Primal Cut by Ed O'Connor Page A

more frightening thought.
    The surface of Shaw’s body was caked in dried sweat. Obviously, this suggests he undertook serious physical exertion before death. It should be noted that Shaw’s blood group was O negative. However, traces of AB negative blood were found on his hands, arms and face. My supposition is that Shaw was involved in some kind of fight before he died. This hypothesis is supported by the severe bruising to the victim’s ribcage.
    Underwood sipped his coffee, drowning his anxiety in hot, brown water. He tried to focus his mind. His thought processes, always erratic, were at their most unreliable in the morning.
    The victim’s right arm also shows an extremely unusual pattern of damage. A portion of flesh has been torn away and is missing. The victim appears to have had a tattoo of an eagle in the upper arm area. It is a common design. It appears that there was some crude attempt to remove it by force.
    Underwood looked out of the grey window at the grey skies above his grey world. Why try to remove the tattoo? Did it reveal something about the killer’s identity? He looked up as Alison Dexter arrived in the next office to his. Underwood looked up at the office clock. It said 8.02. He wrote that piece of information down in the notebook in which he noted such details. Dexter sat down and flicked on her computer. Underwood studied her black hair and elegant neck intensely, with the hunger of desolation.
    He continued to read Leach’s report: The wound to the upper arm is, in itself, peculiar. The flesh is torn and ragged resembling the kind of damage inflicted by dangerous dogs. However, an enzyme analysis of the area revealed traces of human saliva on the flesh. This matched the AB negative blood traces found on the victim’s hands. The obvious conclusion is that Shaw’s assailant removed the flesh with his teeth.
    A warning bell jangled in Underwood’s head. In the gloomy recesses of his mind, something was screaming at him. Edgy now, he read on:
    The actual killing blows were struck with tremendous ferocity. Splinters of steel were lodged in the victim’s skin and hair. The cranium was fractured an inch above the nuchal crest, fatally piercing the brain itself in two places.
    Something vague and indistinct bothered Underwood. A memory frantically gasping for life: like some prehistoric creature crawling out of the primordial soup.
    The post-mortem evidence points to a rather obvious conclusion: Shaw was engaged in some form of physical violence immediately prior to his death. His assailant is of the AB negative blood group and, in addition to administering the fatal blows to Shaw with some kind of heavy steel instrument (hammer?), he bit a sizeable chunk of flesh from Shaw’s right arm. Without question, Shaw was dead before his body was dumped onto the railway track.
    Underwood sat back in his chair and for a moment or two watched Alison Dexter stare into space in the office next to him.
     
    The computer screen glowed in front of her, waiting for her to log in. Alison Dexter was aware of the faint musky aroma on her face and her fingers. She thought that she liked it. However, everything else was uncertain: her feelings ricocheted between shame, pride and excitement. The thrill and terror of losing control electrified her. She now knew that she was alive but had no idea what she was becoming. She groaned inwardly as Underwood came to her door.
    ‘Got a minute?’ he asked.
    ‘Of course.’ Dexter waved him in.
    ‘Everything OK?’
    ‘Fine.’
    ‘You seem…’
    ‘Fine,’ Dexter crashed the sarcophagus lid shut on that twitching corpse of a conversation. ‘What can I do for you?’
    Underwood handed her the post-mortem report on Lefty Shaw. ‘This is Leach’s PM analysis of the railway body, Leonard Shaw.’
    ‘Foul play?’
    ‘So it seems. It also appears that there’s an overlap with the work Bevan’s been doing.’
    ‘The dog-fighting thing?’
    ‘That’s right. Shaw attended