Dr Mehta broke the silence. ‘You’ll make the identification, Sergeant?’

‘Yes. This is the same woman I saw yesterday at 22 Jerusalem Lane, WC2, at’-she consulted her notebook-‘16.56.’

‘How do you spell your name?’ he asked. She told him, watching Brock bend lower again until his nose was within a few inches of the old woman’s face.

‘I’m damned if I can see any spots, Sundeep,’ he muttered.

‘On the scalp, just inside the hair line, Chief Inspector. In any case,’ he continued, addressing himself to Kathy in his precise, formal manner, ‘petechial haemorrhages don’t prove anything. They can be a sign of smothering, but they’re also seen in other conditions of terminal lack of oxygen and congestion, such as heart failure, so they’re not diagnostic of asphyxia in the forensic sense.’

He returned to filling in his form.

‘Her skin is pretty tough,’ Brock remarked.

‘Yes. I’d say she spent some years out in the sun, in a warmer climate than we are blessed with in these blighted shores.’

‘Oh now, it hasn’t been a bad summer,’ Brock murmured absently, continuing his detailed inspection of the corpse. ‘What about these faint bruises on the upper arms? Could somebody have held her down?’

Dr Mehta shrugged. ‘Perhaps she got so excited watching the gee-gees on TV she gripped her own arms too tightly. They bruise very easily, these old dears.’

‘But you’ve got the bag?’ Kathy broke in, and turned to Brock. ‘We found a plastic bag in her kitchen rubbish bin which had moisture inside, and a couple of silver hairs.’

‘Oh yes, I’ve got it,’ said Dr Mehta, ‘and of course we’ll test it against the swabs. Anyway, we’ll have a good look at blood fluidity and, of course, the condition of the heart, dilatation of heart chambers, oedema of the lungs, congestion of organs, et cetera, et cetera, but, I’m not in the least sanguine, Sergeant, that in the end I’ll even be able to establish the cause of death, let alone provide you with clues.’