Читать книгу The Trophy Taker - Lee Weeks - Страница 12
Оглавление‘All three Caucasian?’
‘We may never know for sure, but the measurements, the forward curve to the femur, they tally.’
‘We may get lucky with some IDs,’ said Mann. ‘We have one skull, in pretty good shape at least, and a tattoo.’
‘And a fingerprint,’ added Li. He wasn’t going to let them forget that.
‘We’ll download these photos we’ve taken onto Detective Li’s laptop – get them straight across to headquarters so that they can begin working on it,’ said Mann. ‘Let’s hope it’s enough to positively establish the race and identity of these women. One Gwaipoh is bad enough – three will start a mass exodus.’
‘What about the texture of the skin?’ asked Li. ‘Would that help to give the ethnicity of the victim away, sir?’
‘How?’
‘Everyone knows that Gweilos have really rough skin and are very hairy.’
Mann looked at him, half-amused, half-appalled. ‘Yeah, that’s about as true as the one about all Chinese men having tiny cocks. Oh wait! That one is true!’ He turned back to the pathologist who was suppressing a grin.
‘Any theory about cause of death, sir?’ asked Mann.
‘We need to wait for the toxicology results to be sure about poisoning, but I suspect the cause of death to be asphyxiation again – manual strangulation or with the aid of a ligature. We’re just waiting for the x-rays to come back; that might give us an idea of how it was done. Right, let’s see what else we can find.’ He pressed his fingers inside the wound again and eased it apart.
‘We’re quite lucky here – because of the freezing process we still have some organs left intact. However …’ his gloved fingers disappeared inside ‘… some are not where they should be.’ He looked at Li.
‘Sir?’
‘The ovaries and uterus are missing …’
‘What does that mean?’ asked Li, before he could stop himself.
The pathologist paused and looked at him. ‘It means … young man …’
Li blinked back at him, ready for the worst, but before Mr Saheed could answer, Kin Tak exploded:
‘We have a trophy taker …’ and immediately smacked his hand across his mouth to silence his excited giggle.
