Soul Seeker (8 page)

She walked on, leaving a thoroughly chastened newly-promoted detective sergeant, whilst fiercely reminding herself to take her own advice as soon as she got back to the office.

‘PLEEEASSE!'

His throat felt like fire but he no longer cared; even had it been real fire, it would have been preferable to that tingling, the one that had been filling his body for what seemed like hours now, that was slowly but inexorably intensifying, that he knew would carry on intensifying until . . .

Nothing else had changed. The light was just the same, the temperature had not changed, the silence remained; the lenses merely continued to stare impassively and at the same time menacingly. The tingling, though, increased; it became stronger and at the same time spread throughout his body, extending tendrils into every organ, every limb, eventually every cell.

TEN

C
live had been a senior mortuary technician for over twenty years and those years had seen his routines ossify into things of resolute inflexibility; things in Clive's mortuary were done as Clive wanted them done, and in no other way. Since he was good at his job and intelligent, this was not necessarily a bad thing; the paperwork was always exemplary, the cleaning was well handled and the pathologists could never complain that he was not a useful man to have around; he eviscerated quickly and quietly, he reconstructed immaculately, and he occasionally spotted things that they had missed. The downside was that he did not welcome change, or those who sought to introduce it; woe betide any manager who thought to suggest that Clive's way was not the best, and any junior mortuary technician was liable to experience something not unlike being scalded if he questioned the rituals he was expected to perform. Most of the time, a quick tongue-lashing was all that was required to restore the status quo, occasionally, two or three were required; thereafter, because for most of the time Clive was a charming and amusing man, they acquiesced. Only once, and quite recently, had these tactics failed to work, and the experience still rankled with Clive.

This particular morning he did as he always did, rising at six, taking his dachshund for a walk (he had only bought the infernal thing to impress a rather attractive married woman some four years before; it had worked – in that he had made a conquest – but this was the unfortunate and rather irritating residue), then cooking himself a fried breakfast. After three rashers of bacon, two sausages, two fried eggs and a round of fried bread, he felt somewhat better disposed to the world. He thought about writing the birthday card for his grandson, six on Wednesday, then decided that he would do it that evening; if he put a first class stamp on, it should arrive in time. He got on his bicycle, and made the short journey from his home in Whaddon to the mortuary in good order, arriving at his customary seven thirty.

He opened the big red double doors, wheeled his bike into the vestibule and thought about the day to come; it would be a busy one, especially as he was for the time being on his own until they could appoint a replacement for Shaun, but he was not particularly bothered by this. He had supreme confidence that he could handle things, just as he had had to on many occasions in the past. He was better off without that wanker, Shaun, anyway. Just remembering his name made Clive's blood become slightly hotter, his heart beat slightly faster. How dare that little shite tell him what to do? What did he think he was up to, telling Clive that he knew a better way of dissecting the middle ear bones, and that Clive's reconstruction techniques ‘belonged in the ark'? It wouldn't be the first time that Clive had had to run the mortuary single-handedly for weeks on end, including all the on-call, and the prospect had long ago become little more than an irritant.

This day was definitely going to be hard, though. He had four coroner's post-mortems being performed by Ben Gosling in the morning, then he had the dentists coming in to identify a body pulled from a local lake. In between, he had to shift some bodies out to undertakers or else he would run out of space, and he would undoubtedly have junior doctors coming in to view bodies for the purposes of the statutory cremation documentation (and also undoubtedly badgering him to pay them their cremation fees). Still, he had a good hour before Ben Gosling came down to identify the bodies for his two autopsies, so he would first of all have a cup of coffee and a quick cigarette out the back of the mortuary, using the viewing chapel entrance. Accordingly, heavily sweetened white coffee in one hand, bunch of keys in the other and rolled-up cigarette behind his ear, he opened the door and stepped outside into the cool but sunny morning air.

He almost tripped over a huddled figure leaning against the brick wall. It was dressed in thick clothing that was muddied and frayed, what looked like an old duffel coat; the head was slouched forward, chin on chest; this, together with the black fedora meant that he could not see the face. It was not unusual to find down-and-outs here; it was reasonably sheltered and they were unlikely to be disturbed during the night. ‘Time you were on your way, mate,' he said cheerfully, then passed on down the short flight of steps to the pavement, there to sit on the low wall as he always did. He put his coffee cup down, transferred his cigarette to his mouth and fished for the lighter in his pocket. It was by far from his first cigarette of the day, but it was one of the best; now, in a sort of interlude between the strain of getting up and the hardships of the day to come, he could really appreciate the pharmaceutical effects of nicotine and caffeine.

He stretched the experience out for as long as he dared, then sighed; time to get back to the shithole. The down-and-out was still there. Clive had a viewing booked for two o'clock and he did not want Cheltenham's finest putting on a display for the grieving relatives. ‘You'll have to go soon, I'm afraid.' He sighed. ‘Sorry, but there it is.'

The next four hours were busy indeed. Ben Gosling was thorough but slow and, much to Clive's discomfort, he had a liking for silence; no radio was allowed when Dr Gosling was working. He rarely spoke and, when he did, it was on purely technical matters; Dr Gosling did not gossip and did not obviously have an interest in popular culture. Whilst assisting him, Clive also had to see to a steady stream of undertakers, as well as field calls from the coroner and the police regarding arrangements for John Eisenmenger's forthcoming forensic autopsy. He managed no breaks and was therefore fairly dry and unnicotinned by the time that noon came and things, temporarily at least, became calmer.

In order, therefore, to bring inner calmness to this outer calmness, he made himself an even sweeter coffee than usual, rolled an especially fat cigarette, and repeated his morning ritual. His state being one of tiredness and agitation, his reaction when he saw the tramp still in exactly the same position was not one of carefully considered entreaty.

‘Oh, for fuck's sake!'

He walked forward and prodded the form with his clog.

Nothing

‘Come on, my man. On your way.' He repeated the action, this time with a little more force.

What happened then was forever jumbled in his memory, a series of disconnected sights and impressions; his surprise in realizing that it was not a man but a woman; his astonishment that she should be so deeply asleep that she should fall to the side without complaint . . .

His stomach-churning shock when her head fell off.

Josh and Darren had become firm friends over the course of only a few months and, since then, had rarely had disagreements but, when they did, they were usually serious, about such things as what game to play, whose was the best team (Man U for Darren, Chelsea for Josh) and whether
Doctor Who
was better than
Star Trek
. Josh was only taller than Darren by three centimetres, but that is a lot at their age; Darren's feeling of inferiority was compounded by his birthday trailing seven months behind Josh's. Josh, too, was aware of these advantages and – perhaps subconsciously, perhaps with a glimmering of artifice – played upon them, always implying that he was the natural leader. In consequence, Darren was vehement in holding his side of the debate, something that was enhanced by a slight advantage in musculature. They had never come to blows, but that did not mean that their arguments were not passionate and therefore bruising.

The most important argument that they ever had did not seem as such at the time and, inevitably, it was related to play; more specifically, about where to play. It was Darren who had discovered it – many months before Josh arrived – but it was Josh who had seen the potential, who had wanted to claim this place as their own – their own battlefield, their own alien planet, their own kingdom . . . their own universe.

There were problems, though.

‘We mustn't. Granny would go berserk if she found out.'

Darren, too, was in awe of Josh's grandmother, but to him she was at one remove and her ire was accordingly less of a deterrent to him. ‘She won't find out,' he assured Josh, unknowingly paraphrasing the empty words of every felon in history.

‘There's lot of other places we could play.'

‘But not like the Grange.'

Which was true. Here was a huge abandoned building, decaying in a sort of romantic yet mysterious verdancy; with four storeys of dark windows, many broken, that they somehow just knew had high ceilings, with dust on the floor, cobwebs in the doorways . . . and ghosts. They knew – as in complete, total, pure, concentrated certainty – that there were ghosts in there. Their eyes might not actually see apparitions, or their ears hear eerie moans, or feel their flesh crawl as icy fingers clutched their hearts, but in their minds, these things would happen, and such an imagining would be better than reality, would be enhanced, more intense and somehow multidimensional, a hyper-reality.

The problem was that everyone knew that it was strictly out of bounds. True, they did not understand why it was so – they were too young to appreciate fully that decayed, abandoned buildings were not wise places in which to act out the realities of childhood fantasy – but they were old enough to comprehend that there was a scale of wrongdoing, that some things were mere misdemeanours, whereas others were felonies

And playing in and around the Grange was definitely felonious.

Yet it was dangerously close to irresistible, and so Josh had to yield the debating point to his colleague. ‘No . . .'

Darren sensed an advantage and, with cunning that he had not learned but had been given as an inheritance, said, ‘Think of what we could do in there, Josh.'

He had to say no more, for Josh was already thinking of such things. He imagined space battles with laser beams in the long corridors, sword fights in the decaying, dusty, darkness of the empty bedrooms, perhaps cricket in the long sun-stroked corridors, perhaps just simple hide-and-seek in and around the grounds. As fortune – or perhaps misfortune – would have it, a few spots of summer rain began then to fall, warm but still wet. Darren looked up at the sky and murmured perhaps to himself, perhaps to no one, perhaps to his friend, ‘It wouldn't even matter if it was to rain . . .'

ELEVEN

B
everley was used to being one of the star performers, had the experienced actor's unconcerned awareness of being constantly observed, a confidence that she would only look good and would not slip up, fluff her lines, trip over the scenery. Even though the body had been enclosed in a temporary marquee within an hour of Clive's call, word had soon spread of the finding and, even though Orrisdale Terrace (the road in which it lay) had been cordoned off, the barriers held back nearly fifty people, some holding mobile phone cameras aloft in an attempt to gain some saleable footage of the event. Not only were there stalls, though; this particular theatrical event had a circle in the form of the upstairs front bedrooms of the houses opposite the mortuary. Every window presented a picture of peering faces, a differing study of human salacious curiosity.

Inside the mortuary, Clive sat in his office, for once not in charge, for once very much in a subordinate position as Beverley and Rebecca Lancefield questioned him and Eisenmenger looked on. He did not enjoy being in this situation and became somewhat short as the interview proceeded; despite this, they were able to establish the main facts and chronology of the finding. To his not inconsiderable irritation, Clive was then dismissed from his own office in order that the two police officers and Eisenmenger might confer. He sat on his customary wall and smoked a thicker than usual roll-up with considerably less sangfroid than his morning smoke; he knew now that the day was a long way from over.

Inside the mortuary, Beverley asked of John tiredly, ‘Please don't tell me that this is an entirely new head and body.'

He shrugged and smiled; he had gone beyond worrying about what the police wanted of him. ‘Until the body is stripped, who knows? In any case, I can tell you what you want to hear, or I can tell you what I find; your choice.'

She said nothing, although her face was expressive enough. Lancefield put in, ‘It
has
to be the missing head and body.'

Beverley was scathing. ‘It doesn't have to be at all, inspector. If we're lucky it is; if we aren't, we have another two deaths.'

Lancefield, chastened, hoped that the flush she felt could not be seen. Eisenmenger, perhaps aware that there was embarrassment in the air and, in an ill-judged tone of jocularity designed to lighten the atmosphere, said, ‘I was always taught that the more bodies you have, the more evidence you get.' He didn't wait long, though, before he continued, ‘I'll get on with it, then.'

Charlie had not answered when Eisenmenger rang her and he had known at once that it would mean trouble to come. He left a message telling her that their planned meal for the evening would have to be postponed and that he wouldn't be finished until late, probably very late. He apologized – grovelled, if anything – and promised to make it up to her, but he knew that this would not make up for standing her up. He was well aware that this was the second time in a row that he had put work before this new and still developing relationship; well aware, too, that he was effectively on probation and not doing too well at it either. He had to put that to the side, though; now, he had a job – a long and possibly very difficult job – to do; two forensic post-mortems that were possibly, and bizarrely, on three different people.