Authors: Bethany Daniel
Copyright 2012 by Andrew Toynbee
First Edition
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book
or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
First Edition.
Cover artwork
by
To Roz;
Whose insatiable appetite for supernatural romance
first inspired me to embark upon this endeavour.
. x X x .
To Mr & Mrs Dookins;
Without their initial collaboration, this work would
have been a very different shape indeed.
Nugz
And to my Mother;
I write.
But perhaps not as often as I could.
X
Monday
September 16th.
Chapter 1
I did my utmost to ignore it, but the Black Star still managed to jab a glittering needle into the corner of my eye as it fled from the imminent sunrise. I glanced away from the mortuary door, my eye drawn by the star’s insistent glimmering just as York’s haphazard skyline swallowed the damn thing for one more day. The shudder that shook my shoulders owed little to the unseasonably chill breeze.
One-two-three, pause.
My mind clung to the rhythm of the star’s bizarre flashing. Gritting my teeth, I tried to shake the thought away, but it fluttered back at me like a persistent moth.
One-two-three, pause.
Resisting the overwhelming urge to drive away the thought with a sharp blow to my head, I entertained a moment of futility by simply wishing the intruder from the skies.
Fat chance,
the pragmatic side of my brain argued.
Damn thing
’
s been up there for nearly three weeks. Why would it drop out of the sky now - just because you want it to?
Exasperated, I turned back to the mortuary door. The lock buzzed before my impatient finger had a chance to press the call button again. I pulled on the heavy door, slipping into a dimly-lit corridor that was barely warmer than the pre-dawn air outside. A mixture of disinfectant and household air freshener filled my nose, a dichotomy that momentarily forced my mind back to my childhood; to Mother’s frantic cleaning sessions that always preceded the arrival of...
Of him.
I shuddered at the memory, thrusting it back under the mental rock it had crawled out from and tried to focus on the present - since part of me noted that I had just blundered straight past the comfortably-furnished Relatives Room.
But I didn’t care. I was on a mission. I wanted answers and I wanted them now. I pushed open the door to the Mortuary’s Body Storage Area, hoping for a quick resolution, but the long room was deserted. Twelve white sentinels filled the wall to my left - tall doors behind which York’s recently-deceased silently awaited the pathologist’s verdict.
Is my brother in one of those?
I wondered. A sick feeling cramped my stomach at the idea. My twitching fingers twirled the short strands of auburn hair beside my ear as I wondered what the hell to do next.
The mortuary manager chose that moment to burst into the room, his Wellington boots squeaking on the tiled floor like terrified mice. The instant he saw me, his dark eyebrows wrinkled with irritation.
“Sara,” he growled. “You shouldn’t be in here.” Despite my need for answers, I found myself shrinking back from his glare. My mission - the driving force that had dragged me down here this morning - shrivelled within me like a raisin.
“I know...” I managed. “You told me to wait in the Relatives Room.” I silently cursed myself for acting like such a wimp.
“That’s right,” he frowned. “You of all people ought to know the rules.” His blue-gloved hand shooed me back towards the door. But something rallied within me. I folded my arms, demonstrating a resolution that I didn’t feel.
“I need to see if it’s him, Morty,” I tried to sound gruff, but the words emerged as a hoarse wheeze.
“Rules...” he sang, stepping closer, looming over me. I quailed, but somehow I kept my boots firmly planted on his squeaky-clean floor.
“You
did
say he was unidentified,” I said, desperately hoping the logic would sway him.
“Morty peered at me over his half-rim glasses and addressed me like a wilful child. “Sara, if you’re here to make an identification as a relative, then you have to wait in the
Relatives
’
Room
.”
“But - ,” I croaked. Morty’s hand resumed its shoo-ing motion. As his shadow fell across me, distant, terrifying memories nudged at my mind. Desperately, I thrust them away. The last thing I needed at this point was to be distracted.
“No buts. I’ll have him ready for you in...” he glanced at his watch. “Twenty minutes.”
“Twenty minutes?” I echoed. I didn’t have twenty minutes. I had to be somewhere. Desperation seized me. I dug into my arsenal for one last shot across Mister ‘by-the-book’ Mortuary bloody Manager’s bows.
“Morty, it’s me...” I fluttered my eyelashes at him. “...we’ve known each other for years.” For good measure I tried to throw in a coy glance. It probably made me look constipated; childish and wilful at best.
“That’s not going to work, Sara,” he growled. His words were a blast of lead shot to my guts. But I needed answers and there was no way in hell he was going to get away with denying me. Not today.
“And you love me,” I hedged. The moment the words spilled from my mouth, I regretted them. I knew I’d just blown a big hole in the wall that I’d spent years building between the two of us.
Aw, hell! I used the
‘
L
’
word! Idiot!
Now I’d have to start all over again. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Morty - quite the opposite. His tireless pursuit, married to his insistence that a relationship with me would be palatable to his eccentric ego, would often lift my sense of worth out of the gutter. His job as a mortuary manager mattered little to me. I’d known him back when I was working as a nurse in Accidents and Emergency. I’d even considered his morbid and off-beat sense of humour to be quite refreshing at times.
But as my childhood-rooted nightmares continued to haunt me year after year, I’d begun to see myself as a liability, a poisonous harpy who could only shrivel or tear out the hearts of those who tried to love me. In an effort to protect Morty, I’d pushed him away, citing my work as my only real desire in life.
And now I’d carelessly reminded him of what he’d once coveted. A cold chill washed through me as I thought about the damage I’d just done. Morty’s Wellingtons squeaked uncertainly on the disinfected floor.
“As a friend,” I spluttered, desperately trying to brush over my stupidity. “You love me as a friend. And as a colleague.” My voice strangled into a squeak on the final words. Why the hell hadn’t I just said ‘professional courtesy’? I watched Morty’s mouth tightening as I verbally backtracked.
“I really should do this by the book...” he sighed. I clearly heard the uncertainty straining his voice, and despite feeling bad about having manipulated his feelings only a moment ago, I pounced.
“But what harm would it do?” I bit into my lower lip as Morty ran a hand over his salt-and-pepper crew cut, weighing up his options.
“You get a positive ID,” I pointed out, hoping to keep him on the back foot. “And I find out what happened to my brother.”
If it turns out to be him.
Morty’s shoulders sagged as my logic finally swayed him. “You win,” he sighed. “Come on through.” If he added anything further, I didn’t hear. The blood was thundering in my humiliated ears as I hurried after him, my short legs hopelessly outdistanced by his long strides.
I trotted through the doors and into the mortuary, a room that was larger and more brightly lit than the storage area. The other ends of the twelve huge fridges, concealed behind tall stainless steel doors, lined one wall of the mortuary like giant serving hatches for the dead. Morty stopped in front of the fourth door, pressing his hand to the cold metal. I scuttled across to one of the examination areas on the opposite side of the room and tried to look as if I wasn’t keeping my distance. It wasn’t that I was afraid of corpses. Not at all. It was just that, to me, dead patients represented a professional failure on my part. Double that for cold ones.
“This is still irregular,” Morty sighed. “But since you’re not a civilian, it’s only bending the rules a little. However...” he held up a single finger. “If he
does
turn out to be your brother, then you become a relative and the rules change.”
“Is that a bit like the offside rule?” I threw him a lop-sided smile.
“You’ve been reading up on football?” Morty frowned at me, missing the point completely.
“No.” I shook my head. “I was just trying to keep up with all your rules.”
“All I meant was - .”
I realised that we were getting sidetracked and I was short on time.
“What have you got, Morty?” I interrupted him.
My brother?
Morty lifted his half-rim glasses to his forehead and frowned at the report in his hand.
“Okay...police got a call at about three-thirty from a couple who’d seen our friend here...” He tapped his hand absently against the centre of the tall door. “...staring into space on the Ouse Bridge. Naturally, they assumed he was...one of those crazies. Those...” He raised a questioning eyebrow at me.
“The papers are calling them ‘Star-cravers’ now,” I supplied, recalling the previous weeks’ tabloid headline.
“Star...cravers?” Morty echoed in disbelief. He’d replaced his glasses on his hooked nose.
“As in ‘Star-craving mad’,” I added.
“Oh...right.” Morty nodded. “Well the couple didn’t think anything of this ‘Star-craver’ - until he suddenly dropped dead.”
“That’s new.” I was genuinely surprised. “I’ve only seen people go for a long drop after staring at that thing.”
Seventeen dead last week.
“He wasn’t up high enough to make a proper job of it.” Morty shook his head.
“If he was on the bridge, he might have been planning a swim in the Ouse,” I mused.
“Well, after the summer we’ve just had, it would probably have been deep enough - and fast enough - to finish him off.”
My paramedic’s mind was now racing, analysing the facts. “This’ll probably have nothing to do with the Black Star. He’ll have had a heart defect or suffered an aneurysm.”
“Maybe...” Morty rocked his head as he considered my words. “If they’d said that he’d folded over or clutched at himself - then yes, I’d agree with you. But they said...” Morty lifted his glasses back up to his forehead and peered at the page. “...that ‘he dropped as if all his strings had been cut.’ Odd.”
I shook my head at this particular facet of his eccentric behaviour. “Morty, why do you wear those things?”
“These?” He threw a brief glance up at his glasses. “So I can see to read. Anyway, the paramedics - that’s your people - .”
“I know that,” I sighed.
Get on with it!
The weight of time was heavy in my gut. I knew I couldn’t afford to stay here much longer.
“They tried to resuscitate - unsuccessfully - then delivered him to A&E. He ended up in here shortly after that.” His fingernails tapped against the door, barely filling the silence that followed his words. I swallowed hard, steeling myself to ask the next question. And yet I still wasn’t sure that I wanted to hear his answer.
“Um...so...does he look like..?”
Morty met my shifting gaze. “He matches the description you gave me.”
“So it
is
him?” I groaned. I could feel tears stinging my eyes. Morty’s hands rose defensively. The report crackled between his fingers.
“I’m not saying it is - he just looks like - .”
“So it
isn’t
him?” A ray of hope crept out from behind the clouds of gloom.
“Sara...” The report rattled against Morty’s thigh as his arm swept down. “I can’t make a positive ID on a twenty-something male from an old photograph of a nine-year old boy!”
He’s getting annoyed.
“I know.” I lowered my head, embarrassed by my own impatience. “I’m just...anxious, I s’pose.” In truth, I wasn’t really sure if I could handle the bad news. But what was worse? Knowing, or not knowing?
“So do you still want to identify the body for me?”
I managed to smile tightly. “I should, shouldn’t I? Now that I’m here.” I realised that I had started to babble and pressed my lips together, then drew in a deep, steadying breath through my nose. Before I had a chance to appreciate the consequences of what I’d agreed to, the tall fridge door swung silently open, revealing five stainless steel trays, resting on horizontal rails at two foot intervals. I suppressed a shiver as my eye fell upon the white-shrouded shapes, wondering if my life was about to change forever.
What if it isn’t him?
A chill shuddered through me, one that had nothing to do with the cold air spilling out of the huge fridge.
What if it IS him?
Morty heaved a blue loading trolley forwards, docking it against the frame that held the centre tray. I tore my gaze from the fridge to see his grey eyes considering me from over his shoulder.
“Are you going to ID him from over there?” he asked. I realised that I couldn’t keep my distance any longer. Not without looking stupid.
“No...of course not.” I dragged my leaden feet forwards. Today, I realised, I might finally have my answer. Trepidation chilled my gut. I watched numbly as Morty drew the cold steel tray across the rollers towards him. The body rocked beneath its shroud as the tray emerged into the fluorescent glare and rolled smoothly onto the loading trolley. I staggered, fighting the sudden dizziness that threatened my balance. Morty seemed to sense my distress, turning as the heavy tray rolled to a stop.
“Are you all right?” he asked quietly. For a moment, his grey eyes seemed to soften.