Free Shroud of Evil by Pauline Rowson Page A

was shot,’ he declared, staring at the round-shaped hole in the upper thorax of the hairless chest before exchanging a swift glance with Uckfield who was looking worried and rightly so.
    Gaye frowned as she studied it. ‘It looks that way but I can’t say for certain until I open him up, or even if it was the cause of death. He could have been alive when he was put in that shroud and placed in the water and therefore drowned.’
    Horton suppressed a shudder at the thought. And judging by Uckfield’s glowering countenance he didn’t like what they were seeing any more than Horton did. What on earth had Kenton been doing to get himself shot, stripped, bundled up in a sail cloth and dumped on the shore?
    ‘Whoever shot him aimed well,’ he said.
    ‘Yes. Right at the heart,’ Gaye answered almost abstractedly, which wasn’t like her, thought Horton, wondering what she was thinking.
    He said, ‘His clothes have been removed to try and hide forensic evidence.’
    ‘Probably. And just to make it more difficult,’ she added, ‘your killer decides to wrap him up in a sail to further confuse any traces of forensic evidence and leave the sea to eradicate even more.’
    Uckfield sniffed. ‘A clever-dick killer. Let’s hope he made some mistakes along the way. They usually do.’
    Gaye looked up. ‘We might get something on where the body was prior to being found on the shore from an analysis of hair and skin. But there’s more.’ She paused. Horton could see her mind racing with thoughts. ‘The body is wet.’
    ‘Yeah, well it has been in the sea,’ Uckfield sneered sarcastically.
    Gaye rolled her eyes at him while Horton rapidly thought. ‘Wet all over?’ he asked sharply.
    ‘Yes.’ She waited for him to say it.
    ‘Which means he must have been immersed in the sea before being wrapped in the sail cloth.’
    ‘The sail cloth is laminated, which means it’s waterproof. And from what I could see there didn’t appear to be any tears or holes in it, but we’ve only shoved it into a bag, not examined it. You’ll need to have it tested to see if it has lost its waterproof capability. And if he was shot and fell on to it then there might be traces of blood. But he might not necessarily have been in the sea. I’ll test skin samples for a saline content but he could have been shot in the bath or the shower, hence his nakedness, and the killer could then have wrapped him in the shroud and put him in the sea. He could even have been shot in a shower on board a boat.’
    ‘I thought you were meant to be giving us something to help our investigation, not make it more complicated,’ grumbled Uckfield. ‘Time of death?’
    And this, thought Horton, was a critical point.
    She considered this while scanning the corpse. ‘As you know a body usually sinks because the specific gravity of it is very close to that of water. As putrefactive gas formation decreases so the body gravity creates enough buoyancy to allow it to rise to the surface and the length of time this takes depends on whether the body is dressed in heavy clothing, which this victim wasn’t, although I would say that sail was heavy enough to make him sink. Normally, at this time of the year, his body would have risen to the surface between three and five days but the victim hasn’t been dead that long. Even despite being cocooned there would have been much clearer signs of decomposition than there are. Post-mortem lividity looks well established, as you can see by the purple colouring of the skin, and rigor mortis is also well established but the temperature of the sea might have slowed it down. I’d say time of death twenty-four hours but that is very approximate. You could be looking at less or possibly more.’
    Uckfield raised his eyebrows as though to say
thanks a bunch
.
    ‘I might be able to be more precise when I open him up, and when we examine stomach contents.’
    Horton’s own stomach churned as though in sympathy, reminding him he hadn’t