Dagger Magic

Jack Somerville was there ahead of them, a husky, balding man half a head shorter than McLeod and muscled like a wrestler, heatedly discussing rugby standings with an athletic-looking younger man with an Irish accent. Listening indulgently was a diminutive grey-haired woman in hornrimmed spectacles and green surgical scrubs who turned out to be Vale of Leven's resident pathologist, Dr. Margaret Gow. The Irishman was introduced as Detective Sergeant Ernan Ryan, sent over from the Garda Siochana in Dublin.

"We're only waiting on Dr. Macaulay," Somerville explained in his gravelly bass. "He's on staff at Southern General, coming across to be our independent consultant. He should be here any minute."

This announcement coincided with a stir back down the hall, followed by the sound of a door opening and closing.

"Och, just stay where you are, Detective," a tenor voice said good-naturedly. "I know my way well enough from here."

Muffled footsteps approached; then the door swung open to reveal a lanky, lantern-jawed man with bright, dark eyes peering out from under an untidy fringe of black hair. Though Dr. Macaulay would have towered head and shoulders above his female colleague if he stood straight, his posture was somewhat bowed from many hours spent bending over operating tables and peering through microscopes.

"Sorry I'm a bit late," he announced to the room at large. "Meg, if you'd be kind enough to introduce me to these gentlemen, we can suit up and get on with the afternoon's business."

A quarter hour later, with introductions tendered all around, both Macaulay and the police observers had exchanged their street attire for green surgical scrubs and seemingly incongruous rubber boots and shifted their venue to the theatre where the post-mortem would be performed. Peregrine had a sketch pad and pencil clutched to his breast. Scrubbed white tiles lined the walls and floors under a bank of high-intensity lights, and several stainless-steel buckets flanked a drain in the middle of the floor, directly underneath the stainless-steel table that occupied center stage. As a mortuary attendant wheeled in a green-sheeted form on a gurney, Peregrine found himself wondering whether the buckets were for the benefit of weak-stomached observers or were meant to contain more grisly offerings.

A faint whiff of decay tickled at his nostrils as Macaulay helped the attendant shift the body onto the stainless-steel table, and Peregrine retreated to the foot of the table with McLeod. The array of shiny surfaces reminded him queasily of a cross between a veterinary surgery and a prep-school biology lab, and the refrigerated air was cold enough to make the breath turn to frost between his teeth. Despite the sterile chill and the operative hum of the ventilating system, the air smelt strongly of clinical disinfectants - but not strongly enough. Detective Murray came to stand on McLeod's other side, already beginning to look unwell.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gow was slipping a series of X rays under the clips of a bank of light-boxes to one side, pulling on surgical gloves as she beckoned for Macaulay to have a look. Adam moved to the head of the table with Somerville and Ryan, also casting a professional eye over the X rays. As the two police surgeons came back to the table, taking positions on either side, McLeod casually interposed himself between Peregrine and Murray - which Peregrine realized would afford him a greater degree of privacy once he began sketching.

Pausing to switch on the overhead lights and video recorder at the head of the table, Dr. Gow stripped back the body's covering to the waist, announced the date and time, then began her description and external examination of the body.

"Subject is a well-nourished male Caucasian, approximately thirty years of age, previously identified by next of kin as Michael Alan Scanlan, an Irish national. Police surgeons attending: Dr. Margaret Gow, Vale of Leven Hospital, and Dr. Richard Macaulay, Southern General."

When she had also rattled off the names and functions of all the witnesses present - no mean feat, by Peregrine's reckoning - she and Macaulay examined the body's head injury, then got down to work.

Somewhat removed from too direct a view, Peregrine managed to remain reasonably detached through the initial phase of the procedure by working quick anatomical sketches; he had done similar exercises in art school. As the autopsy progressed, however, he found cause to be glad that he had not eaten much lunch. The cold room felt suddenly hot and stifling; he became aware of a roaring in his ears. The reek of decay and blood and other bodily fluids made the bile rise in the back of his throat, and he found himself swallowing convulsively to keep from gagging.