Bad Blood by Mark Sennen

locked properly too.’
    â€˜Well the victim didn’t squeeze in through a window, did he?’ Savage glanced up at the narrow slits above the urinals and at the overhead roof lanterns. ‘But then again he didn’t walk in here either. You saw the hand?’
    â€˜I saw
one
hand.’
    â€˜Exactly. I wonder what the pathologist will make of that.’
    Minutes later and the white-suited figure of Dr Andrew Nesbit shuffled in, displaying his characteristic stoop and offering a little homily by way of a greeting as he glanced over the top of his glasses.
    â€˜Wednesdays are all very well, Charlotte, but they are only two better than Mondays. Whether you like them depends if you are a glass half full person or not.’ Nesbit edged round a large puddle of water and peered into the cubicle at the body. ‘What have we here? A suicide?’
    â€˜That’s what the toilet attendant thought when he phoned triple nine. But us amateurs guess not.’
    â€˜Let’s see then, shall we?’ Nesbit put his black bag down in a dry patch and shuffled closer. He spotted the white powder. ‘Drugs OD?’
    â€˜I don’t think so.’
    â€˜Ah, no!’ Nesbit had seen the arm. ‘Silly me. Not a suicide either. I don’t think anyone would choose to kill themselves by cutting their hand off and if they did, my hunch is they would find it impossible to walk very far once they’d done so.’
    â€˜Doc?’
    â€˜He didn’t die here.’ Nesbit moved the left arm. ‘He’s in rigor, but he must have been brought here before the stiffness set in. And there is no blood, or very little. With both the ulnar and radial arteries in the arm severed, blood would be gushing everywhere. I can see some splatter marks on the man’s right leg but not much on the floor. The hand was removed somewhere else.’
    â€˜How long before rigor sets in?’
    â€˜A few hours, but look at the lividity in the lower legs and the left arm. Some blood has oozed from the right too. I’d say the body was moved shortly after death. One to two hours at the most. To sum up, before rigor mortis but prior to livor mortis.’
    â€˜And the severing of the hand caused death?’ Savage asked.
    â€˜Too early to say that, Charlotte, but it is possible.’ Nesbit stared at the body for a moment and then reached forward and pulled the man’s right sleeve up. ‘There’s something else here. Strange.’
    Savage moved closer and Nesbit pointed at the forearm. There was a rectangle of skin marked with black and white stripes in a crude pattern resembling a zebra crossing.
    â€˜Appears to be paint,’ Nesbit said touching the arm with a gloved finger. ‘Dry too. Never seen anything quite like it.’
    â€˜Not a tattoo?’
    â€˜No, this is on the surface of the skin.’
    â€˜Can you get that thing out of his nose? The business card?’
    â€˜Let’s see …’ Nesbit reached for the black tube and teased it from the nostril and then flattened the card and showed it to Savage.
    â€˜Fastwerk Bookkeeping,’ Savage said. ‘Notte Street. That’s close to here, back down Hoe Road.’
    Nesbit turned to Savage. ‘Can you pass me my thermometer and some wipes from my case please. An evidence bag too. I am going to take a rectal temperature reading, but I’ll need to clean up a bit first.’
    Savage opened the bag and found the thermometer unit with its remote probe and a packet of wipes. She handed them to Nesbit. Denton grimaced as the pathologist began to wipe the excrement from between the man’s buttocks.
    â€˜And I used to think nappies were bad,’ Savage said.
    â€˜How’s Pete, Charlotte?’ Nesbit said in an upbeat tone, the question sounding the sort which might be posed at a dinner party. ‘I completely forgot to ask you on Monday. Rude of me, I know. I read in the paper he’d