The next morning, Kay pulled into the last remaining parking space at the side of Darent Valley Hospital and peered at the menacing clouds gathered above the imposing building.
As if anticipating her dark mood, thunder rumbled in the distance when she switched off the engine, closely followed by a streak of forked lightning that illuminated the sky beyond the swooping wave-shaped arches that formed the entrance to the accident and emergency bays.
Rain started to spatter against the concrete pavers as she hurried towards a side door to the left of the ambulances and the general public, and when she pushed against the chrome handle, a second thunderclap shook the glass panels either side of it.
There was still no news from Sharp’s team regarding the identification and apprehension of a suspect, and the atmosphere within the Maidstone incident room had been one of growing frustration during that morning’s briefing.
She checked her text messages while the lift carried her to the second floor, noted a meeting scheduled at headquarters for noon to update the chief superintendent, then tucked her phone away as the doors swished open and she stepped into a highly-polished corridor.
Muted voices carried from behind the doors she passed, a stark contrast to the cacophony of noise outside on the concourse and when she entered through the double doors to the mortuary department, a calmness filled the space.
After all, the patients that lay beyond the inner door to her right were in no hurry to go anywhere.
‘Morning, Detective Hunter.’ Simon Winter looked up from his computer screen and gestured to a visitor log on the desk beside him, his brown hair hidden under a protective blue bonnet. He glanced at the window as the rain gathered in intensity. ‘Looks like you made it here just in time.’
‘Beats getting a soaking.’ Kay smiled, and scrawled her name in the next available space. She eyed the signature above hers and frowned. ‘Who else is here?’
‘Zachary Taylor,’ said a familiar voice from behind her.
She turned to see Lucas Anderson pulling on protective gloves as he bustled in from the corridor, a large white envelope tucked under one arm.
‘Who’s he?’
‘The ballistics expert I requested,’ said the pathologist. ‘Luckily he was able to come at short notice – I wouldn’t have been able to proceed without him. Well, not unless I wanted to face Harriet’s wrath afterwards. He’s just getting changed. Do you want to do the same, and I’ll see you in there?’
‘Sure.’
Ten minutes later, clad head-to-toe in protective overalls over her suit trousers and blouse, Kay walked out of the changing cubicle and tucked her hair under a paper bonnet.
Simon gave her a grim smile, then pushed open the door into the examination room.
Cool air caressed her face as she followed him towards a stainless steel table at the far end, her pulse missing a beat as she approached the mangled body laid out ready for the autopsy.
The stench of bleach and antiseptic fluids invaded her senses, stinging the back of her throat, and she blinked to counteract the tears that prickled from the effect of the chemicals.
However bad those smells were, it was nothing compared to what would follow over the course of the next hour or more.
Two identically dressed figures stood at the far end of the room, their attention taken by six bright white screens fixed to the wall and a set of X-rays pinned under each.
The shorter of the two turned as she approached, and beckoned her over.
‘Kay, come and join us,’ said Lucas, his face obscured by a mask. ‘This is Zachary Taylor, our ballistics expert.’
‘Call me Zach.’
Kay shook the outstretched gloved hand and peered up at deep-set brown eyes. ‘I’d say nice to meet you, but…’
‘Don’t worry – I get that all the time with this job.’ The skin around his eyes crinkled with humour. ‘How’s the investigation going?’
‘It’s going.’ Kay tried to keep the frustration from her voice, and failed. ‘I’m hoping you’ll give me some answers that will help us this morning.’
Lucas gestured to the X-rays. ‘We can certainly try. Before we start, we wanted to take a look at these. Harriet’s team didn’t find any bullet fragments at the scene so that told us they’d lodged in our victim’s body rather than going through.’
‘You can see them here.’ Zach tapped the third and fifth screens. ‘The one in the skull is stuck where the man’s nose used to be, and you can see the other amongst what’s left of his sternum.’
Kay moved closer, staring at the ominous white smudges within the tangle of bones and cartilage. ‘You can hardly tell they’re bullets.’
‘Which makes me think that they’re soft-nosed rounds or hollow points rather than full metal jackets,’ Zach mused. ‘It’s the body that captures the kinetic power of the bullet, especially at such short range. What your killer used looks similar to what’s used to hunt deer. We’ll know for sure once we open him up.’
‘We needed to know where they were before we started,’ Lucas explained to Kay. ‘There’s no sense in my nicking one of these with a scalpel by accident – it could damage vital evidence.’
‘Ever worked on a shooting investigation before, Detective Hunter?’ asked Zach as they walked over to the examination table.
‘Please, call me Kay while we’re in here. I haven’t in a long while.’ She grimaced. ‘I’d forgotten how bad they can be.’
She ran her gaze over the man laid out ready for the post mortem.
Under the stark lighting of the morgue, his injuries were even more horrific to look at than when she’d first encountered him in the White Hart’s car park on Wednesday night.
Simon had done his best to wash away the blood and worse that had clung to the man’s skin but there was little he could do for the shattered face and chest cavity.
‘We took swabs of his hands, arms, face and clothing before passing those on to Harriet’s team,’ he said to Kay. ‘It’ll help them work out whether there was more than one weapon involved, and how close the victim was to his killer when he was shot.’
‘Okay, thanks. What about identifying him? He didn’t turn up on any of our systems, and given the damage to his face…’
‘While I was getting these X-rays, I had some taken of the remains of his jaw as well,’ said Lucas. ‘What was left of his teeth showed some expensive work had been done in the past, so I’ve passed everything on to a forensic orthodontist. We obviously can’t promise anything, but if there are records available then we might be able to let you have a name in the next twenty-four hours or so.’
‘Fingers crossed, then.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Lucas, before you start, would you mind if I take a look at the entry wounds?’ said Zach. He held up a tablet computer. ‘I’ll take photos on this as well, if that’s okay with you – that way, I can use them to work out trajectories, that sort of thing, for my report.’
‘Of course – Simon, could you give me a hand?’
Kay took a step back as the pathologist and his assistant rolled the victim onto his right side, and watched as Zach bent over to photograph the back of the man’s skull before moving to where a second hole punched through the spine.
‘Thanks,’ he said, straightening while Lucas rearranged the victim ready for the examination. He frowned, swiping through the photographs. ‘Bigger than a .22, I’d say.’
‘Well, we’ll soon find out,’ said Lucas, pulling a magnifying lens over his face and selecting a scalpel from a trolley beside the gurney. ‘Shall we make a start?’
Moving along to the victim’s feet and staying well out of the way while the two pathologists worked, Kay listened as they provided a running commentary.
A microphone hanging from a cord above the table recorded Lucas’s every word, which would then be transcribed and checked before his report reached her email inbox later that week.
In the meantime, she soaked up the knowledge emanating from the experts around her, desperate for information that would help the investigation.
She turned away while Lucas used tweezers to pick apart the remains of the man’s face, knowing she would remember every detail for years to come.
The memories never left her – they only faded a little until a random thought triggered a recollection.
And yet, she would never stop what she did.
It was the only way she could bring the victim and their families any justice for a life taken too soon.
‘Here’s the first one.’
Lucas’s voice roused her from her thoughts and she looked over her shoulder to see him using the tweezers to hold up a tiny object to the light.
She crossed the slip-proof floor to where he stood, and waited while Zach took a number of photographs before the pathologist placed the bullet fragment into an evidence jar.
After sealing the lid, he handed it to her.
‘One down, one to go,’ he said.
‘Can you tell me anything about it?’ she asked Zach, eyeing the squashed metal fragment. ‘I mean, it’s hard to tell what its original shape was now, isn’t it?’
‘Despite the damage to it, I’d suggest I was correct in saying that it’s a soft-point. Expanding ammunition, too – designed to do a lot of damage on impact.’
‘So we’d be looking for someone with a sizeable rifle, then?’
‘Yes, most certainly. Something like a .308 – like I said, typically used for hunting deer, or perhaps wild boar.’ He gave a grim smile. ‘Not what you’d use for a localised rabbit problem, or rats. There wouldn’t be much left of them afterwards. It might also be a semi-automatic, something with a small magazine holding half a dozen rounds.’
‘That would explain why our witnesses said they heard the two shots in quick succession then.’
‘The killer wouldn’t have had to pause to reload,’ Zach agreed.
A cold chill flickered across Kay’s shoulders as she handed back the evidence.
‘And if he was using a semi-automatic rifle with a full magazine as you suggest, then he could still be walking around with a loaded weapon,’ she said, rummaging under her gown and pulling her mobile phone from her trouser pocket. ‘I need to tell Sharp.’