A Conspiracy of Silence by Legat Anna

Author:Legat, Anna [Legat, Anna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Mystery & Detective, Police Procedural, Suspense, Thriller
ISBN: 9781786159755
Published: 2020-10-14T13:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-one

Dr Michael Almond doesn’t like answering questions; he prefers to carry out autopsies in the peace and the dead quiet of his examination room, after which he issues a post-mortem which he believes to be self-explanatory. But DI Marsh won’t wait for it. She is a busybody, a domineering little woman running on adrenalin and exuding vapours of bad attitude. She is standing next to him, breathing down his neck and bombarding him with questions: was it an accident? Any evidence of drug use? Was she sexually violated? Did she drown? The exact time of death? Anything of importance?

Almond turns to face her and, due to their considerable height difference, looks down on her with unconcealed irritation. He is pointing a scalpel at her pretty little nose that she so very much likes to poke in anywhere she can. His gigantic moustache hangs ominously over his words. ‘You’re not helping, DI Marsh. I’m likely to miss vital pieces of evidence due to your distractions. Can you not follow the example of DS Webber and watch patiently from outside?’

‘Look here, I appreciate you may like an audience – pathology is an awfully lonely pursuit – but I don’t have the time to applaud you from the sidelines. So let’s get this straight: I don’t do watching. Webber attends autopsies. And he’s only behind the glass because he can’t bear the sight of blood.’

Outside, Webber smiles sheepishly and adds, ‘Nor the smell . . . There’s something about the smell that turns my stomach.’

‘Anyway, it’s not about Webber.’ There! She’s doing it again: an abrupt change of subject. ‘So, was she murdered?’

Almond would love to argue and stick to his rules, but he has come to know DI Marsh and he is in no doubt that she won’t go away until she gets what she has come here for. In telegraphic shorthand he delivers his verdict, ‘There are no defensive injuries anywhere on the body. I can’t tell you with certainty that she wasn’t pushed or coerced, but I’d be more comfortable with the hypothesis that she went into the water voluntarily.’

‘Went? As in waddled in?’

‘Or dived . . . But the river isn’t deep enough in that section by Ascombe Street. There is no bruising to indicate that she hit the surface of the water falling from a considerable height, like the bridge . . . I’d say she just – went in.’

‘Suicide?’

‘That’s not my conclusion to draw. I can’t account for the victim’s intentions.’

‘But you can account for the time of death?’

‘Late Friday night or the early hours of Saturday morning. I can’t be any more specific. And before you repeat yourself,’ he raises a forbidding finger in response to Gillian’s mouth forming the opening of her next question, ‘yes, she drowned; no, she wasn’t violated – in fact, she is still a virgin; and no, there’s no external evidence of drugs, no needle marks or any suspicious bruising, but you’ll have to wait for the lab results to have a definitive picture as to what she may, or may not, have ingested.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.