Kiss and Die

Chapter 87

Mann sat in the car park and rested his head on the steering wheel. The head was on ice in a box on the backseat. Kin Tak tapped on his window.

‘Inspector?’

Mann nodded, pulled his keys from the ignition and opened the door. ‘Sorry.’ He clutched his bottle of mineral water as if it were his leash on the world. He’d sat outside in his car until he felt ready. He hadn’t had the stomach for it ten minutes earlier. They crossed the gravel path carrying the box. ‘Sorry I’m late.’

Mr Saheed was business as usual. ‘Hello again, Inspector.’

Kin Tak unpacked the head and placed it in a stand on the autopsy table.

‘His name is Peter Thorne. He’s a forty-five-year-old businessman from the UK,’ said Mann.

Saheed made an incision in the scalp from behind the ear, around the back of the head to the other ear. Then he peeled the scalp away from the top of the head and placed it over Peter Thorne’s face. Saheed talked to Mann as he worked. ‘We have already established that the head was removed after death.’ He looked at Mann over his bifocals. ‘Moved to your apartment, I hear. You should try not to take your work home with you, Inspector. A fine-bladed chopper was used to sever the spine between the third and fourth vertebrae.’

Kin Tak fetched a small electric saw and pressed the button to start it. It buzzed and whined like a dentist’s drill but louder, much louder, as it cut through the bone. Mann clenched his teeth. The sound was like nails down a blackboard. The smell of burning bone filled his nose. He swallowed. He squeezed the plastic bottle of water without even realizing he had. It cracked as it popped in his hand as it expanded again. Kin Tak took a small hammer and chisel and dislodged the portion of skull that he had sawn through. There was a sound like a boot being freed from sticky mud. He laid the top half of the skull to one side and began stripping the membrane with a pair of pliers. Kin Tak reached inside and extracted the brain.

‘We will leave that cooking for a few days,’ Saheed said as he placed the brain in a bucket of formalin. ‘I can’t dissect till it toughens up. I will let you know what I find from the swabs in the mouth and the fluid tests. They will tell us whether there are drug traces. But I can confirm that the same blade has been used in this case as in the others. Inspector, are you listening? Are you all right?’

Mann shook his head, he took a swig of water. ‘I have to go.’