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gallery. Can you spare ten minutes?’
    ‘Certainly. Have you turned up anything?’
    ‘Best if I go through it with you here.’
    ‘Okay.’ He paused to think for a moment. ‘Give me fifteen minutes.’
    ‘See you then.’
    The crime-scene tape was still stretched across the entrance to Durrell Place and a constable in an overcoat stood in front of it, stamping his feet. Pendragon gave him a sympathetic smile as he passed under the barrier. Dr Newman was alone in the gallery, slipping out of her green plastic overalls as Pendragon walked in. Beneath them she was wearing a black knee-length skirt and a white blouse. Beside her on the floor was her case, opened out. Next to that lay a sheet of plastic with clear bags and a line of specimen bottles arranged upon it in two neat rows.
    ‘You’re on your own,’ Pendragon observed.
    ‘My team just left. They’ll be back in the morning to finish up. It’s been a long day.’
    ‘Certainly has. So, what have you found?’
    Dr Newman lifted one of the bags from the floor. The apple lay inside it.
    ‘Ah, the Granny Smith,’ Pendragon said, without expression.
    Colette Newman tilted her head to one side and gave him a questioning look.
    ‘Our friend Dr Jones. One of his little jokes. He made a point of identifying the apple before telling me anything else about the corpse.’
    Dr Newman produced a half smile. ‘We have a few prints on it, but I can guarantee they’re from a local greengrocer. Anyone who could kill someone and set them up the way they did with Berrick wouldn’t make such an elementary mistake.’
    Pendragon nodded.
    ‘That’s confirmed by the fact that there are no prints on the chair and there was nothing on the body either. We managed to give it a thorough going over before it was moved over to Jones’s lab. Has he turned up anything, by the way?’
    ‘Berrick was killed by a long needle plunged into his brain. But Jones believes the victim’s head was mutilated later, possibly using some kind of press.’
    ‘Yes, I noticed the mark on the neck before the body was removed.’ She lifted a bottle from the plastic sheet. In the bottom of it lay a tiny fleck of grey. ‘The press idea makes sense. We found this, a sliver of steel. It’s either from a knife used to tidy the hole or a punch of some sort. Before you ask, it’s too small to help much, but we’ll put it under the ’scope at the lab.’
    ‘I don’t suppose our killer left anything of themself behind?’ Pendragon asked, without much hope.
    ‘Sadly, no. I think they must have been wearing some sort of plastic suit.’ She bent down to return the sample bottle to the sheet. ‘But I’ve got at least one thing to show for eight hours’ work.’ Newman turned and walked towards the archway leading to the reception area. Pendragon noticed for the first time that a series of marker flags had been placed seemingly at random close to the centre of the room. He followed the Head of Forensics over to the first flag. Crouching down beside her, he could just make out some black marks on the wooden floor.
    ‘Rubber,’ she said without looking up. ‘There’s a line of these marks across the floor all the way from reception. They stop here.’
    ‘From a tyre?’
    ‘Correct. Or, more precisely, the tyre of a wheelchair.’

Chapter 9
    Stepney, Thursday 22 January
    Sally Burnside was an early-to-bed-early-to-rise type and she had a set routine. Up at 6.30 on the dot, out of the door by 6.40 and on her route around the Stepney streets. She rarely changed the course she followed: down Stepney Green, along the High Street, cut through the patch of lawn around St Dunstan’s Church, and then west along Stepney Way before heading back east along Mile End Road.
    This morning was no different, though she was annoyed with herself for leaving the flat five minutes later than usual, which meant she would either have to cut short the run or be late for the tube. The pavement along Stepney Green was