Fever of the Bone by Val McDermid Page B

route. Before he’d made the first turning, Patterson began talking. It was, Ambrose thought, quick off the mark for his boss. A measure of how heavy Jennifer Maidment was weighing on his spirit.
    ‘Cause of death was asphyxiation. The polythene bag over her head, it was taped tight to her neck. No sign of a struggle at all. No blow to the head. No scratches or bruises, no blood or skin under her fingernails.’ His voice was leaden, the words slow and deliberate.
    ‘Sounds like she was drugged.’
    ‘Looks that way.’ Patterson’s face altered as anger replaced depression. Two dark flushes of colour tinted his cheeks and his lips were tight against his teeth. ‘Of course, it’ll be fucking weeks before we get the toxicology results. I tell you, Alvin, the way we do forensic science in this country, it’s a joke. Even the crappy old NHS is faster. You go to the GP for a full set of blood tests and you get the results, what, forty-eight hours later? But it takes anything up to six weeks to deliver a toxicology result. If the bloody politicians really want to deter criminals and up the detection rate, they should throw money at the forensic services. It’s insane that we can only afford the technology in a tiny percentage of cases. And even when the accountants let us have some access, it takes fucking for ever. By the time we get the results, nine times out of ten all it does is back up what we’ve already pulled off with old-fashioned coppering. The forensics should be there to help the investigation, not just to confirm we’ve arrested the right villain. That
Waking the Dead
? And
CSI
? I sit there in front of the telly and it’s like some horrible black comedy. One episode and I’d have used up my entire budget for a year.’
    It was a familiar rant, one of several that Patterson trotted out whenever he felt frustrated with a case. Ambrose understood that it wasn’t really about whatever his boss was criticising. It was about what Patterson saw as his failure to deliver the sort of progress that might help the grieving families with their pain. It was about being fallible. And there was nothing Ambrose could say that would make either of them feel better about that. ‘Tell me about it,’ was all he said. There was a long pause while he gave Patterson time to compose himself. ‘So what else did the doc have to say?’
    ‘The genital mutilation was apparently the work of an amateur. A long-bladed knife, very sharp. Probably not anything exotic - could have been a carving knife.’ Patterson made no attempt to disguise his revulsion. ‘He inserted the blade into the vagina and twisted it round. The doc reckons he might have been trying to cut out the whole lot - vagina, cervix, uterus. But he didn’t have the skill for it.’
    ‘So we’re probably not looking for someone with medical knowledge,’ Ambrose said, calm and apparently imperturbable as ever. But under the surface, he felt the slow build of a familiar dull anger, a rage he’d learned to contain as a teenager when everyone assumed that a big black lad was always going to be up for a fight. Because when he gave in to it, the fact that he was a big black lad meant he was always going to be in the wrong, one way or another. Better to burn inside than end up taking the weight of everybody else’s need to prove themselves. And that included teachers and parents. So he’d learned to box, learned to put the power of his fury under the discipline of the ring. He could have gone all the way, everyone said so. But he’d never enjoyed the demolition of his opponents enough to want to make a living out of it.
    ‘The doc said he wouldn’t even ask this one to carve a bloody turkey.’ Patterson sighed.
    ‘Any signs of sexual assault?’ Ambrose signalled to turn into the Maidments’ street. He knew how Patterson adored his Lily. There would be no mercy, no pity in this hunt if the killer had raped his victim too.
    ‘Impossible to tell. No anal