At the hospital mortuary, I identify myself into the entryphone. "Detective Sergeant Beth Woodcock, Carford CID. Here for Dr Britten." The door buzzes and clicks open.

The pathologist is grabbing a coffee from a vending machine; he fetches me one too. "Tastes like mud, DS Woodcock, and watery mud at that, I'm terribly afraid. But sometimes one doesn't want anything too strong lying on the stomach, eh?" He pushes a door open with his back and waves me to follow. "Well, now. Our recently late friend from Burtonheath, eh?"

"Thanks for expediting the exam."

"Always at your service." He grins, and pushes his glasses up his nose with an elbow. "Actually, I was intrigued – rightly so as it turns out. And it's nice to see a new face at Carford. You come recommended, I believe, and I'd like to keep our good name with your lot."

"Oh. Well." I wonder who he's been talking to. I've been parachuted in from the other end of the Force's patch to cover a vacancy, and am definitely an outsider; it's nice – but also curious – that someone he knows has talked me up. "Thanks, anyway."

He nods, and shows me through to the exam room. I perch on one side while he fetches a body out of the freezer units and wheels its trolley across. "Now then, DS Woodcock. What were your first thoughts?"

I sip my thinly muddy coffee. "Blunt force to the head, and hefty. Probably more than once. There was blood pooled on the rug beneath him, so I assumed some rear injury." I wave a hand vaguely at the trolley, remembering the mess which had been the victim's face. "But I don't think his face was supposed to look like...that. He was supine when I saw him."

"A face only a mother could love, as they say." Dr Britten has the grace not to smile at his own remark and points at the naked corpse with a pencil. "You're correct. The poor fellow's head has been comprehensively bashed in, both front and back. Back first. I think that was the business concluded. The facial damage is...ah...dressing. Aesthetic work, if you like."

I risk a proper glance at the victim, and regret it. "No chance of accidental? Self-inflicted?"

Dr Britten appears to take my question seriously. "I didn't see much sign of organic material residue on the desk or bookcases. Might have been some blood smear on the desk edge, but I'll leave that to your white-suited technical ghouls, of course. I presume there will mainly be just the usual dust and fingerprints of a working study." He then gently circles his pencil over the man's face. "You'd have to be working with extraordinary enthusiasm to do this to yourself on the furniture in that room. And, in any case, this chap was in no fit state to be enthusiastic about anything after those blows to the back of the head."

"Blows, plural." I close my eyes and nod. "OK. Murder it is, then."

"I fear so. Not least because the fatal blow or blows came upwards to that sweet spot at the base of the cranium. I'd suggest it's physically impossible to deliver a blow like that to oneself, in that environment." He turns the body partially over with remarkable gentleness, and indicates the damage to the base of the skull; his glance at me is equally considerate. "The blow or blows were also, as you put it just now, 'hefty'. Forceful. And deliberate. The angle and force suggest someone shorter than the victim, but with momentum behind them. Or strength to their arm."

I force myself to consider the corpse as a whole for a few moments, front and back, signing Britten to lift it up or lay it down where necessary. My untrained eye can't see anything out of the ordinary for a late-middle-aged man, other than his disfigured head. "Apart from his face, is there anything about him that even a mother might not love?"

Britten lays the corpse back on the trolley and covers him. "Typical middle-aged professional man. Ate well but not luxuriously, judging by his last meal, last night. Drank a bit too much, probably – we middle-aged professional men usually do. Bloods will confirm, but there seems to be red wine and whisky still in the stomach. Obviously enjoyed the odd cigar or pipe, more likely pipe, but not regularly: there were tobacco flakes on his waistcoat and his lungs were heading towards a crisis – however, I suspect he was an after-dinner smoker. Probably nothing in the last 24 hours, and I suspect he suffered his fate between his last meal and his last anticipated smoke. Sexually abstinent in the recent past. Nothing else."

I rub my face. How does one begin to investigate the murder of a typically middle-aged single man whose worst bad habit was an after-dinner pipe? "Any idea what did it?"

"The weapon? Now, then." Dr Britten grins. "This is what intrigued me, DS Woodcock. There were traces around both wound sites which suggest he was hit with something organic. Animal, rather than vegetable. Again, I'm waiting for some test results, but..." He sips his own coffee and keeps his voice casual. "My working theory is a large haunch of meat." He makes a small but clear gesture which looks a lot like a cramped golf swing.

I laugh harshly with surprise, then realise Britten is – underneath his grin – perfectly serious. I must look either blank or incredulous, because his eyes twinkle mischievously.

"I don't get intrigued by most of the poor souls you lot bring us, DS Woodcock. But this one has given me some pause for thought, and I like that." He waggles his pencil. "Bear in mind, the Science may throw up some..ah...left-field results, but it very rarely lies." He takes a pad and doddles for a moment, turning it round and showing me a crude but recognisable cartoon of a leg joint – complete with comic bone sticking out of the end. "You're probably far too young to remember these hanging in a butcher's window – or even using a butcher rather than a supermarket – but they do still exist here and there. Both the butchers and the relevant cuts of meat."

I swallow. "Dr Britten, you're suggesting you think this man was battered to death with a leg of lamb or something?"

"Yes. And not a frozen one." Again, he pushes his glasses up his nose with his elbow. "I'll let you know exactly what breed of livestock when the results come back.