. After that,’ the pathologist looked cheerfully from Kate to Lynch, ‘he was a dead man one way or another.’
I