An Empty Death

by Laura Wilson

‘He might come over to cadge a fag – he’s got the neck.’

  ‘He’ll be—’

  ‘Evenin’ all!’ Reg’s liver-coloured face, with its drooping grey moustache, appeared between them, and he clapped Stratton on the shoulder in his usual just-too-hard-to-be-jovial manner. Stratton palmed the paper and shoved it back in his pocket, hoping that his brother-in-law hadn’t noticed it was blank. ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Fine, thanks. Just talking about the allotment.’

  ‘Got a problem, have you?’ Unlike Stratton, Reg knew bugger-all about gardening, but that didn’t stop him talking balls by the yard.

  Donald, who had been glaring at him, asked abruptly, ‘Couldn’t you get served?’

  ‘They’ve just run out. Not had a chance to put the sign up.’

  ‘Hmmph.’ Donald gave an upward jerk of his chin that could have meant either ‘Wouldn’t you bleeding know’ or ‘I don’t believe you.’ Reg naturally chose to interpret it as the former, and said, ‘I daresay if she’d known I was coming in…’

  ‘I daresay,’ murmured Stratton, sardonically.

  ‘Anyway, I’d best be off. Can’t really spare the time, to be honest, but I thought it would be nice for us chaps to have a bit of a chat.’ Given that Stratton and Donald had decided to come to the pub on a whim and without consultation, this statement was patently untrue, but neither man wanted to prolong the encounter by challenging it. Reg then employed the latest refinement in a battery of mannerisms that were already quite annoying enough, thank you very fucking much. He’d started it in the last year, after, Stratton guessed, seeing something similar in a film; it was a particular intense look, as if he were judging whether or not to let you in on some secret or otherwise important development, but then – regretfully – decided that you weren’t quite ready to hear it just yet. This time, he even went as far as opening his mouth, then closing it sharply again before saying with apparent casualness, ‘Seeing as I’m here, you don’t happen to have a cigarette, do you? I’ve run out.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Stratton, ‘I’ve run out as well.’

  ‘Me too,’ said Donald. ‘Just smoked my last.’

  This was followed by an impasse, during which Reg stared first at Stratton and then at Donald as if attempting some sort of mental X-ray technique, while they stared back with conspicuously neutral expressions.

  ‘Well, gents,’ said Reg, when it became apparent that neither of his brothers-in-law was going to relent, ‘I’ll bid you goodnight, then.’

  ‘’Night, Reg.’

  ‘’Night.’

  Stratton and Donald held their positions as Reg walked slowly to the door, and, turning round, gave them a hurt and lingering last look before disappearing through it.

  After a short pause, Donald said, ‘You know what really gets my goat? That look – I thought better of you than that – when you know the fucker’s got half a dozen fags in his pocket.’

  Hearing the cue for the start of one of their favourite pastimes (only indulged in private, by unspoken consent, because, although enjoyable, it was undeniably childish), Stratton said, ‘Yes, but the thing that really annoys me are his feet. Why are they so small? Why doesn’t he just fall over?’

  ‘Pomposity,’ said Donald. ‘Keeps him upright. Especially since he got that sergeant’s stripe. I’m surprised he hasn’t asked us to salute him.’

  ‘And the way he raises himself up on his toes,’ said Stratton, ‘as if he’s going to fart and wants everyone to know it.’

  They continued in this vein for some time, running through Reg’s belief that he was a comedian (and underlining it frequently by describing himself as being ‘cursed’ with a sense of humour); his general buffoonery; his bullying of his wife Lilian, and his air of appearing to know more about everything than anyone else did.

  ‘But you know the worst thing,’ said Donald, suddenly serious, ‘is that he makes me feel like a complete shit for saying all this, even though he hasn’t got a clue that I’m saying any of it.’

  ‘Does he? Make you feel bad, I mean?’

  Donald held his gaze for a moment, then grinned and shook his head. ‘Naah…Come on, drink up and let’s get home. Doris must have Mrs Ingram safely tucked up in bed by now.’

  ‘Good idea. I could do with an early night myself – then I might have a chance of being able to think straight tomorrow.’

  Twelve

  Todd stopped on his way to work to watch the policemen walking slowly and purposefully across the bomb-site, pausing now and then to inspect the ground. The fact that they were still searching after yesterday obviously meant that they had not, so far, found anything of note, which was good. In any case, they wouldn’t find any trace that he’d ever been near the place – he’d been too careful for that. Just as well, since Dr Byrne had pronounced that the death – caused by blows to the head – was suspicious. And the police, clearly, agreed with him.

  Across the way, he noticed a gaggle of nurses chattering and laughing amongst themselves, their red capes and white caps standing out, the only clean, bright things in a landscape of dusty greys and buffs. He observed them as an entity, not as individuals, much as he might a group of cows in a field, until one figure, slightly to the left of the centre, drew his eye. He didn’t know exactly what it was about her, but he knew – after what? Thirty seconds? A minute? – that he was looking at his girl. That it was now and it was her impressed him with such force that it might have been a thunderbolt. Yet, strangely, it wasn’t love that he felt, it was, simply and directly, knowing that this one belonged to him. He just knew it. And now he looked more closely, he could see that she was a knockout. Dark hair, dark, almond-shaped eyes, creamy-white skin, nice legs, and, so far as he could make out beneath the cloak, a shapely figure. And she looked as if she were kind – not in a nurse’s way, the put-on, professional caring, but really, properly, kind.

  He didn’t stare. That would be rude, and besides, he did not want to draw attention to himself. Now that she was earmarked, she’d keep. And when he was Dr Dacre, he’d have her. He needed her name, though. That was important: he must know who she was. He moved closer, making as if to walk past the nurses, hoping for a closer look as well as information. As he crossed the road, the group began to break up, leaving his girl standing alone on the pavement. She stared at the bomb-site for a moment, apparently in a dream. Another nurse turned back and called out, ‘Come on, Marchant! We’ll be late!’ and then, in exasperation, ‘Fay!’

  Fay Marchant. My girl Fay, he thought. He watched her run to catch up with her friend and then, just as he was about to turn away, he heard another female voice, slightly breathless, calling, ‘Dr Wemyss!’ Remembering that this was the name of one of the junior doctors the porter had told him about, he stopped. One nurse – a coppery redhead with a sharp-looking, almost fox-like face – had broken away from the group going towards the hospital, and was walking back towards (and, judging by her movements and the way she was holding her body, beginning to flirt with) a man of about his own age, tall, with carroty-red hair and a relaxed air. Perhaps the nurse noticed that they were being watched, because she suddenly turned her head and looked straight at Todd. For a moment their eyes locked, and he was sure he saw a flicker of surprised recognition. He turned away, quickly. Had he seen her before? Had they met? Where? His memory, usually reliable, came up blank. Probably nothing, but…Anyway, there was nothing he could do about it, at least for now.

  And that was Dr Wemyss, was it? Very useful. Two for the price of one, how about that? Todd glanced back for just long enough – the nurse had resumed the conversation and didn’t see him – so that he’d be able to recognise his man again, then took himself off to the mortuary.

  Lying on a trolley in the main room was an enormous corpse covered in a sheet. ‘Allow me to introduce you,’ said Higgs. ‘Mr Albert Corner.’ As Higgs uncovered him, beginning at the head, Todd saw, first, wispy white hair, then an elderly face with the dull damson blush and smashed capilla
ries of the dipso, then the mound of a huge belly, and, finally, a vast pair of women’s pale pink silk drawers, one leg of which was hitched up by the groin, displaying a pendulous scrotum.

  ‘How the hell…?’

  Higgs shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me. Let’s just hope someone claims him before he gets all frozen up like that Mrs Lubbock. We’d never get him off the tray and he looks like he’d take a week to thaw out.’

  ‘Who’d want to claim that?’

  ‘Buggered if I know. Landlady found him. Poor woman – must of been a hell of a shock. Divorced, apparently.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. Moral degeneracy, by the look of him.’

  ‘Well, I should think it was a bit more than pissing in the sink.’

  Dr Byrne’s face appeared round the door of his office, frowning as he caught the last words. ‘Not ready yet?’

  ‘Sorry, Dr Byrne.’

  ‘Well, make sure you have those things off him before Miss Lynn arrives.’ He withdrew and closed the door.

  ‘Come on,’ said Higgs. ‘You take the head end.’

  They manhandled the fat man onto the table with his head resting on a wooden block and, after a lot of huffing and puffing, managed to remove the silk drawers. Todd tried, as much as possible, to keep his eyes closed while this was going on and think of the girl but the corpse before him kept mutating, horribly, into that of Reynolds. This, combined with handling the loose, clammy folds of skin of the stomach and thighs, made him nauseous.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Higgs, ‘I know he’s no oil painting, but you should be used to it by now.’

  ‘Something I ate,’ Todd muttered through closed lips.

  ‘Well, you’ve gone green, and I don’t want him covered in spew, so piss off outside if you’re going to throw up.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Leaving Higgs whistling ‘Nice People’, Todd stumbled out into the yard just in time to heave his meagre breakfast down a drain.

  Once Dr Byrne had finished, and was removing his rubber gloves in a tight manner that suggested he was skinning his own hands, Todd returned. The cause of death was a heart attack. As he helped sew the body back together with twine and clean up before the next job, Higgs brought up the subject of Dr Reynolds. ‘Could be a really good murder. You’ve not done one of those, have you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A proper murder. Not just some chap killing his wife. Something with a bit more to it. It can’t have been a robbery,’ Higgs added thoughtfully, ‘or they’d have had his wallet off him, wouldn’t they? Or perhaps they didn’t mean to kill him and panicked when they realised what they’d done. Dr Byrne found a bruise on the back of his head, remember? He could have been pushed and fell backwards, but I’d say it’s more likely he was clobbered from behind.’

  ‘Can you tell that?’ asked Todd.

  ‘Not always…Mind you, we’ve had some very odd things. About six months ago we had a bloke run over by a car. Brought in upstairs, still alive. Not a mark on him, so they discharged him, and he’s died the next day. When Dr Byrne opened him up he found a ruptured kidney. You’d think the doctor who examined him would have found something, but no…Come to think of it, that was Dr Reynolds. Dr Byrne was not impressed – said he hadn’t examined him properly, but with no bruising I suppose he just didn’t think of it.’

  Todd’s interest quickened. ‘That’s terrible, sending him home like that.’

  Higgs looked grim. ‘It wasn’t the only time, neither. I don’t like to speak ill of the dead, but…’ He shook his head.

  So it was as he’d thought: Reynolds was in the habit of making a hash of things – and that was with the proper training. He was going to be far, far better. And he’d have his girl. Of course, he hadn’t heard her voice yet, but he was sure that anyone who looked like that would speak properly…

  He listened with half an ear to Higgs’s various theories about Dr Reynolds’s death and wondered about the medical exemption certificate he’d filched from his landlady’s son Jimmy’s room the previous evening. Provided he could get hold of the right paper, the green form would be easy enough to forge, now that he knew what it looked like. The stamps that validated it were a different matter – he’d have to steam off the ones on Jimmy’s certificate and doctor them carefully so that they passed muster. That meant, of course, that he wouldn’t be able to put Jimmy’s certificate back in his room, but there was no reason for him to be suspected of its theft. As far as both his landlady and her son were concerned, he – Sam Todd, that is – had a certificate of his own, because he’d taken care to tell them so when he arrived.

  Jimmy’s ‘weak heart’ had turned out to be something called cardiomegaly. Todd had looked this up and found that it meant an enlarged heart, and that the condition could be either pathological (related to significant heart disease), physiological (related to exercise or other physical activity), or idiopathic (with no known cause). The last bit made it sound promising, as was the fact that it was diagnosed by X-ray and couldn’t be spotted by eye or some simple physical test. Also, it was only sometimes accompanied by irregular heartbeats – or rather, Todd corrected himself – arrhythmia, and palpitations. This was definitely a bonus because, as far as he knew, his heartbeat was normal. Other symptoms, apparently, might be shortness of breath and dizziness, and they’d be easy enough to fake if necessary. The treatment seemed to consist largely of keeping healthy and visiting the doctor to have one’s blood pressure checked, so that wouldn’t pose a problem. All in all, it was a lot better than bad eyesight or flat feet.

  At the end of the day, when Dr Byrne gave him the keys to his office to take upstairs to the porter, Todd slipped them into his pocket. Alone in the mortuary, on night duty, he waited until the coast was clear, then went down the corridor to Byrne’s office to search for his notes on Reynolds, which, by a stroke of good fortune, were on the top of the pile in the tray.

  After the usual preamble – Name, age, height, probable weight…– came the extent and position of hypostasis. That, Todd now knew, was the discolouration from blood collecting in the lower parts – not to be confused with bruising. There seemed to have been quite a bit of hypostasis, with the bruising and external wounds confined to the head. Three lacerated wounds – an inch and a half to three inches in length…Bruising to edges and contusion to deeper tissues of the scalp…some cranial damage…fracture…evidence of foreign matter…Inconclusive as to whether wounds were produced by weapon or fall. Wounding may have taken place at separate location and subsequent exertion resulted in collapse.

  Todd sat down in Dr Byrne’s chair. It wasn’t exactly cut and dried, but nobody had seen him, had they? And even if they had, they couldn’t have been close enough to be certain, in the dark, of his identity, otherwise he would have spotted them. All the same, he ought to keep an eye out for the policeman, who was bound to be back.

  He locked the office door behind him and took the keys up to the porter, claiming to have forgotten about it earlier. Then, returning to the mortuary, he went to the refrigerated room, pulled out the smallest, lightest corpse – a skinny teenage girl the colour of tallow, suffocated in bomb debris – and laid her on one of the slabs. She would be tonight’s subject. On other nights when he was in the mortuary alone, he practised examining his ‘patients’ and performing such procedures on them as would leave no trace, or dissecting organs he’d saved from disposal, but tonight was to be his self-imposed weekly anatomy test. He drew back the sheet that covered the body and brandished it in the manner of a matador before bundling it up and throwing it into a corner. Observing her, naked on her back, he mentally superimposed Fay Marchant’s features onto the underbred rodent face and her curves onto the meagre body. Idly, he cupped the breast nearest to him and rubbed the nipple with his thumb. The flesh was inert, cold and slippery beneath his touch. ‘Oh, Fay,’ he murmured. ‘Fay…’ When he was Dr Dacre, he’d have her like this, at his disposal, to do with as he wished – though not, of course, in a mortuary…Taking a
coin from his pocket, he said, ‘Heads or tails?’ and flipped it into the air.

  ‘Tails. So,’ he said to the dead girl, ‘if you don’t mind, I’ll start with your feet. Muscles, I think. First layer, then…Extensor brevis digitorum, abductor pollicis, flexor brevis digitorum…’

  He worked slowly and methodically, occasionally, when he forgot something, consulting the dissection manual. After an hour or so he’d worked his way up to the head. ‘Epicranial region, one muscle, occipito-frontalis…auricular region, three muscles…’ He stopped to think, tapping his fingers on the girl’s cheek and frowning. Being alone with the dead at times like this didn’t bother him – in fact, he felt an odd sort of kinship with the corpses. After all, he’d died himself, hadn’t he, in a way? It was just that he happened to be still inhabiting the same body.

  Perhaps, he thought, I should get a book on psychiatry. Maybe he’d find out something about himself. The idea of that made him laugh out loud. As if any of those professors knew – or could even guess – anything about him. Even if they were to interview him, he’d run rings round them. All the same, psychiatry was an interesting – and comparatively new, and certainly underrated – branch of medicine, and he could do whatever he wanted, couldn’t he? He might win a prize, one day, for advancing the understanding of the human mind…

  Hearing a commotion in the corridor, he covered Maisie Lambert with another bullfighter’s flourish, and went out to greet the bearers of the first corpses of the night. Perhaps they’d be jigsaw jobs – a practical opportunity to practise his skills as an anatomist. He hoped so.

  Thirteen

  Stratton glanced at his wristwatch – five o’clock – and scraped absent-mindedly at his itchy chin with a thumbnail. The day had been entirely unproductive and very frustrating – now he’d had some decent sleep, he wanted to get on. However, those of Reynolds’s colleagues he’d spoken to had been just as bewildered as Mrs Reynolds yesterday, though without the tears. The hospital had been co-operative about letting him use a spare consulting room to conduct the interviews, but, beyond telling him that Reynolds had been a valued colleague, none of the doctors had said anything of interest. It wasn’t just a matter of not speaking ill of the dead, he thought; it was also the fact that medical folk would be bound to stick together. Stratton couldn’t blame them – coppers would do exactly the same. Perhaps tomorrow, when he saw the nurses, the results would be better. The other problem was that, Dr Byrne having been out of his mortuary for most of the day, Stratton was completely in the dark as to the results of the post-mortem. After two days of searching, Ballard and the others had come up with sod-all from the bomb-site, and the Home Office analyst, he knew, would take several days over the bricks and whatnot, but at least if he knew how the bloke had died, it would be a help.