Tom Graham - Life on Mars - A Fistful of Knuckles

Sam peered down at what remained of Denzil Obi. He had been beaten into anonymity, his nose and eyes reduced to swollen puddings of battered flesh. His mouth had been battered into a misshapen, toothless hole. He was barely even recognizable as a human being. The only identifying mark Sam could make out was the large spider tattooed on the dead man’s neck, its spiky legs reaching up towards the remains of Denzil’s ear.

Suddenly, something else caught Sam’s attention – something inside of Denzil’s slack, gaping mouth. He leant closer.

‘You’re getting unpleasantly intimate with the victim, Tyler,’ Gene said gruffly. ‘Your little woman not keeping you satisfied?’

‘Guv, there’s something in the back of his throat.’

‘His pelvis, probably, given the pasting he’s had.’

‘No, Guv, it looks like something metallic.’

‘His fillings?’

Sam peered closer, trying to see without touching the body. Gene loomed over him.

‘Well? What is it?’

‘I can’t quite see, Guv. Whatever it is, it’s gone down his throat.’

‘Don’t be squeamish, Sammy-boy. Have a rummage.’

‘I can’t do that,’ Sam protested.

Gene loomed closer: ‘Think of it like a first date – stick your fingers in and see what you can find.’

‘For God’s sake, Guv, I’m not qualified to conduct an autopsy!’

‘You don’t need ten years in medical school to fish out a ball bearing, Sam. Dive in, he won’t bloody bite.’

‘Guv, this is a crime scene, and we’re going to act professionally, and we’re not going to start mucking about with the body, and we’re not going to-’

Gene ripped off his driving glove, elbowed Sam aside, and thrust his hand into Obi’s mouth. After a spot of blind fumbling, he produced something and held it up with bloodied fingers. It was a bullet.

‘Blimey …’ murmured the landlord. ‘Is that what did him in?’

‘If it is, then Denzil Obi choked to death,’ said Gene. ‘This round hasn’t been fired.’

Sam squinted closely at the bullet. It was indeed perfectly intact.

‘Somebody shoved it down his throat,’ he said.

‘Either that or the coon got peckish,’ said Gene. And then, with enough sarcasm to sink a battleship: ‘Sorry, Tyler. Mixed. Race .’

The coroner peeled off his latex gloves, dropped them into a pedal bin, and belched like a walrus.

‘Beg pardon. I had whelks,’ he said, patting his flabby chest and growling out more gas.

This put into Sam’s mind the ghastly image of the fat coroner’s digestive system clogged with semi-digested seafood. He felt his own stomach heave uncomfortably. How the hell could the coroner talk like that, here of all places? Damn it all, they were at a morgue not a restaurant!

Unmoved and unconcerned, Gene Hunt lounged against a wall, his arms folded, his manner casual: ‘So Doc, what’s the story with Rocky Marciano? Anything for us to go on?’

‘Denzil Obi’s been dead about two or three days,’ said the coroner. ‘He suffered a prolonged and powerful attack, almost exclusively to the face and head. Massive fractures to the parietal and zygomatic regions.’

‘That bit and that bit,’ translated Gene for Sam’s benefit, pointing to the side of his head and then his cheek.

‘Nice to see you’re picking up the lingo, Inspector,’ said the coroner, impressed.

‘I’m not just looks and charm,’ growled Gene. ‘So what was the weapon used? Iron bar was it? Baseball bat?’

‘Interestingly, no. The nature of the skull fractures are inconclusive, but the contusions to the face and head bear very clear imprints of a human fist. Punch marks, gentlemen.’

‘Well that makes sense,’ put in Sam. ‘Denzil Obi was a boxer. Are you sure these weren’t old bruises?’

The coroner smiled condescendingly and said: ‘I flatter myself, young man, that I can tell an old contusion from a cause of death. Denzil Obi was punched – repeatedly, and with impressive force,’ he fought to suppress another deep, whelky belch, ‘until he died from cerebral haemorrhaging.’

‘But … whoever did this must have hands the size of anvils!’ Sam said.

Again, the coroner shook his head: ‘Quite the opposite. A broad fist wouldn’t inflict quite this degree of concentrated damage; the force of the blows would be more widely dissipated. The man who killed Obi had small hands – small, with strongly condensed bone structure, rock solid, packed tight. I measured the bruises; the man who inflicted them has fists slightly less than three inches across the knuckles – about the same length as your index finger, Inspector Tyler. Every punch would have been like an intensely focused hammer blow.’

‘One bloke, you reckon?’ asked Gene. ‘Just one bloke to overpower Obi and beat him to death?’

‘It’s perfectly feasible,’ said the coroner. ‘I could find no evidence that the victim was restrained in any way during the attack, and all the injuries he sustained are consistent with an attack from a single assailant. One man attacked him. One man killed him.’

Gene pulled a sceptical, pouting expression, but the coroner smiled and went on. ‘A single blow, powerful enough and delivered in the right place, could leave even a professional boxer reeling. If the victim was dazed and semi-conscious, his assailant could rain blows on him unresisted. In this case, though, Obi didn’t go quietly. He fought back – at least for a while. His hands were freshly cut and bruised. The struggle may have lasted some minutes.’ He grunted up a noisy bubble of stinking air. ‘Like the struggle between me and these whelks. Excuse me, gentlemen – if I don’t get some liver salts down me I’m going to be the next one on the slab.’

‘But what about the bullet?’ asked Sam as the coroner pushed past him.

‘Shoved down his throat after he died,’ the coroner called back as he strode away down the corridor. ‘A tantalizing mystery for you sleuths to puzzle over.’

And then, with one last resounding belch, he was gone, leaving Sam and Gene alone.

‘Denzil was a boxer,’ said Sam. ‘Whoever killed him was a boxer too – somebody who knows what they’re doing with their fists.’

‘Most likely,’ said Gene. ‘A boxer with a grudge – and very small hands.’

Without warning, Gene reached out and roughly grabbed Sam’s hand.

‘Guv, what the hell are you doing?!’

‘The length of your index finger, he said,’ growled Gene, peering at Sam’s finger. ‘It’s gonna be like Cinderella and the glass slipper; whoever owns the fist that matches your pink little manicured digit, he’s our man.’

‘I’m not playing Prince Charming for you, Guv! You’re not using my finger as a measuring stick for murderers!’

‘I thought you’d always wanted to give me the finger, Sammy-boy.’

‘Give over!’

Sam wrenched himself free from Gene’s powerful grasp.

‘Let’s at least try and behave like professional coppers, Guv,’ he said. ‘Denzil knew his killer. That would explain why he let him into the flat. They quarrelled – fought – after a few minutes, Denzil was overpowered, and the killer pummelled him to death. But why stick a bullet down his throat afterwards?’

Gene shrugged: ‘Symbolic. I dunno. We’ll ask the killer when we nick him.’

‘And how are we going to do that, guv? Where are we going to start?’

‘Somewhere conducive to contemplation, where the mighty Gene Hunt noggin can work its magic.’

‘And where’s that, guv?’ asked Sam.

Gene looked at him flatly and said: ‘Where’d you think, dumb-dumb? And you’ll be the one getting them in.’