The body was on its side, a vast hulk of pale white flesh like the underside of a fish, though now tinged with green. Was that the light reflecting off the curtains? Tom couldn't tell. Strangely, his eye found the unbroken flesh first. The wound, the torn opening in the back, ringed by frayed threads of red, he only saw later, and when he saw it he could not look away. It was the depth of it that appalled him, the deep, red depth of it.
‘… consistent with severe trauma to the trunk, shattered shoulder blade, ruptured lung and exploded right ventricle…’
Tom was not listening. His eye was still gazing into the crimson gash, now congealed. It had the broken, rough edges of a hole in a plaster wall, as if a fist had punched right through it.
‘Let me turn him over for you.’
The two men had been standing opposite the pathologist, with the body between them and her. Now, they moved around so that they were alongside her. There was no smell yet, but the sight was powerful enough. Tom felt a hint of nausea.
‘You can see the exit hole here. Which means you'll have to be looking for a bullet.’
Tom focused on the dead man's face. The passport photograph must have been recent; the same full, roundness of head was still visible, hard as a billiard ball. He moved his hand forward, contemplating a touch.
‘Don't!’
He looked up at the pathologist, who was holding two latexed hands up in the air. ‘You don't have gloves.’
Tom gestured his retreat and took the opportunity to ask a question. ‘Can I see his eyes?’
She stepped closer and, with no hesitation, pulled back one eyelid, then another, as roughly as if she were checking on a roasting chicken.
For that brief second, the inert lump of dead flesh, a butcher's product, was transformed back into a man. The eyes seemed to look directly at Tom's own. If they were saying something, Tom had missed it. The moment was too short.
‘I'm sorry, can I see his eyes again?’
‘Pretty striking, huh?’
Tom hadn't noticed it the first time but now, as she pulled back both lids, pinning them with her latex thumbs and holding the position, he saw immediately what she meant. They were a bright, piercing blue.
‘He was strong, wasn't he?’ Tom pointed at the thickness of the dead man's upper arms. When his father had hit his seventies his arms had thinned, the skin eventually flapping loosely. But this corpse still had biceps.
‘You bet. Look at this.’ She pulled back the rest of the sheet revealing a flaccid penis, its foreskin drooping limply, before prodding the man's thick thighs: the butcher's shop again. ‘That's some serious muscle.’
‘And that's unusual for a man this age?’
‘Highly. Must have been some kind of fitness freak.’
‘What about that?’ It was Sherrill, anxious not to be forgotten – and to remind Tom who was in charge here. He was gesturing at a patch of metal bandaged to the dead man's left leg like a footballer's shin pad.
‘That appears to be some kind of support. It's unusual. When plates are used in reconstructive surgery, they're inserted under the skin. This is obviously temporary. Maybe it was used as a splint after a muscle strain. Odd to use metal though. It will probably become clearer once we see the deceased's medical records.’
‘What about that?’ Sherrill asked pointing at the lifeless left foot. There was a big toe, another one next to it and then a space where the other three should have been.
‘I hadn't got to that yet,’ the doctor said, with a welcome implication that he was ahead of her – and Sherrill. She moved to the end of the gurney, so that she could examine the foot from above. ‘These are old wounds,’ she said. ‘Maybe an industrial accident as a much younger man.’
‘Can you tell how old they are?’
‘Put it this way, I don't imagine this playing much of a role in your investigation. I would estimate these wounds are no less than sixty years old.’
Sherrill resumed with a battery of technical questions, most of which seemed to centre on ballistics. He and the pathologist were now trading in a technical dialect Tom didn't speak, all calibres and contusions, and that was when he noticed, lying casually on the top of a small cabinet of drawers, several clear, ziplocked plastic bags, the kind airport security hand out for valuables. One of these contained a plain white plastic card that looked like a hotel room key, another a clunky, outdated mobile phone. These had to be the possessions of the deceased, removed from his pockets prior to the post-mortem and carefully bagged up. Tom remembered Sherrill's scolding of the security chief over the passport.
As casually as he could, Tom picked up the first plastic bag. Sure enough, the card inside bore the imprint of the Tudor Hotel, suggesting once again that this poor old buffer was no suicide bomber: he probably planned to go back to his room after his ‘mission’ to UN Plaza, no doubt to have a nice cup of tea and a lie-down. There was Merton's passport, a few dollar bills, a crumpled tourist information leaflet, probably taken from the hotel lobby: Getting to Know… UN Plaza.
Sherrill's stream of technicalia was still flowing when a head popped round the door, summoning the pathologist outside. Tom seized the moment to beckon the detective over and show him the bag containing the phone. Through the plastic he reached for the power button, then brought up the last set of numbers dialled, recognizing the familiar 011-44 of a British number and then, below that, a New York cellphone, beginning 1-917. Instantly Sherrill pulled out a notebook and scribbled down both numbers. Tom did the same. He was about to bring up the Received Calls list, and then take a look at the messages, when a ‘Battery Empty’ sign flashed up and the screen went blank.
Sherrill waited for the pathologist to return, peppered her with a few more questions before making arrangements for a full set of results to be couriered over to him later that afternoon. Then he and Tom went back to the UN, to the security department on the first floor where, on a couch and armed with a cup of sweet tea, sat a pale and trembling Felipe Tavares.
Despite himself, Tom had to admit, Sherrill was a class act. He spoke to the Portuguese officer quietly and patiently, asking him to run through the events of that morning, nodding throughout, punctuating the conversation with ‘of course’ and ‘naturally’, as if they were simply chatting, cop to cop. Unsaid, but hinted at, was the assumption that if Sherrill had his way no police officer was going to be in trouble simply for doing his job. All Felipe – can I call you Felipe? – had to do was tell Jay everything that happened.
The part of the narrative that interested Sherrill most seemed to be the moment Tavares had received the alert from the Watch Commander supplying the description of the potential terror suspect: black coat, woollen hat and the rest. Sherrill pressed the officer for an exact time; Tavares protested that he had not checked his watch. What about the precise wording? Felipe said it was difficult to remember; the rain had been coming down so hard he had struggled to hear properly. Other officers must have heard it too: it was a ‘broadcast’ message to all those on duty. ‘That's right,’ said Sherrill. ‘I'll be checking with them, too.’
The detective did his best to sound casual asking what was clearly, at least to Tom's legal ears, the key question. It came once Felipe described the moment he pulled the trigger.
‘At that instant, did you reasonably believe your life was in danger?’
‘Yes. I thought he was suicide bomber. Not just my life in danger. Everyone's life.’
‘And you thought that because you saw some kind of bomb?’
‘No! I told you already. I thought it because of the message we had, the warning about a man who look like this.