He knew all too well that sense of dread, of uncovering too many complications in what should have been a straightforward investigation

Cadwallader moved round the trolley towards Smythe’s head and neck, prising back the neat scar that ran around from ear to ear.

“Throat has been cut with a sharp knife, probably not a medical scalpel. Could be a Stanley knife,” he said. “There’s some tearing, which would indicate the cut was from left to right.

“Judging by the angle of entry, the killer stood behind the victim while he was seated, held the blade in his right hand and . . .”

He made a slashing motion with his hand. “Was that what killed him?” Mclean asked, trying not to imagine what it might have felt like.

“Probably. But he should have been dead from all this.”

Cadwallader motioned towards the long slash that ran from Smythe’s groin up to his chest.

“The only way his heart could still have been pumping after someone had hacked away at him would be if he had been anaesthetised.”

“But his eyes were open.” Mclean remembered the dead stare.

“Oh, you can anaesthetise someone completely and still leave them lucid, Tony. But it’s not easy.

“Anyway, I can’t say exactly what was used on him until the blood tests come back.

“I should know by the end of the day, early tomorrow morning at the latest.”

The pathologist went back to the body and began removing organs.

Inspected

One by one the internals came out, were inspected, placed into white plastic buckets that looked suspiciously like they might have had raspberry ripple ice cream in them in a previous life, and finally handed to Tracy to be weighed.

Mclean watched with increasing disquiet as Cadwallader peered closely at a bright pink pair of lungs, prodding them with his gloved fingers, almost caressing them.

“How old was Barnaby Smythe?” Cadwallader asked as he held up something brown and slippery.

Mclean dug out his notebook, then realised it didn’t have any useful information on the case in it.

“I don’t know. Old. Eighty at least.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought.”

The pathologist put the liver in a plastic bucket and hung it on the scales. He muttered something under his breath.

Mclean knew that mutter and felt a twinge in the pit of his stomach that was nothing to do with a lack of food.

He knew all too well that sense of dread, of uncovering too many complications in what should have been a straightforward part of the investigation.

And Duguid would blame him, even if it wasn’t his fault. Shoot the messenger.

“But there’s a problem.” It wasn’t a question. “Oh, probably not. I’m just being fanciful, I guess.” Cadwallader brushed aside his concerns with a nonchalant wave of his blood-caked hand.

“It’s just such a shame. He must have worked hard all his life to keep this fit and healthy, and then some evil bastard goes and cuts him open.”

The Smythe murder incident room was a hive of activity when Mclean passed its open door on his way back from the mortuary.

Peering in, he could see at least a dozen uniforms tapping information into computers, making phone calls and generally keeping themselves busy, but no sign of Duguid.

Thanking small mercies, he carried on down the corridor, stopping only to persuade a vending machine to give him a bottle of cold water on his way to the small incident room he had commandeered for his own investigation.

Heavy weight

He twisted off the top of the bottle, draining half of the liquid in three long gulps.

It hit his stomach with a heavy weight, making it gurgle as he pushed open the door.

Grumpy Bob sat behind one of the tables, his head in his hands as he read a newspaper.

He looked up as Mclean entered, and guiltily pulled a brown report folder over. “What’ve you got there, Bob?”

“Er . . .” Grumpy Bob looked down at the folder, then turned it through 180 degrees so he could read what was written on it.

Finally he flipped it over, realising that he had been looking at the back.

“It’s a report into a break-in at the house of a Mrs Doris Squires. Back in June of last year.

“Me and the boy went to see her son this morning. “He was quite surprised to hear from us. Wondered if we’d found his mother’s lost jewellery.”

“Where is Constable Macbride?” Mclean looked around the room, but there really wasn’t anywhere to hide.

“I sent him on a doughnut run. He should be back any minute.”

“Doughnuts? In this heat?” Mclean pulled off his jacket and hung it on the back of the door.

He drained the rest of the water, feeling slightly light-headed as the cold liquid washed his throat.

His mind jumped back to Barnaby Smythe. A knife opening up his carotid artery, blood spilling out over his ruined body.

Knowing he was dead.

He shook his head to try and dislodge the image. Perhaps a bit of food would be a good idea after all.

“Did you get anything useful from Mr Squires, then?” he asked.

“Depends what you mean by useful,” came the reply. “I think we can safely say old Mrs Squires didn’t divulge the alarm code to anyone.”

“They did have an alarm, then?”

“Oh yes. Penstemmin Alarms, remote system. All the bells and whistles you could ask for.

“But Mrs Squires was apparently very blind and a bit doolally.

“She never knew the code. Her son always set it. And she died at home, in her sleep.

“The burglary happened about two weeks later. The day she was buried. There was a note in the paper and an obituary too.”

“Not a care worker, then. But still, it was a Penstemmin alarm system.

“I guess we’d better check them out. Find out who’s their liaison officer at HQ.”

Grumpy Bob’s complaint at being given more work to do was cut short by a sharp knock at the door.

Before either of them could do anything, the handle dropped.

More tomorrow.

Natural Causes by Fife farmer-turned-author James Oswald is the first in the Inspector Mclean series. It is published by Penguin, rrp, £7.99. Bury Them Deep, the latest in the series, is published by Headline in February, rrp £14.99.