‘There we go, we’re bonding, isn’t it nice?’
Fruitloop.
Mushrooms, egg, chips. ‘So … this Susanne: is she old enough to vote?’
‘OK, this bonding session is now officially over.’
She just grinned and chewed.
The corridors under Castle Hill Infirmary stretch for miles, a tangled maze lined with pipes and cables. It smelled of damp, disinfectant, and something floral and cloying. When I was wee, Jane Moir’s dad worked maintenance for the council and he swore blind the tunnels went all the way out to the river, so medical students could buy dead bodies from smugglers to dissect. But then he was done for fiddling with girl guides eight years later, so I wouldn’t put too much faith in it.
‘It’s creepy down here, what happens if we get lost and end up wandering the corridors for days in the dark?’ Dr McDonald inched closer until she bumped against me with every other step. Sticking close.
The hospital throbbed above us, distant clanks and bangs echoing back from the concrete walls.
She slipped her arm through mine. ‘Lost forever in the dark …’
The corridor split up ahead. On the right, the black line disappeared under a set of dark-green doors marked ‘MORTUARY’, the metal bumper plates scuffed and dented by the passage of the dead. But Dr McDonald was staring the other way.
Her grip on my arm tightened.
The corridor on the left stretched away into patchy gloom – half the bulbs were blown, plunging sections into thick shadow, others were stuck in the process of warming up, never getting beyond the blinking stage.
Someone stood in one of the dark spots, about fifteen feet away. That cloying floral air-freshener smell was even stronger.
Whoever it was stared at us, eyes glinting in the shadows. Big, hunched shoulders, a wheeled cart … The light directly above them flickered and buzzed. It was a woman in a slate-grey boilersuit and scabby trainers. Face like a slab of meat, deep creases around her mouth and eyes. Her cart looked like a hostess trolley. Only instead of the box to keep food in, there was a large metal cage. Something furry moved inside: pointed noses, long pink tails. Rats. The bottom of the cart was piled with traps and a big bag with ‘Bait’ written on it.
Another buzz, and the light died again.
Singing echoed down the corridor from somewhere behind us. A man’s voice, getting louder, accompanied by the grinding squeak-squeak-squeak of a dodgy wheel.
‘Ooh, baby, swear you love me,
doo-dee-doo, oooh-ooh,
something la-la … right …’
The rat catcher didn’t move.
‘Baby, let’s not fight, da-dada, night …
let’s do it, do it, do it …’
The singing drifted to a halt. ‘Ah, there you are.’
I turned. Alf: hair scraped back in a ponytail, high forehead gleaming in the flickering light, beard neatly trimmed, wearing pale blue scrubs, and hauling a hospital gurney behind him. Its occupant was covered in a white plastic sheet. Alf popped an earbud out and smiled. ‘Was about to send a search party for you guys. You know what the Prof’s like if he can’t start bang on nine.’
Alf nodded towards the mortuary. ‘Can you get the door for us? Bloody gurney’s like a wonky shopping trolley today.’
And when I turned back, the rat catcher was gone.
‘Break on the left tibia and fibula show approximately eight years of bone growth …’ Professor Mervin Twining, AKA: Teaboy, ran a gloved finger along the stained bone. His dark floppy hair hung over his forehead – with the square jaw, dimple, and little wire-rim glasses he looked like an extra from a period spy drama.
The skeleton laid out on the dissecting table in front of him had been cleaned of dirt and mud, but it was still the reddish-brown colour of stewed tea. They’d put the head back where it belonged.
Alf looked up from a set of notes, earbuds dangling loose from the neck of his scrubs. ‘Lauren Burges fell off her bike when she was five, treated for broken left leg.’
Castle Hill mortuary was a Victorian monstrosity. Cracked black tiles on the floor, grout turned grey by generations’ worth of bleach, formaldehyde, and disinfectant. Drainage channels leading to wire-mesh grilles and the sewers beyond. The walls had probably been white once, but their tiles had aged to a dirty ivory. Harsh overhead lighting glittered off stainless-steel work surfaces, a wall of refrigerated drawers, and the dissecting tables.
Three of them, each with an inch-high lip, a drain, a tap, a hose, and a blood-coloured set of bones.
Half a dozen flip charts were arranged around the room in pairs, one of each set was covered with copies of the victim’s birthday cards – the other with medical notes, X-rays, and dental charts.
It was cold too, almost as cold as it was outside. Dr McDonald’s nose was going pink, the woolly hat still pulled down over her ears, duffle coat toggled up to her chin, shoulders hunched, hands in her pockets. ‘Shouldn’t we be wearing masks and safety goggles and things?’
Professor Twining looked up from the remains. ‘Not a huge amount of point, I’m afraid: no soft tissue, no DNA, just bones. And they’ve been cleaned by the soil science people, so there’s nothing left for us to contaminate. Can I have the corresponding X-ray, please, Alf? … Thank you.’
Twining worked his way through Lauren Burges’s skeletal remains, comparing the damage to her medical records and the photos on the birthday cards. Confirming her identity.
Three sets of bones on three separate cutting tables. It wouldn’t be long before the SEB turned up the other victims. Only they’d get one more than they were expecting: Rebecca, laid out on a cold metal slab. My little girl, reduced to a collection of mud-stained bones. Chipped and scarred where he slashed and stabbed and broke …
The mortuary air was like cold treacle, sticking in my throat.
I thrust my hands in my pockets. Clenched my jaw.
No one knew: there was still time to find the bastard.
So why couldn’t I breathe?
Think about something else. Anything else. Anything but Rebecca.
Money. Think about the money. About how utterly and completely screwed I was.
That was better …
OK, so I didn’t get the chance to squeeze money out of anyone before the post mortems, but there was still time, wasn’t there? Slip out for a couple of hours while they were examining the other remains. Plenty of time.
Yeah,
