Tana French - Broken Harbour

His finger moved upwards, to three leaf-shaped red blots that made a rough arc from below the outline’s left collarbone down to the center of its chest. “The other major injuries are puncture wounds, also from a single-edged blade. This one penetrated between the upper left ribs; this one struck the sternum; and this one entered the soft tissue by the edge of the sternum. Until the post-mortem is complete I cannot, of course, state the depths or trajectories of the wounds or describe the damage they caused, but unless the assailant was exceptionally strong, the blow directly to the sternum is unlikely to have done more than possibly flay off a chip of bone. I think we can safely posit that either the first or the third of these injuries is the one that caused death.”

The photographer’s flash went off, leaving a flare of afterimage hovering in front of my eyes: the squiggles of blood on the walls, bright and squirming. For a second I was sure I could smell it. I asked, “Any defense injuries?”

Cooper flicked his finger at the scattering of red on the outline’s arms. “There is a shallow three-inch slash wound to the palm of the right hand, and a deeper one to the muscle of the left forearm-I would venture to guess that this wound is the source of much of the blood at the scene; it would have bled profusely. The victim also shows a number of minor injuries-small nicks, abrasions and contusions to both forearms-that are consistent with a struggle.”

Patrick could have been on either side of that struggle, and the cut palm could go either way: a defense wound, or his hand slipping down the blade as he stabbed. I asked, “Could the knife wounds have been self-inflicted?”

Cooper’s eyebrows lifted, like I was an idiot child who had somehow managed to say something interesting. “You are correct, Detective Kennedy: that is indeed a possibility. It would require considerable willpower, of course, but yes: certainly a possibility. The shallow slash injury could have been a hesitation wound-a tentative preliminary attempt, followed by the deeper successful ones. The pattern is quite common in suicides by cutting the wrists; I see no reason why it should not be found in other methods as well. Assuming the victim was right-handed-which should be ascertained before we venture even to theorize-the positioning of the wounds on the left side of the body would be consistent with self-infliction.”

Little by little, Fiona and Richie’s creepy intruder was falling out of the race, vanishing away over the horizon behind us. He wasn’t gone, not yet, but Patrick Spain was front and center and coming up the straight fast. This was what I’d been expecting all along, but out of nowhere I caught a tiny flash of disappointment. Murder Ds are hunters; you want to bring home a white lion that you tracked down in dark hissing jungle, not a domestic kitty cat gone rabid. And under all that, there was a weak streak in me that had been feeling something like sorry for Pat Spain. Like Richie said, the guy had tried.

I asked, “Can you give us a time of death?”

Cooper shrugged. “As always, this is at best an estimate, and the delay before I was able to examine the bodies does not improve its accuracy. However, the fact that the thermostat is set to maintain a constant temperature is helpful. I feel confident that all three victims died no earlier than three o’clock this morning and no later than five o’clock, with the balance of probability tilting towards the earlier time.”

“Any indication of who died first?”

Cooper said, spacing it out like he was talking to a moron, “They died between three and five A.M. Had the evidence provided further details, I would have said as much.”

On every single case, just for kicks, Cooper finds excuses to diss me in front of people I need to work with. Sooner or later I’m going to work out what kind of complaint to file to make him back off, but so far-and he knows this-I’ve let it slide because, at the moments he picks, I have bigger things on my mind. “I’m sure you would,” I said. “What about the weapon? Can you tell us anything about that?”

“A single-edged blade. As I said.” Cooper was bent over his case again, sliding the sheet of paper away; he didn’t even bother to give me the withering look.

“And this,” Larry said, “is where we come in, if you don’t mind, obviously, Dr. Cooper.” Cooper waved a hand graciously-he and Larry get on, somehow. “Come here, you, Scorcher. Look what my little friend Maureen found, just for you. Or didn’t find, more like.”

The girl with the video camera and the nose moved away from the kitchen drawers and pointed. The drawers all had complicated kiddie-proof gadgets on them, and I could see why: in the top one was a neat molded case, Cuisine Bleu swooping across the inside of the lid in fancy lettering. It was made to hold five knives. Four of them were in place, from a long carving knife to a dinky little thing shorter than my hand: gleaming, honed hair-fine, wicked. The second-biggest knife was missing.

“That drawer was open,” Larry said. “That’s how we spotted them so soon.”

I said, “And no sign of the fifth knife.”

Head-shakes all round.

Cooper was busy delicately detaching his gloves, finger by finger. I asked, “Dr. Cooper, could you take a look and tell us if this knife might be consistent with the victim’s wounds?”

He didn’t turn around. “An informed opinion would necessitate a full examination of the wounds, both at surface level and in cross-section, preferably with the knife in question available for comparison. Do I appear to have performed such an examination?”

When I was a kid I would have lost the rag with Cooper every time, but I know how to manage myself now, and it’ll be a cold day in hell before I give him the satisfaction. I said, “If you can rule this knife out somehow-the size of the blade, maybe, or the shape of the hilt-then we need to know now, before I send a dozen floaters off on a wild-goose chase.”

Cooper sighed and threw the box a half-second glance. “I see no reason to exclude it from consideration.”

“Perfect. Larry, can we take one of the other knives with us, show the search team what we’re looking for?”

“Be my guest. How about this one? Going by the holes in the box, it’s basically the same as the one you’re after, just smaller.” Larry picked out the middle knife, dropped it deftly into a clear plastic evidence bag and handed it over. “Give it back when you’re done.”

“Will do. Dr. Cooper, can you give me any idea of how far the victim could have got after the wounds were inflicted? How long he could have stayed on his feet?”

Cooper gave me the fish-eye again. “Less than a minute,” he said. “Or possibly several hours. Six feet, or conceivably half a mile. Do take your pick, Detective Kennedy, since I am afraid I am unable to provide the kind of answer you want. Far too many variables are involved to permit an intelligent guess, and, regardless of what you might do in my place, I refuse to make an unintelligent one.”

“If you mean could the vic have got rid of the weapon, Scorcher,” Larry said helpfully, “I can tell you he didn’t go out the front, anyway. There’s not a drop of blood in the hall, or on the front door. The bottoms of his shoes are covered , so are his hands, and he’d have had to hold himself up, wouldn’t he, as he got weaker?” Cooper shrugged. “Oh, he would. Besides, look around you: the poor fella was going like a sprinkler. He’d have left us smudges everywhere , not to mention a lovely Hansel-and-Gretel trail. No: once the drama had started, this fella didn’t go into the front of the house, and he didn’t go upstairs.”