Part II
A concrete hallway led from the front entrance into what used to be the main office area. Two doors off the hallway — one locked solid, the other hanging open, open one led into the old announcer's box. Martin went straight for it.
I followed him in, my guts twisting like they always do when there's a body in the room, you don't get used to it, people reckon you do, medics, cops, ambos — everyone reckons you get hardened to it after a while, you don't, you just get better at not showing it on your face.
The room was big and square, faded posters peeling off the walls, a long bench running under a row of filthy windows that used to overlook the track, an old candle stub sitting in one corner, melted wax pooled around its base, dust covering everything, thick and grey, except where it's disturbed and the body.
Jack Winters, forty-five, maybe, broad shoulders, expensive clothes — the kind you buy in shops that don't put prices on the tags, curly dark hair, short-trimmed beard, lying on his back, arms flung out wide, legs twisted, hands clenched into fists so tight his knuckles were white.
His face was the worst part, not because it looked damaged; there wasn't a mark on him, no cuts, no bruises, no blood, it was the expression on it, pure terror, mouth open, eyes wide and fixed on the ceiling. The look you see when they knew exactly what was coming and couldn't stop it.
I've seen plenty of dead men; Afghanistan gives you that education whether you want it, blokes torn apart by IEDs, shot through the chest or blokes who bled out slowly in the dirt while you tried to pack the wound and the tell you something about their mum, none of them looked like this, they didn't look like they'd seen the thing that killed them and understood it before it happened.
Whatever Jack Winters saw in his last few minutes, it scared him worse than dying. You reckon you know what a dead body looks like from the movies? Forget it, actual death doesn't look like that, it's ugly and undignified and it leaves a taste in the back of your throat that takes hours to fade, this poor bastard looked like he'd had a conversation with something terrible and lost the argument.
Two blokes were standing by the door when we walked in, Joel Gregson and Sean Lestrade, two homicide detectives Martin had told me about, Joel was short, blond, and had a face that aspired to be punched — not because of how it looked, but because of the expression it wore, permanent smugness, like he'd just told a joke and was waiting for you to catch up, Sean was taller, darker, and looked like he hadn't slept in a week, tie loose, shirt with a coffee stain on the cuff.
"Took your time," Sean said to Martin. "I wasn't aware I was on your payroll," Martin replied, already kneeling beside the body. Joel folded his arms. "We've got this under control, for the record." "I can see that," Martin said, not looking at him. "That's why Sean wrote me a note asking for help, because you've got it under control." Joel's face went red. Sean had the good sense to look at his shoes.
Martin examined the body without touching it, just looked, eyes moving over Winters the way a scanner moves over a document — left to right, top to bottom, missing nothing, then he leaned in close and sniffed the dead man's lips, pulled back sniffed again, eyes narrowed.
"Poison," he mumbled. "There's no wound," Joel said. "We checked." "I didn't say there was a wound. I said poison; lips have a faint bitter residue, expression on his face is consistent with someone who ingested something and knew it immediately, didn't die in his sleep, he was awake, standing, and aware of what was happening to him."
Martin stood up and turned his attention to the floor, this is where I watched him do what he actually does, and I'm going to describe it for you because it was one of the strangest things I've ever seen a human being do, and I once watched a bloke in Kandahar eat a scorpion on a dare.
He pulled a tape measure from his pocket, a magnifying glass from the other pocket, and started moving around the room in silence, bent almost double, studying the dust on the floor.
The dust was thick and grey, undisturbed in most places, but there were tracks through it, footprints, two sets, plus the heavy boot prints of the cops who'd been through earlier. Martin measured the distance between the footprints, the length of individual steps, got down on his hands and knees and studied the impressions with his magnifying glass, his nose six inches from the concrete, at one point he lay flat on his stomach, cheek pressed to the filthy floor, sighting along the surface at an angle.
"Two people came in here together," he said from the floor, "One wearing expensive leather shoes — those are the victim's, the other wearing heavy work boots with a worn-down left heel, boot prints are interesting, stride length suggests someone tall, six feet, maybe over. But the boot size is incorrect for that height, too small, significantly too small."
He stood up, brushing dust off his shirt, and walked to the far wall. "Then there's this," he said.
On the wall, in what looked like dark oil — the kind you drain out of a sump — someone had written a single word in blocky capital letters: DEFECT