‘Or something,’ said Harper.

Laura Pense stood up, acknowledged Denise with a smile and then peered more closely at Harper’s face. ‘That’s pretty bad. Abrasions to the nose, lips, jaw, eyes. Deep tissue bruising. Potential fracture on the left cheek. Is that sore, there?’

‘I can’t feel it any more.’

‘He’s popping four painkillers every hour.’

Laura Pense raised her eyebrows in disapproval. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve been boxing?’

‘You’re right, he wasn’t boxing,’ said Eddie. ‘No, you couldn’t call what he was doing anything more than giving someone target practice.’

‘You been checked out?’ said Laura.

‘This guy?’ said Eddie. ‘This is a Neanderthal, Doctor, a throw-back. You know, when men were men and pain was personal disgrace.’

‘Macho men!’ said Dr Pense. ‘God, the amount of big guys I’ve seen who have been brought down by a spot of blood. Intracranial hemorrhages, Harper — perhaps you can fix that yourself, too.’

‘Is that my report?’ said Harper, pointing at the computer screen.

‘Are you lead on the Capske case?’ asked Laura.

‘I’ve been given the honor. Blue Team are on the case.’

‘Well, I’m just signing off.’

‘Anything I should know?’

‘Sure, come through. You got to see this.’

Harper felt reluctance stir inside him. He didn’t feel too good already, but he followed Dr Pense through to the autopsy room. Eddie was even further behind with Denise.

Dr Pense put on a fresh pair of gloves and approached a gurney covered in a green sheet. She whipped it back like a magician.

The sight was not magical at all, but macabre and strange. The barbed-wire cage had been opened with wire cutters and each clawing strand of wire pulled back. It lay open like a metal ribcage or a huge barbed chrysalis. Beneath the barbed wire was a bloody carcass. The skin was punctured by hundreds of dark round holes and slits.

‘Some of the puncture wounds are straight, but many have torn and ripped the skin where the victim has struggled. They’re deep too, deep enough to get right through the skin. He lost a lot of blood. Practically bled to death.’

Harper and Kasper passed their eyes over the corpse.

‘It’s a vicious death,’ said Dr Pense. ‘I can’t be exact but he’s been left to bleed for an hour or more. Tortured, I should say. In incredible pain. He probably blacked out. Look at this.’ She tilted his head so that one eye could be seen. The eyeball was punctured in two places. ‘Every single inch is punctured. You can’t imagine. You really can’t imagine.’

‘So, we got anything to nail his killer?’

‘He was shot once in the forehead. Little black wound, right here. He must’ve been tight to the ground, the bullet went in through the skull, out, hit the ground, re-entered and mashed the brain like an electric whisk.’

They both looked at Laura. ‘Nice image.’

‘Sorry, I’ve been taking French cookery courses, you know, trying to keep alive.’

‘That’s nice. Did you find the bullet?’

‘Yeah, sleeping like a baby in the left frontal lobe.’ Laura picked up a little lump of metal with a pair of forceps and dropped it back into the tray with a jingle.

‘It’s not got much shape left,’ said Harper. ‘The wound is unusually small too. What’s the exit wound look like?’

‘Interesting that you should ask. Bullet left the skull here. Not a great piece of scalp knocked out. Looked like it zipped through.’

‘It’s unusual,’ said Harper. He lifted the bullet with the forceps and turned it under his eye. ‘There’s something about this that isn’t right. I want Ballistics to tell me what they can about this, Eddie. Can you get them to do it tonight?’

‘Not much for Ballistics to go on,’ said Eddie. ‘But I’ll give it a go.’

‘Did you find a cartridge?’ asked Dr Pense.

‘No,’ said Harper. ‘You find anything more?’

Laura shrugged. ‘We had samples taken; we did checks, but nothing to report, yet. I mean, we don’t know what we’re looking for, but his organs all look healthy. Apart from his septum.’

‘The coke?’

‘Yeah, signs of damage but it’s healed. I’d say he used to be a user, but not in the last year or so. I won’t know if there was any coke in his blood for another few hours. And another thing. We’ve got a lot of dirt under his nails.’

‘What kind?’

‘Petroleum-based with some black dye.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Boot polish.’

‘So he cleaned his shoes before he went out dancing,’ said Eddie.

‘He was wearing white sneakers,’ said Harper.

‘You got any theories?’ said Laura.

‘Maybe he cleaned the killer’s boots,’ said Denise from the far side of the room. ‘Punishment and containment. It wouldn’t surprise me if he humiliated and demeaned the victim first.’

Harper and Dr Pense turned. ‘Where did that come from, Denise?’

‘Deduction. If it’s not his boot polish, maybe this killer’s got some big-time subservience thing going on — a malignant narcissist, something like that.’

Harper and Levene caught each other’s eye. Harper sensed there was more that Denise could say, but he dropped it.

‘Could be a small-time dealer. Selling to his friends. Got mixed up with some bad boys,’ said Eddie.

‘Not the usual MO for a gangbanger, is it? They shoot and scatter like rats,’ said Harper.

‘We’ve also got slight abrasions to his knees, just surface scratches.’

‘Was he dragged across the floor?’

‘No. Not dragged. This was like he was kneeling. Fits with Denise’s idea that the killer made him polish his boots.’

‘Kneeling?’

‘At some point, before the torture and execution.’

The four of them stared down at the bloody carcass with the horrible possibilities reverberating in each of their thoughts. Harper gazed at Laura as the harshness of the word ‘execution’ hung in the air. ‘Anything else?’

‘Yes,’ said Laura, ‘but I don’t know what it is.’ She walked over to Capske’s body and swabbed the corpse’s chest until it was clear of blood. ‘There,’ she said.

‘What are they?’

‘Tiny needlemarks. Some have traces of ink, but the barbed wire has torn most of it to shreds.’

‘They look like they form a series of lines,’ said Harper.

‘Yeah, there’s a few more in the torn skin. Can’t reconstruct anything. What do you think?’

‘Tattoo,’ said Harper. ‘It looks like a home-made tattoo.’

‘There was also a card stuck to his chest.’

‘What?’

Laura Pense brought out a small rectangle of black card. ‘It’s got his name on it and the word Loyalty.’

‘Where was it?’

‘Inside his shirt.’

They looked at the card and then at Capske’s chest where a series of small pinpricks stretched across the skin — but the tears and puncture marks obscured them. The marks ran across his chest and each line was in a different direction. Some were straight, others curved slightly, some were horizontal, others vertical.

Harper took out his sketchpad and drew the marks. ‘It might be something important,’ he said. ‘Shame the barbed wire has ripped it all away.’

‘The marks were made with a fine-point needle,’ said Dr Pense. ‘The killer took his time doing that.’

Harper looked down at his sketchbook. The marks led left to right in a line and fell away to the right. All in all, there were about thirty-two tiny puncture marks. The others were lost in the torn skin. ‘Denise, you got any idea?’

‘Sociopathic not political. Maybe the killer thinks he’s fulfilling some political purpose, but this kind of behavior is compulsive. The need to mark the corpse, to torture, to execute.’

‘I agree,’ said Harper. ‘What about the word on the card?’

‘Loyalty. It might give you a clue to the motive or it might be related to his conceptual framework, his ideology. He thinks this is purposeful, even necessary.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A typed card in black. Like an execution card, right? Like his target has been pre-ordained.’