Dr. Ling and the assistant pathologist wore long green plastic aprons tied over their scrubs and, viewed from the back, made him think of gunslingers in chaps. Perhaps it was something in the assurance of their stance, feet apart, ready to take on the grim reaper himself.

Ling turned and saw him, her eyes crinkling in a smile above her mask. She switched off her mike. “Duncan, I was just saying to your colleagues that we’ve finished the preliminary exam. As I’m sure you all know, we can learn a good bit simply from measurements and radiology, even when the corpse is quite severely damaged.” She gestured towards the far wall, where a series of X-rays were mounted on light boards. “These things tell us that our victim was an adult female, of medium height – probably five-five or-six. Although fire can cause some shrinkage of bone, in this case I don’t believe the heat was that severe.”

“Could you narrow ‘adult’ down a bit, Doc?” Kincaid asked.

“Postadolescent, definitely. In females, by the age of twenty, the lower epiphysis – that’s one of the bony plates at either end of the forearm – and radius have fused. Shortly thereafter the upper epiphysis and radius fuse as well, as is the case here.

“The collarbone gives us our next marker – it has usually finished growing by the age of twenty-eight or so – but as the victim’s upper torso has suffered the most severe fire damage, I can’t give a definitive opinion on that.

“As to the upper end of the spectrum, older subjects show signs of degeneration around the edges of the vertebrae, and joints may show signs of arthritis. Neither of those are evident here, but we may want to have a forensic anthropologist take another look.”

“So you’re saying twenty to-”

“Midthirties, possibly forty.”

Kincaid winced at the idea that, according to a pathologist’s estimate, he was already going downhill. He caught a glimpse of the pained expression on Bill Farrell’s face and guessed the thought had occurred to him as well.

“Twenty to forty. That’s a big bloody help,” Cullen muttered in Kincaid’s ear. While his sergeant might approach the most tedious and time-consuming data search with equanimity, postmortems made him cranky.

“Any chance the victim could be older than forty, Doc?” Kincaid asked.

“With good genes, maybe. As I said, I’m no expert. Let’s move on to the exterior physical examination. Although it’s not unusual to find a burn victim’s clothing fused to the skin, we were unable to discover any fabric traces. Officer Farrell, has your team turned up any evidence of clothing at the scene?”

“Not so far. Even if the fire destroyed all fabric, we’d expect to turn up a bit of button or zipper, or a fragment of shoe leather. I’d say this woman was stripped and her clothing taken away from the scene, or she arrived there starkers.”

Ling nodded, as if he were a promising pupil. “That leads us to another interesting point. The stripping of a female victim usually implies some sort of sexual assault, but this woman shows no obvious signs of sexual trauma. Of course, that doesn’t completely rule out a sexual motive, but it does narrow things down a bit. We’ll know more when we get the results of the swabs.”

“What about race, Doctor?” asked Maura Bell. “The skin looks black, but the hair that’s left seems reddish.”

“Neither skin nor hair are good indicators here. The dark color of the skin is due to charring, but the hair color is also misleading. Dark hair can often lighten due to oxidation. My guess is that this woman was a Caucasian brunette.”

Bell looked puzzled. “Caucasian? But you’ve just said you couldn’t tell the color of the skin.”

“We can’t.” Ling smiled. “But we can tell the shape of the skull, both from visual assessment and from X-rays.” She touched a gloved finger to the head of the corpse. “This skull is high and wide. The nasal opening is narrow. The cheekbones do not project, nor does the jaw. These are all defining Caucasian characteristics.”

“Okay, Doc,” said Kincaid. “We’ve got white, female, brunette, medium height, between twenty and forty. But did she die in the fire?”

“Patience, Duncan, patience. I’m just getting to the interesting bit. Let’s take a closer look at the skull. We noted at the scene that there was fracturing, but we also know that intense heat can cause fracturing. In that case, however, the plates of the skull tend to separate at the sutures. What we can see here, on closer examination, is more consistent with a depressed fracture due to blunt force trauma.”

“Clear as mud,” Cullen said, and Kincaid gave him a silencing frown.

“Microscopic examination of the edges of the fractured bone will tell us more,” Ling went on. “But there’s also evidence of frontal trauma, moderate Le Fort fractures. The nose has been broken” – she traced the bridge of the nose with her finger- “as has one cheekbone.”

“Excuse me, Doctor.” Bell stepped forward, resting her hands on the gallery railing. “Are you telling us this woman was killed by a blow – or blows – to the head, rather than by the fire?”

“No, I’m merely saying that it’s more than likely the skull fractures were not caused by the heat from the fire. That doesn’t rule out the possibility that the victim was alive at the time of the fire, or that these injuries were sustained during the fire. Although the last scenario is unlikely, I’ll admit, as there was no evidence of structural collapse at the scene, and it’s not very plausible that the victim could have fallen and injured both the front and back of her head at the same time.

“There is some soot visible in the nose and mouth, which could indicate that she was still breathing, but it might also be a result of settling, as she was lying faceup. We won’t know for sure until we’ve examined the airway and lungs. So let’s have a look.” Switching her mike back on, Ling turned to her assistant, who had been patiently standing by, and accepted a scalpel. “Thanks, Sandy. Let’s begin with the larynx and trachea.”

Kincaid had never quite got over the instinctive flinch brought on by the pathologist’s first incision, but he forced himself to watch as Ling made a precise cut, murmuring a detailed description into the microphone. The mortuary cold had begun to make his bones ache, but at least, he realized, his nose had gone numb, acclimatized to the smell. Stealing a glance at his companions, he saw that Cullen looked increasingly cross, Farrell impassive, and Bell wore a glazed expression that made him think of a deer caught in the headlamps of a car.

“Ah, now this is interesting,” said Kate Ling, glancing up at them. “There’s no sign of soot in the windpipe, but there is something else – bruising of the underlying tissues of the throat that was not visible on the skin.”

“She was choked?” Kincaid asked, surprised.

“The hyoid bone is intact, but yes, I’d say so. She could have lost consciousness long enough to have been bashed in the head and face.”

“And the absence of soot means she was dead when the fire started?”

“Well, there is always the possibility of vagal inhibition – that’s a reflexive constriction of the pharynx – from inhaling hot gases, but considering her other injuries, I’d say yes, it’s likely she was dead when the fire started.”

“Hallelujah!” breathed Cullen, and a smile flickered across Bell’s face.

“Can you tell us what was used to inflict the blunt trauma injuries?” asked Farrell.

“We’ll know more when we get into the skull, of course, but I’d say something with a fairly large surface area.”

While Kate Ling continued with her examination, Kincaid let his mind wander over the implications of what she’d told them. Although Farrell still hadn’t found any definitive evidence of arson, this made it look as if they were dealing with a fire started to cover up a homicide – which in turn made it less likely that insurance fraud was the motive. But did that mean Michael Yarwood was out of the frame?