She studied the body. It lay supine, half on the pavement and half in the gutter. Legs folded over to one side, arms splayed out at shoulder height. The back of the head had leaked blood and brains into the roadway, and wetted the otherwise dried mud that caked the nearby drain. ‘Looks like the same cause of death as the others’ she said.

‘Look again.’

Gwen took a broader view of the alley. ‘This is a new location. Still out of the way. Secluded. But further into town.’

He dropped his gaze and his pale blue eyes stared directly at her. ‘Look again.’

‘Time of death must be early this morning.’

He clucked his tongue. ‘Let’s leave that for Owen to decide at the autopsy. Now, look again.’

Gwen stooped for a closer examination. The corpse’s lower face and chest were spattered with fresh vomit. Gwen coughed and gagged abruptly. ‘This is too recent. It wasn’t him.’

‘It wasn’t him, right,’ agreed Jack. He raised his voice to a shout. ‘It was someone else who barfed over the evidence!’ Gwen could see Mitch further up the alleyway, still staring silently at his own feet. ‘It was someone,’ Jack continued, ‘who had two corned beef sandwiches and a Tango Orange before he came on duty.’

Gwen arched her eyebrows at him. ‘I don’t believe you can work that out from just looking at that pile of sick.’

‘It’s the smell,’ he told her.

‘Dog shit, vomit… Now I feel sick.’ She hunkered down to examine the corpse again, unsure whether to breathe through her nose or her mouth in the process. The face seemed familiar. And why did she associate that face with the smell of fish and raw meat? Not from the stench of Mitch’s acid vomit, that was certain. She could see that the victim had been a tattyhaired vagrant who looked much more than his teenage years. ‘The previous victims were older than this guy.’