Last Man's Head by Philip Cox Read Free Book Online Page B

court this morning, hoped to make it over later.’
    ‘Okay. So – are you telling me they didn’t die of natural causes, then? How come the prelim said cardiac arrest?’
    Hobson took off his glasses, put them in his lab coat pocket, then perched himself on a stool.
    ‘Sam,’ he said, ‘cardiac arrest, heart failure: these occur every time someone dies. On death the heart stops. A prelim exam will only give you part of the picture; we have far more resources here than the guys on the ground. And if it hadn’t been a weekend, we could have gotten all the facts sooner. Maybe.’
    Leroy leaned on a wall and folded his arms. ‘So what are you saying, Russ? It wasn’t natural causes?’
    Hobson sat forward, rubbing his hands up and down his legs. ‘This is the – the sequence of events, as it were. They both died because their hearts failed. Right?’
    Leroy nodded. ‘Go on.’
    ‘The next stage is to find out what caused the hearts to stop.’
    ‘With you so far.’
    ‘Sam, have you ever heard the expression serotonin syndrome ?’
    Leroy thought a moment. ‘At the back of my mind, yes, but…’
    ‘Well,’ Hobson continued, ‘serotonin syndrome is a drug reaction, potentially life-threatening, that can occur following therapeutic drug use, overdose of particular drugs, or the recreational use of some kinds of drugs. It’s not hit or miss: it’s predictable, and it’s the result of excess serotonergic energy at the central nervous system and peripheral serotonin receptors. Some in the profession prefer to call it serotonin toxidrome as it’s really a form of poisoning.’
    ‘I see. I think. So basically, it’s when someone has taken two different drugs at the same time, and they react.’
    ‘More or less, yes.’
    ‘So if someone had this – this syndrome: would they exhibit any symptoms?’
    ‘For sure, yes.  And quickly.  Very shortly after ingesting the second drug.  And there are a lot of symptoms: sweating, shivering, shaking, twitching. And that’s just a mild case. More seriously, we’re talking about high blood pressure, hyperthermia, hypervigilance, diarrhoea, nausea. And the body temperature generally rises to over 106.’
    ‘Jesus.’
    ‘Quite.’
    ‘So what sort of drugs could cause this state?’
    ‘The list is endless, Sam. It could be a massive amount of one drug, or a combination.’
    ‘Like what? Give me an example.’
    ‘Antidepressants, painkillers, stimulants, recreational drugs. Certain herbs, such as nutmeg.’
    ‘Shit. So what exactly is this – sero…?’
    ‘Serotonin. It’s a neurotransmitter, which means it’s an endogenous chemical that transmit signals from a neuron to a target cell across a synapse.’
    ‘Ah. Thought so, ’ Leroy lied.
    ‘Basically, Sam, it’s a chemical the body produces at certain times to produce a certain reaction, such as sleep, pain, appetite, depression.’
    ‘O-kay. I think I’m getting it.’
    ‘Good. Now, there’s no actual laboratory test for serotonin syndrome.’
    ‘Then how do you know…?’
    ‘Hear me out. There’s no specific test, and so we look at a diagnosis of the symptoms and the person’s medical history.’
    ‘Not much use with a dead John Doe.’
    ‘Quite. But Toxicology were able to carry out screening tests on the blood and urine.’
    ‘And?’
    ‘In both cases, there were traces of drugs in both the blood and the urine.  Of both guys, though more in – your guy.’ Hobson rested the palm of one hand on the Century City corpse.
    ‘Right. Now we’re getting somewhere. What drugs were used, and how much?’
    ‘Well, as you might know, narcotics tests take the form of colour tests and crystal tests. These are really screening tests, then we carry out a GC-MS…’
    ‘Gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer…? Leroy said slowly.
    ‘Good boy. So you do listen.  Yes, you’re right: we carry out a GC-MS and another similar test and we are able to identify the narcotics in his body.’
    ‘Go