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Maddie asked, ‘What did you know?’

‘That guy is useless, I wouldn’t trust him to PM my hamster.’

Of course, she wanted to know what he meant. He got up and led her into the dissection room where the body of Mr Helmond lay, now reconstructed and washed. He went straight to his left hand that was still clenched into a fist, and unfurled the fingers. There was a deep linear burn running across the palm and across the fingers. Clive said, ‘Heart attack? My backside it was a heart attack. I just checked with the Coroner’s office; they had to make a few phone calls and talk with the ambulance crew, but it seems that Mr Helmond was using an electric mower at the time he died. The poor bloke ran over the cord and got two hundred and forty volts for his trouble.’

‘What are you going to do?’ asked Maddie.

‘Have a word with Ed Burberry. He won’t thank me, but I can’t let this go.’

Ten minutes later, Clive returned with Ed and they went into the dissection room; I could see from Ed’s expression as he emerged that he was not happy. He went out but was soon back again, this time in the company of Dr Zaitoun; back into the PM room he went while Maddie and Clive stayed in the office and waited. There were raised voices for a few minutes and then they heard the PM room doors open and Dr Zaitoun hurried out. Ed followed, but came into the office and sank into a chair with loud sigh. ‘Oh dear,’ he groaned.

Maddie made him some coffee. Clive said, ‘This won’t be the last time, Ed. You mark my words. There’s more to come.’

Ed said nothing but apparently the look he gave Clive spoke volumes.

All this, I had walked into after taking the morning off. I could tell Clive was upset that his judgement had been ignored by Dr Zaitoun. Although I did wonder if he really cared what Dr Zaitoun thought of him, I came to the conclusion that deep, deep down he did, but would never admit to this.

Maddie, on the other hand, looked as though she was ready to throw in the towel and made it clear that it was her turn to have a weekend off.

FORTY-FIVE

Over the next few days, all three of us got to see how Dr Zaitoun operated, which was pretty shoddily. Clive was totally pissed off when he took just ten minutes doing a road traffic victim, not even bothering to chart the external injuries. ‘No respect for the family at all,’ Clive said loudly enough for him to hear. You could always tell when Clive was angry, because he became tight-lipped and quiet, growling when he spoke; and he would stalk around threatening to kick things like the wall and the door. He mumbled to himself, stuff that was difficult to hear but you knew it was about Dr Zaitoun’s behaviour. This was Clive all over. He took it personally although, technically speaking, it wasn’t really his problem; Clive, though, considered it would reflect badly on the mortuary and thus on us if the PMs weren’t done properly.

Things were quiet for a week or so, and then Dr Zaitoun did the autopsy on an old gentleman who had died shortly after having an endoscope put down his throat to investigate swallowing difficulties. They had seen a tumour at the entrance to the stomach and had biopsied it; then, though, after three hours, he had collapsed, sweating and fevered. He had been rushed to ITU, but had died before the night was over. Dr Zaitoun – not reading the hospital case notes as usual – decided that it was a spontaneous perforation of the tumour. The distinction is important because spontaneous perforation would be a natural cause of death, whereas if the act of biopsying it had caused the hole, then it would be an unnatural death, and there would have to be an inquest. We wouldn’t have known any different, except that the endoscopist rang up the mortuary a couple of days later to find out the results of the post-mortem. He was most surprised when Clive read out what Dr Zaitoun had written.

‘Really? That’s odd. I could have sworn I’d made the hole.’

Clive put the phone down, shouted a loud swear word, sighed, and said some