His hands are all over it. Plus some DNA from his skin where he kept it in the back of his waistband. Maybe traces of other hands on the gun. Maybe. Not enough DNA to read after a weekend in the river.’

‘One person, both hands?’

‘Working on it, Inspector… With my luck lately, it’ll break down to three.’

‘And perhaps a bit of fabric,’ Charles Léger muttered. ‘Synthetic. Like training shorts.’

She moved to his bench, looked through the scope at the tiniest morsel. Lighter than darker. Bluish, not white. ‘Or a bathing suit?’

‘Sure.’

‘Or underwear,’ Jean-Marc suggested. ‘Again, very indistinct. An outer layer. Minimal contact with skin… Thing is, a lot of different people rolling around on the ground out there, or so I gather.’

Indeed. ‘Thanks, messieurs. Please don’t stay late on my account.’ Though she knew they would. Adding, ‘Tomorrow I’ll have the gun.’ Then she went across to the morgue.

Pathologist Raphaele Petrucci uncovered the cleaned-up corpse. ‘The bullet killed him, no doubt there. I mean the one in his head. But the two in his gut could have done, if required. But dead before his little swim, that’s sure. And smacked about the face and head with something hard.’

‘Not the rocks while he drifted?’

‘No…well, a bit. But the worst part of it is pre-swim.’

‘Med Examiner says two days, maybe three.’

‘I’ll narrow it to Friday night. Saturday, early.’

Aliette’s eyes drifted over the surface of lifeless flesh of what used to be a handsome man. A severe mish-mash of cuts and scratches on the legs and back and shoulders. ‘Most of that’s your rocks and thorns and the like,’ Raphaele said. Sustained in being run down, tripping, falling in the rocks? ‘Yes,’ gesturing across the hall. ‘IJ’s got corroborating blood and bits of skin. But this mess around his head…’ now demarcating the tighter, deeper cluster of wounds which had ruined the classic face, ‘this is something else. A chair? Or a board?… Wood, not metal.’

‘A picture frame?’

Raphaele Petrucci considered the gashes. ‘Yes…Well, a hefty one.