The Blood Line by Solomon Carter

Author:Solomon Carter [Carter, Solomon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

It was left to Palmer to pull Drummond back in for interview with Kaplan taking notes as they forced the man to recount every detail he could remember of the days around the eleventh. Meanwhile, Hogarth, always glad of a reason to be away from the office, took a drive to the hospital mortuary for more information from pathology. Having called ahead, Ed Quentin was there to greet him. Hogarth was glad to see that the doctor had a batch of fresh paperwork with him. They took a seat in the room used to host bereaved relatives. Hogarth took the opportunity to grab himself a fancy coffee from the Gusto machine.

“A precise window for the time of death is what we need, Ed. We’ve got a suspect, and he fits, but—”

“But you’re not sure he’s the guilty party.”

“Not guilty of killing John Gristle, at least.”

Ed settled into a deep armchair. He settled so deeply that he threatened to disappear without a trace. Quentin set a pair of half-moon glasses on his nose and began to inspect the paperwork. “You would have had a copy of this by the end of the day.”

“You know me.”

“Yes, I know you’re impatient. Almost as much as I am. Thankfully, my patients never keep me waiting, and they don’t often waste my time. Ah, here we are – time of death. Signs of asphyxiation became less reliable as the body decayed, but they were still strong enough to provide me with a baseline. The further we move away from the moment of physiological death, then looking at eye tissue can provide a useful indicator. The vitreous humour, contrasted with the general state of decay, suggests the eleventh is still our probable date of death. But from those indicators alone, you’re talking about a twenty-four-hour window, running through until the end of the twelfth. Working with what I have, that’s all I can narrow it down to. Twenty-four hours from the eleventh to the twelfth.”

“Then it’s still an estimate of a kind? Forty-eight hours rather than twenty-four?”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I’m talking about twenty-four hours from the eleventh. The victim’s oral condition suggested the same timeframe.”

“Anything else to confirm it?”

“Only one thing.”

“Yes?”

“The presence of the common housefly. Musca domestica. When this little fly laid its eggs in John Gristle’s airway, the thing set a kind of biological timer.”

“How do you mean?”

“As soon as the deed was done a housefly had access to Gristle’s gaping mouth. Assuming those fly eggs were laid while the body was still warm –a good bet because a warm body is very appealing for our friend the housefly – then the soonest they could have hatched to form maggots was two weeks. And the ones inside Gristle were very small – and most still in the egg – which means they had only just hatched.”

“Ed, are you actually trying to make me sick?”

“No, Hogarth. I’ve been running this part through in my head. It’s forensic entomology, not really my field. It involves using the presence of insects to discern a timeframe.

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