her appearance and voice less marked.
Liz Falla did the introductions and, as they put on protective clothing, Moretti got straight to the point. “You think this could be an assisted suicide, Dr. Edwards.”
His voice echoed back, the sound magnified off the bare walls. Somewhere a tap was dripping.
“I do.” Irene Edwards went over to one of the tables and pulled back the sheet. “I got him out when I heard you had arrived. Take a look.”
Gus Dorey was white as the sheet he was under, frail as a one-dimensional sketch of a human being, a line drawing in death. His strong nose jutted out on his sunken face, which was otherwise wiped clean otherwise of individuality. He lay there still, unable any longer to escape the peering eyes and human contact he had avoided in life.
“There’s nothing much to him,” said Moretti. He looked at the hermit’s veined hands, the bones stark against the transparent skin. “If he had tied the knot on that rope, he should have marks, even rope burns.”
“I agree.” Irene Edwards turned the hands over, laid them back down by the side of the body. “Nothing there. I already checked. And he probably would have had trouble seeing to tie a knot. He had cataracts that would soon have needed attention. Is there anything else you want to see?”
“No.”
Gently, Irene Edwards pulled the stiff sheet up over Gus Dorey’s face, pulled off her gloves and looked at Moretti.
“What happens next? Procedures are different here, aren’t they?”
“Yes. Outside, I think.”
Liz Falla looked at Moretti. It was not the first cadaver they had looked at together. They didn’t seem to affect him. She had never sensed repugnance or discomfort in him when they looked at the recently dead; his familiar air of detachment always remained firmly in place. It was more, she thought, as if he was respecting the feelings of the dead man by taking the discussion outside.
Breaking the silence, Irene Edwards said something to the mortuary technician, who stood waiting at a discreet distance, and they left the room.
In the corridor outside, Moretti said, “The magistrates court becomes the coroners court when necessary, and they will take care of this. But I’ll have to inform my chief officer first.”
“I leave it in your hands,” said Irene Edwards. “And you’ll let me know?”
With one swift movement she pulled the cap off her head, the gesture loosening the chignon from the large comb that held it, and a mass of dark hair cascaded around her shoulders. She smiled, and both men blinked, Aloisio Brown smiling back at her. The comb clattered to the floor and she picked it up without comment and put in her overalls pocket.
“We will,” said Moretti. He turned to Al Brown and Liz Falla. “Right now, we need to head back to the office. I’ll need to write a report and speak to Chief Officer Hanley.”
They said their goodbyes to Irene Edwards, and she disappeared back into her echoing world with its inescapable smell of human mortality and decay hanging in the air beneath the antiseptic.
As the door closed behind her, Moretti said, “I want you both to go back out to Pleinmont and search Dorey’s roundhouse thoroughly, and I want you both to do the search. No one else. I want to keep this as quiet as possible.”
“Peculiar,” said Liz Falla, and both men turned to look at her. She was looking back at the mortuary.
“An odd choice of word,” said Moretti, “even in the circumstances. What is it, Falla?”
“He reminded me of someone. Even in death, white and cold like that. That’s why I said ‘peculiar.’”
“Who did he remind you of?”
“I have no idea.” Liz looked at Moretti and smiled, sweetly. “But maybe it was my imagination playing tricks, Guv,” she said.
It was chilly in Gus Dorey’s roundhouse. Constable Bury had been only too happy to go and sit outside in the police car and leave Al Brown and Liz to the task in hand. He helped them carry in the boxes they had brought with them and then asked, “So how long do we have to do this? There’s not much here except about a million books.”
Al Brown picked up the Dickens first edition from the floor, where it still lay.
“A million books, full of magical thinking — the sort of magical thinking that matters to me, at any rate.”
“So, tell me about magical thinking.”
They had divided the room in half and had agreed that the books came first, if only so they could be removed to a safer place. Constable Bury might not have the slightest idea of their value, but others might not be so uninformed.
“Oh, here’s his glasses. Remember, Dr. Edwards said he had cataracts.” Al Brown picked up a case on the floor, which had been hidden by some of the books. “Not prescription by the look of it. The kind you can get in Boots the Chemist. What do you want to know?”
“You were saying you came here because of it. You asked to be posted here. Was it because you thought we still worshipped pagan gods and danced in the light of the moon?”
Al Brown pulled himself back from Nicholas Nickleby’s world and shrugged his shoulders.
“You don’t? What a disappointment.” His tone changed. “Let’s get a few things straight, Liz. Yes, DI Moretti told me about your aunt and your grandmother. Yes, I can understand your being pissed off. No, I don’t believe you’re all a bunch of primitive pagans. What I meant was that I wanted to work somewhere where there was some flexibility of structure, and I hoped to find it on Guernsey. I attended a lecture given by a retired superintendent from the Met, and he talked about your Guvnor’s handling of a complex case here. He said he didn’t go by the book.” Al Brown slapped the Dickens he held in his hands. “I wanted to have that chance.”
“So not going by the book is magical thinking?” Liz was piling up a heap of Penguin paperbacks, checking inside each one as she did so. “And it can destroy geniuses? Sounds like dangerous stuff to me.”
Reluctantly, Al Brown put down the Dickens. “If I keep reading these we’ll get nowhere. I think DI Moretti was referring to the death of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, a genius who believed that magical thinking could cure him of pancreatic cancer.”
“Sorry, but I don’t get it. What has that to do with my Guv not going by the book, and you coming here?”
Al put the first edition in one of the boxes and picked up the Gillray bibliography. “You’ve started on the Penguins, so I’ll keep going with the hardcovers. It has to do with MI Teams — Murder Investigation Teams — and Action Managers, and all that crap. It was supposed to simplify and to accelerate the process, but like anything else, it depends who’s in charge. I felt — trapped.”
Liz Falla looked over at Al Brown, who was lovingly examining the Gillray page by page. “DI Moretti answers to Chief Officer Hanley, which can be frustrating, but mostly our supreme leader worries about not offending the powers-that-be. That’ll be what the Guvnor’s talking about right now with him — paperwork and vampires.”
“What?”
