Free Maxwell's Inspection by M.J. Trow Page A

slippers for routine stuff like this, so he went about the business for which he had been trained and which most of us would find too ghastly to contemplate, alone and talking into a mike that was suspended from the ceiling.
    â€˜Well-nourished male,’ Astley mumbled, knowing thatDonald could translate his mutterings into coherent English for the report later. ‘Age … mid-forties.’ He mechanically checked the knees, the shins and the elbows for childhood scars. Nothing. Perhaps Alan Whiting had been a fastidious child. Perhaps Mr and Mrs Whiting had kept their little boy in a glass bubble. The world of a forensic pathologist was littered with the word ‘perhaps’.
    For a brief moment, Jim Astley and Alan Whiting held hands. The nails were good, clean and trimmed, the fingers strangers to manual work. No scars even here, no signs of slippage with the hedge trimmer, no careless swing with a hammer which chipped the nail and coarsened the skin. Alan Whiting had been a paper pusher all his life. There was a discoloration around the cuticles that Astley recognized, chemical staining. At some point, the dead man had had access to a chemistry set and over a period of time, well, well, well … join the club; the man was a scientist.
    Astley had scraped the dried blood from the man’s chest. His shirt, bow tie and other clothing were with Henry Hall’s people now, going through the third degree as all objects from a crime scene did. All that remained now to tell the world how he died was a small black hole in the mid line of his body.
    â€˜Incision measuring four milimetres through the ster-no-cleido mastoid,’ he tilted the dead man’s head, ‘exiting through the trapezium to the right of the mid line. So,’ he dropped the head back and straightened up, adjusting the dangling mike as he went, ‘my guess at this stage – and we’ll do the surgery tomorrow, Mr Hall, if it’s all the same to you, is that the murder weapon is a sharp-pointed, dull-sided narrow blade which passed through the ster-no-hyoid  above or below the third vertebra. Resistance would have been slight if the blow missed the bone and the impact would have carried the head backwards if …’ he checked the papers alongside him, ‘as the notes contend , Mr Whiting was pinned by said weapon to his chair. Fibres on his hair will confirm that.’
    Astley switched off the mike and looked down at the placid face of the dead man, his head supported by the pads. ‘Neat but not neat enough. Professional, but amateur . You’re a mass of contradictions, aren’t you, Chief Inspector?’
    And in that chill, stainless steel room as another summer’s day died around him, even Jim Astley wasn’t sure whether he was talking about Alan Whiting or Henry Hall.

Chapter Four
    â€˜That’s enormously hurtful, you know.’ Peter Maxwell was talking to Jacquie Carpenter on her front doorstep in Sandcroft Way as darkness came down over Leighford.
    â€˜What is?’ She kissed him and took one of the takeaway bags.
    â€˜What you just did,’ he told her. ‘Looking round to see if anyone noticed my arriving. You’re ashamed of me, aren’t you? Aren’t you?’ He was screaming now. ‘It’s because I’m so old, isn’t it? So decrepit. That’s what all this is about.’
    She kissed him again, giggling and pushing him back in the doorway and draping herself over him, grinding her hips against his. Then she pulled back. ‘You,’ and she batted him on the nose with a prawn cracker, ‘are just a dirty old man.’
    He winked at her. ‘Works every time, doesn’t it?’
    She led him through into her kitchen, opening cupboards and clattering crockery as she went. The sun gilded her spice rack and her assorted whisks. ‘Anyway,’ she said. ‘Where’s your key?’
    â€˜Ah.’ His face