Fatal Last Words

Eighteen

Things had changed since his previous visit to the mortuary; Sammy Pye could tell that as soon as he walked through the swinging doors and into the examination room. He and Wilding had made good time through the quiet Sunday streets, and so he was surprised to see that Neil McIlhenney was there before them. . doubly surprised since the pathologist had not mentioned that he would be joining them.

Professor Hutchinson read this in his unguarded glance. ‘I thought it best,’ he explained to the two newcomers, ‘to call Neil. This incident has taken on a new dimension, and it’s going to generate some big headlines around you gentlemen. After all, this isn’t any wee backstreet junkie we’re dealing with. This chap won’t be hidden away on page three. He was a minor literary god, a colleague of yours, you could say, given what he wrote about. I confess to having quite a few of his Walter Strachan novels on my own shelves. And then of course there’s his other life as an MSP. The bizarre killing of a parliamentarian is bound to stir the media into a frenzy.’

‘Killing?’ Ray Wilding repeated. ‘Does that mean you’ve ruled out suicide?’

‘Oh yes, Sergeant, and accident, too. I know for sure what happened to him and I will show you how it was done.’ He glanced at McIlhenney. ‘Is this death in the public domain yet?’

‘It should be,’ the detective superintendent replied. ‘Our press officer was authorised to make a statement as soon as formal identification was made.’

‘That’s right,’ Pye confirmed. ‘He was told to describe it simply as a sudden death, and not to imply that there was anything suspicious about it.’

‘Hah!’ the little professor chortled. ‘He’d better backtrack on that one; there’s plenty suspicious about it. Come here, and I’ll show you what I should have spotted at the first time of asking.’ He turned and, beckoning them to follow, walked towards the naked bulk of Glover’s body which still lay on the autopsy table.

‘Do we need to gown up?’ asked Wilding, who preferred the view from the other side of the glass screen.

‘Don’t be daft, Sergeant,’ Hutchinson replied. ‘You won’t catch anything from him, and whatever you might give to him won’t make any difference now. Come on, all of you; I need to show you this. I headed up the wrong path, I’m afraid. I won’t say I misled you but I didn’t consider all the possibilities. He was full of glucose, as I said earlier, but. .’ He hesitated. ‘My initial assumption was that somehow or other he had injected himself with the stuff, deliberately, by accident or through sabotage.’ He took the dead man’s left hand, still stiff with rigor, and twisted it so they could see the thumb, from which a section of tissue had been removed. ‘D’you see? That’s where the injection site was; the tiny needles that the pen devices use don’t leave much of a mark, but I found one. But the thing is, the thing is. .’ suddenly he seemed embarrassed, ‘when I considered the pathology of the thing, the process that leads to ketoacidosis and then death, I realised that injecting himself with that quantity of glucose even in high concentration simply wouldn’t have done the job, especially subcutaneously, as that jab was. So I asked myself,’ he continued, ‘was he topping up what was already there? Echo answered “no” and damn quickly. If he’d had that amount of the stuff in his system before he injected himself with what he undoubtedly assumed was insulin, well, he couldn’t have bloody well injected himself because he’d have been unconscious. Finally, that led me to ask myself, later than it should have, “What if he injected himself with something else?” So I began to check the tissue from the injection site for traces of other substances, and with commendable speed I came up with Pavulon.’

Pye looked at him blankly. ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s the American trade name of a paralysing drug used in anaesthesia, so that tubes can be put down the patient’s throat without reflex resistance. What I’m saying to you is that someone must have switched the ampoule in Glover’s pen thing. The effect would have been to incapacitate him, very quickly. And when he was under, that’s when he was murdered.’ He looked at each of the three detectives as if inviting a question; when none came, he continued. ‘Someone. . and for the record, the angle of injection precludes self-administration. . took advantage of his condition to ram a needle into the muscle of his upper arm, through his jacket and shirt, and to inject him with a really massive dose of glucose, enough to render him comatose in a very short time. Look here,’ he bent over the body, ‘for this is what I wanted you to see. Mr Glover was pretty hairy, or it would have been immediately obvious.’ He pointed to an area of the arm that had been shaved; in its centre was a red puncture mark. ‘It’s fresh,’ Hutchinson confirmed, ‘and when you take a really close look, magnified, you can see that fibres from his clothing have been punched in there. That’s how your man died, chaps. He was murdered. I apologise that it took me longer than it should have to work it out.’

There was silence for a few seconds, until McIlhenney broke it. ‘Joe,’ he asked, ‘once that fatal dose of glucose was given, would he have been unconscious at once?’

‘Not unless his attacker hit him, and there’s no sign of that. He’d have grown more and more dazed and confused, until finally he blacked out. The effect of the Pavulon would have been wearing off as the glucose took hold of him.’

‘Could he have called out? Shouted for help?’

‘I doubt it. He’d have been virtually helpless.’

‘Would he have been able,’ Pye queried, ‘to send a message, say a text or an email?’

‘That might have been possible, but he wouldn’t have had much time to do it. Plus, it probably wouldn’t have made much sense.’ The old pathologist beamed. ‘Gentlemen, I am pleased to tell you, albeit at the second attempt, that you have a murder on your hands, as cunning and premeditated a homicide as I have seen in my long and distinguished career. I wish you luck in trying to solve it.’