The Perfect Corpse

by Giles Milton

  The ZAKRON building was set back from the highway. It was shaped like a lop-sided dome, not unlike an egg, with the apex sloping away to the back. The shell was burnished metal, or that’s how it looked in the darkness. It was reflecting the orange glow of the interstate, spinning the streetlights to a blur.

  As he approached the entrance the smoked-glass doors snapped open. He stepped into the chill of the building and instantly recognized the woman standing there in a white lab coat, loosely buttoned, her blond hair tied back and held neatly in place. She was wearing the same retro glasses that Karin had bought just before she left.

  ‘Well,’ she said, extending her hand. ‘After all the emails. Tammy Fox.’

  ‘Jack Raven,’ he said, smiling. ‘Jack. Good to meet you at last.’

  ‘Not too exhausted? Sorry to drag you from the airport but I wanted you to see him straight off.’

  Jack ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘You got me intrigued. Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.’

  She led him down a corridor towards the lab, swiping the door with a smart-card and flicking on the lights. Then she stood back to allow him through.

  ‘Here we are,’ she said, pointing to an oblong glass container on the far side of the laboratory. ‘Can’t wait to get your take on it.’

  Jack walked across to the container. Its interior was chilled to minus 10 Fahrenheit, so cold that the outer surface was etched with frost. He pressed his hand to the frozen glass. His skin stuck there for a moment, forming a glue-like bond. But then the warmth of his hand melted the thin veil of ice. He took a cloth from his pocket and wiped away the wetness, creating a porthole through which to get a clearer view.

  The corpse was naked, deep-frozen, outstretched on his back. Male. White Caucasian. His feet were iced to steel, arms locked stiffly to his side. He had a yellow rubber tag attached to his left ankle, like one of those locker-key straps you get at public swimming pools.

  Three halogen spots shone onto the container, their light reflecting off the frosted glass. A fourth had been positioned at the far end, throwing light onto the head. Jack scrutinized the corpse with care, his eyes shifting from the head to the feet and then back to the head. Mid-thirties, he reckoned. Physically fit. Strong boned. His hair was intact, it was dusky-blond, and the skin was as smooth as a pebble. The genital area, often the first part to deteriorate, was in perfect condition, even after all the years that he’d been in the ice.

  The left eyelid, frozen ajar, revealed a pupil that was a sharp blue and beautifully translucent, though veiled in frost. The right eye was sealed with a delicate zip of ice. The way he was lying there, frozen like a rock, he could have been a fallen statue, renaissance, Italianate, marble. Perfect muscles, perfect physique.

  Jack lifted his gaze and looked back across the laboratory to Tammy. The light was gilding her hair and tracing her profile into a firm silhouette.

  ‘Just perfect,’ he said with a smile.

  She flashed her eyes at him in a questioning sort of way.

  ‘The corpse, I mean. Completely perfect. Never seen anything -’

  He turned back to the container and looked at the body more closely. Something was strange about the curvature of the back and spine. It was as if he had died in his sleep, relaxed, stretched out on a comfortable mattress.

  ‘Was he like that when he was found?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Tammy. ‘Except he was head down. That’s what’s so strange. It’s like he fell through a hole in the ice. Fell, got stuck and was then unable to get back out. That’s not a pretty death.’

  ‘No. But I guess not many deaths are pretty.’

  She smiled, embarrassed.

  ‘But surely – ’

  He glanced up at her but she broke off mid-sentence.

  ‘Normally there’d be fractures in the skin,’ he said. ‘You’d get ice cracks here and here.’ He pointed to the eyes and mouth. ‘And I was expecting him to be white. When we found Mallory, he looked like he’d been bleached.’

  He paused. ‘Do we have any idea what he was up to in Greenland?’

  ‘Tom’s been in charge up till now. Tom Lawyer. The boss. Maybe you read about him on the website. You’ll meet him tomorrow. He says we’ve reached the end of the road. Discovered everything we’re going to discover.’

  ‘But what have you discovered? All I know is the stuff in your last email.’

  ‘There’s more,’ she said. ‘He had an I.D. bracelet. Just initials - F.C. - but enough to set Tom on track. Name’s Ferris Clark. American. A serviceman. Died in wartime, that’s clear, and Tom’s been going through the military records.’

  She hesitated. He sensed she had more to say.

  ‘But to be honest, even with all this new stuff it hasn’t exactly got us very far. We’ve no idea how he got there. Not even sure what he was doing in Greenland. And we certainly don’t have a clue why he was naked.’

  She turned to face him.

  ‘Naked for Chrissakes. That’s just weird.’

  ‘You’re right. It is weird.’

  ‘And that’s why I had to get you over. Find out how he died. If you can’t come up with an answer, I guess no one can.’

  She went over to the desk at the far side of the room and rummaged through a couple of files, as if she was looking for something.

  ‘Tom pretends it’s all solved, of course, but he’s not even close to giving us a cause of death. Murder? Suicide? It’s like all the balls are in the air.’

  She lowered her voice, even though the only other person in the building was the night security guard. ‘And then there’s the whole question of why he’s so well preserved.

  ‘I worked on the George One case. Three Second World War pilots found in the Antarctic. And I can tell you one thing, they looked a million miles different from Ferris Clark.’

  Jack went back over to the glass box that was housing the body, nodding slowly as she spoke.

  ‘Why was he brought here?’ he asked. ‘Why ZAKRON? I checked your website, saw all the stuff you’ve done. But there’s other places that can do this.’

  ‘One or two. But well, I guess it was cos of George One. It was us, right from the outset. They brought him straight from Greenland. Delivered him to the military airport just down the road. You must have passed it on your way here. And then he was brought to us.’

  She ran through the events of the evening the corpse had arrived. Twenty-ninth of June. They’d unpacked him, weighed him and measured him, calculated his body mass, etcetera, etcetera. And then they’d transferred him to the vitrification box.

  ‘And this thing,’ she said, pointing back to the glass container, ‘is real state of the art. Even NASA couldn’t do better. Equipped with optic sensors, thermostatic control panels, the works. Keeps him at a constant temperature. Even scans his organs.’

  While Jack looked over the equipment, Tammy picked through a bulging file marked F. Clark. It was filled with charts, tomographic scans and computer print-outs.

  ‘You’ll get a good look through them tomorrow. But, well, we’ve run through pretty much everything, as you’ll see. Body scans, organ scans, internal probes, blood analyses. White and red corpuscles. Dioxides. I’ll get you the whole set in the morning, if I can persuade Tom to hand them over.’

  ‘Brain scans? DNA?’

  ‘Yep, brain scans and DNA. Haven’t seen those. Tom’s got them in his office.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Everything points in the same direction. Froze the very second he died. Like he was tipped into liquid nitrogen. You’re right about him being perfect. Exactly what I thought the moment we unpacked him. It’s like he’s too perfect, if you get what I mean.’

  She reached for a second file and pulled out a glossy print of the dead man’s heart.

  ‘Check this.’

  Jack took it from her hands.

  ‘Jeez, Tom’ll kill me. Shouldn’t be showing you any of this without his say-so.’


  Jack put down the high-res scan for a moment while he took out his glasses. Then he held it close to his face and studied it more closely. Frozen corpses had a peculiarity of their own, he knew that more than anyone. The three Austrian soldiers they’d pulled from the Forni glacier - brain, liver, lungs, they’d scanned them six, seven times. Every image revealed those tell-tale whitish spots. Each spot was an ice crystal of shattered blood cells, the inevitable result of death by freezing. Cells explode and fragment as they turn from liquid into ice.

  But this scan was flawless.

  *

  ‘You’re all over the internet,’ said Tammy brightly. ‘Jack Raven, forensic archaeologist. I checked out your website. You make it sound somehow – ’ she paused – ‘romantic.’

  ‘Romantic!’ He laughed.

  ‘Jack Raven with that body in a peat bog. Jack Raven on Everest clutching George Mallory. Jack Raven with a human skull. I get this feeling you’d hack through the Amazon if there was a dead body at the end of it.’

  ‘It’s a job like any other,’ he said.

  ‘Not really,’ she said with a smile. ‘It’s not like you’re a trucker. Or an accountant.’

  ‘True. To be honest, most people think it’s a totally weird thing to do.’

  ‘And all this stuff with death masks.’

  ‘Ah, that – ’

  He paused, changed tack. ‘And you?’

  ‘I do the labs. Keep them clean. Wash them down. And that’s anything but romantic.’

  She looked up at him again.

  ‘One thing I didn’t tell you. I should have said something before you left England. But I thought you wouldn’t come.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Tom and Hunter, they’ve only just found out about you. It was all my idea, see. I’m the one that got you over from England. Tom was on vacation. And – ’

  She turned to face him directly. ‘Tom’s, well, a bit of a hard-ass. Takes no crap, particularly right now, what with his divorce and all that. And with you here -’

  Jack laughed again. ‘We’ll get on, I’m sure of it. After all, I’ve come to find him some answers.’

  ‘And that’s the problem,’ said Tammy with a frown. ‘Answers are the very last thing Tom wants.’

  THREE

  Tammy was summoned to Tom Lawyer’s office as soon as she arrived at work. She expected trouble.

  ‘Who the fuck is he?’ said Tom as she entered the room. ‘And why the fuck didn’t I know about him?’’

  ‘Name’s Jack Raven. A Brit. Very smart. And an expert on death. I’m telling you, he’s the smartest forensics guy in the business. Made his name on the Mallory case. Pieced it together like a jigsaw puzzle. They even showed it on Discovery. We need him. And you were on vacation, remember?’

  Tom stabbed his hand through his hair, fingers splayed, as if to express his exasperation.

  ‘But this was meant to be kept in-house. Absolutely in-house. Use only the team. You knew that. This isn’t a repeat of George One. And we do not want the press all over us. For fuck’s sake, I couldn’t have made it clearer. What were you thinking of? I just don’t get it.’

  The July sun thumped at the porthole window, its morning heat broken by the reflective glass. The air con gave a sudden whine as if struggling to keep itself at a constant. Tom’s newly acquired tan had a tinge of orange, like it had been sprayed from a can.

  ‘This was meant to be kept in-house.’ He said it again.

  ‘I know you wanted it kept in-house. You did make it clear. But it’s just, come on Tom, we’re talking about a real person for Chrissakes. Ferris Clark. Who just happens to have died upside down, naked, in the middle of nowhere in Greenland. In my mind that all adds up to something weird. If you of all people can’t see we need to know more, then I don’t know what.’

  Tom was staring at her hard, listening to what she was saying. ‘Yeah, yeah.’

  She ignored him. ‘Look, when I read about Jack Raven, well, he sounded like just what we need. And it wasn’t all my doing. Accounts have been just as much involved. You can’t stick it all on me.’

  There was a long silence. She took off her glasses and placed them decisively on the desk in front of her. And then she edged them forwards with her finger. Tom’s eyes contracted slightly. She smiled. Men were so territorial, at least Tom Lawyer was. She was invading his personal space and he didn’t like it one bit.

  ‘Jack Raven can help us Tom,’ she continued, saying his name in a half-pleading fashion, like it might win him over. ‘He’s the best there is.’

  ‘What does he know? What have you told him?’

  ‘Nothing. Precisely zero.’

  ‘He came here last night.’

  She shrugged.

  ‘You brought him here last night.’

  ‘So?’ She looked at him. ‘How d’you know?’

  She knew Kingston wouldn’t have said anything.

  Tom emitted a sarcastic laugh, like he was playing the gangster. ‘Nothing in this sweet little town happens without me knowing.’ He chewed on his gum then jabbed his finger towards her, leaning casually back in his chair as he did so.

  ‘D’you know what I’d like more than anything in the world?’ he said. ‘I’d like this Jack Raven to get himself back on a plane to England and take his British ass away from here. He’s not getting involved in Ferris Clark. And you should have known that.’

  Silence.

  ‘Listen, you’re a lab tech, right? Your job’s to keep him cold, keep him constant, nice and steady. If you can only do that, we’ll all be happy. We can all get along just fine. Your job’s not to hire people when I’m away on vacation and nor is it to persuade the accounts people that we need to call up a forensic fucking scientist from England.

  ‘And just cos ZAKRON was founded by your old grandpa, God bless his memory, it doesn’t mean you’ve some special licence to do whatever you want. I take decisions. Hunter takes decisions. We’re full members of the board. You’re just an honorary member. Thanks Grandpa. Remember that. It’s not the same thing.’

  Tammy let out a weary sigh.

  ‘Listen,’ she said. ‘I got Jack Raven here to find answers. That’s all. And that’s what you should let him do. Find answers and then go home.’

  Tom waved his hand nonchalantly through the air. Then he stood up and paced around the room. ‘You all signed the confidentiality agreement,’ he snapped. ‘Doesn’t that mean anything? And what about Plaxon? They’ll hit the fucking roof if they hear about this. For Chrissakes, what other crap are you going to spring?’

  He pointed a finger directly at her. ‘If I was in your dainty little ballerina shoes I’d be seriously watching my step.’

  ‘Tom,’ she said, ignoring the bluster, ‘I honestly thought Greg would clear it with you before he bought the ticket.’ She paused. ‘Anyway, it’s too late now. He’s smart and he’s on the ball. I told him to come at -’ she looked at her watch – ‘at ten-thirty, to catch the end of the meeting.’

  FOUR

  The cab was waiting in the Logan’s Corner parking lot, engine growling softly and indicator winking redundantly. Jack opened the door and stepped into the chilled interior. Cold as a morgue.

  ‘ZAKRON, isn’t it?’

  ‘Please.’

  The driver nodded from the front, swung the car into a giant circle then turned onto the Interstate 50. The indicator stopped ticking as they straightened onto the main highway. This is Radio KMZQ on six-seventy AM. Nevada’s number one news talk. A sign flashed passed the window. ‘Hanford Gap: Oasis of Nevada.’ It was an oasis that everyone seemed to be leaving. Homes, bars and grocery stores were strung out along the highway like some sort of disjointed town. Yummies’ Ice Cream. Grand-daddy’s Bar. Nugget Social. You could eat junk for miles, all the way to the desert.

  ‘You from England?’

  ‘Arrived last night.’

  ‘What brings you to our lonely little town?’

  ‘A corpse.’

  Th
e driver looked into the mirror, as if to double-check that he had a passenger in the back and was not hearing voices in his head. Most visitors came for the air base. If they were tourists, they came to see Sand Mountain.

  He forced a laugh and shrugged.

  ‘Well, you’ve come to the right place, I guess. Must have a few at ZAKRON. They did George One you know.’

  Jack nodded. ‘I saw it on their website. D’you know the place? Tom Lawyer, he’s the guy in charge?’

  ‘Everyone knows Tom Lawyer. Been the boss for years. They’ll tell you he’s the richest guy in Hanford.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Must be big money in frozen corpses,’ said the driver as he bought the vehicle to a gliding halt. ‘Walt Disney and all that. D’you do this cryonics business in England?’

  ‘No.’

  It took just a couple of minutes before they were glancing off the highway and into the parking area at the front. Jack paid the driver and stepped out of the cab. It was like walking into the blast of a hairdryer. The air was hot and grainy and smelled of aviation oil.

  He looked once again at the ZAKRON building. He hadn’t seen it properly in the darkness of the previous evening. Now, its burnished metal skin was screaming sunshine. The windows were tiny, square, like airplane portholes. And behind, stretching into a silver-foil mirage, was the parched wasteland of the desert scrub, baked to bread by the sun. Not quite ten-thirty, yet the sun was already pumping enough heat to soften the tarmac.

  He walked to the entrance and the doors snapped open, more aggressive than welcoming. He passed from furnace to fridge. The air temperature was about sixteen degrees.

  The visitor reception area had been almost dark when he’d arrived on the previous evening. Now, it was lit by a row of halogen spots and looked like some sort of Philip Zervos creation. Spiked legged chairs and an oval chromium table that had been designed to represent the building itself. There was a water dispenser made of clear blue glass. Every few seconds a bubble emerged from the bottom and shimmied its way to the surface, creating a pond-like ripple.