Cassie paced the length of her cabin, a journey of five steps one way then five back the other, Macavity’s eyes following her from his perch on the sideboard as if watching a tennis match. She checked her phone again. Where the hell was she?
Archie’s microscopy had confirmed her hunch, which was gratifying, but also posed a conundrum: how to follow up on the revelation, without dropping either Archie – or herself – in it.
At last, she felt the tell-tale tilt of the boat as someone climbed on board and heard Flyte’s voice calling her name.
‘What’s with all the cloak and dagger then?’ Her amused look edged with wariness.
It was the first time Cassie had seen her in anything other than her plainclothes detective ‘uniform’ – a boring, dark trouser-and-jacket get-up. Her Sunday gear was indigo jeans, and an ice-blue cashmere jumper under her classy parka-type jacket that echoed her eyes and set off her Scandi colouring. Noticing she’d applied fresh lipstick, Cassie wondered what she’d be like to kiss.
‘It’s a bit delicate,’ she said. She waved Flyte into the bench seat next to her and opened her laptop on the fold-down table. ‘What do you see?’
Leaning in to the screen, Flyte narrowed her eyes. ‘Two microscopic samples?’
‘Right. They’re actually both samples of muscle tissue.’
‘Really? They look totally different.’ Flyte touched the screen. ‘This one has a more even pattern, while this one is more . . . random and looks like it’s full of holes, like a Swiss cheese.’
They were sitting so close that Cassie could feel Flyte’s breath on her cheek.
‘This one with the regular pattern is a standard post-mortem sample,’ said Cassie. ‘But this one’ – indicating the splotchy-looking image – ‘is from Green-Eyes.’
The sliver of tissue had come from the psoas muscle in his lower back. One of the densest muscles in the body, it was the slowest to decompose and since it was accessible from inside the body cavity Cassie’s sample-taking had left no external trace.
‘And?’
Luckily, Flyte appeared to have forgotten that no histopathology had been requested on Green-Eyes’ body.
Zooming up the slide, Cassie said, ‘You see these jagged holes? They’re ruptured cells.’ She shifted excitedly in her seat, her thigh accidentally brushing Flyte’s.
Flyte gave her a gimlet stare. ‘Do I have to play twenty questions? Or are you going to tell me what that means?’
Cassie took a deep breath. ‘This kind of cell damage only happens at sub-zero temperatures.’
Flyte’s head whipped round and her eyes widened. ‘What are you saying . . . ?’
‘Before it turned up in the canal, Green-Eyes’ body was frozen.’
Cold, so cold.
Cassie’s light-bulb moment had come when she’d unearthed the chicken breast in Babcia’s freezer compartment and suddenly recalled her biology teacher’s passing comment about food hygiene in a lesson on microbiology.
Meat which has been frozen and defrosted goes off faster than fresh.
‘It’s been bothering me for days: why his body was decomposing so fast, and this explains it.’
Flyte looked incredulous. ‘Could he have got accidentally frozen in the mortuary fridge?’ Cassie shook her head. ‘Is there nothing else that could cause this kind of damage?’ She gestured at the sample.
‘Freezing preserves tissue very well, but the ice crystals take up more room inside the cells.’ Cassie traced the holes in the sample. ‘When it starts to thaw the cell walls rupture, which speeds up decomposition.’
Flyte’s usually pale cheeks were tinged with pink. ‘Somebody kept his body frozen before dumping it in the canal.’
‘Yep.’ Since Archie’s call, Cassie had been berating herself for leaving Green-Eyes’ evisceration to Jason. If she’d done it herself, who knows, she might have spotted the last traces of ice crystals inside the body cavity.
‘How long had he been frozen for? Days? Weeks?’
‘Over to you, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘Once tissue has been frozen there’s really no reliable way of estimating a time of death.’ She’d seen a documentary once about a body uncovered by melting ice in the high Alps. At first the man was thought to be a missing climber, until specialist dating revealed that he’d died five thousand years ago.
‘Hang on.’ Flyte sent Cassie a penetrating look. ‘You said that the pathologist wouldn’t be performing any microscopic analysis – that it was expensive and inconclusive.’
‘That’s why I need your help.’ Cassie pulled an apologetic grimace. ‘This is what you might call a bit of freelance histopathology? To make it official and find out how he died we really need a forensic post-mortem.’
Flyte gaped in disbelief. ‘How do you expect me to deliver that? Do you think I can just . . . swan in to my boss’s office and ask him to sign off four grand for a forensic PM on a random floater?! The guy isn’t even officially my case.’
‘I dunno.’ Cassie shrugged. ‘Couldn’t you say that you’ve come up with a new line of enquiry?’
‘Oh, sure.’ Flyte cheeks were getting redder by the minute. ‘Why don’t I just tell him an unhinged mortuary technician has just performed her own post-mortem.’
‘Look, I get that it’s tricky,’ said Cassie. ‘I suppose I just thought that by now you might have found something that suggested foul play . . .’ She trailed off.
Seeing Flyte reach for her handbag, Cassie gave it one last try. ‘I thought you really cared about identifying this guy, finding out how he ended up in the canal.’
‘I did,’ snapped Flyte. ‘I do. But I care more about keeping my job – something in which you display very little interest.’
And with that, she swept out of the cabin without a backward glance.