The Perfect Corpse

by Giles Milton

  He studied it more closely. It looked like dermal melanocytosis. Certainly that’s what the colour suggested. Blue-grey on the outside and darker towards the middle. But it couldn’t be. Dermal melanocytosis, Mongolian spots, were rarely found on white Caucasians. And they almost always faded at puberty.

  The only other possibility was a port-wine stain. Nevus flammens. He was thinking back through the other cases he had seen. They were extremely rare under the armpit and always irregular. Ferris Clark’s was perfectly rounded at the top. He rubbed the skin once again in the hope of examining it more closely. But the birthmark was faded with cold.

  There was the breezy sound of laughter as the others came back into the lab. Tom looked impatient to call it a day.

  ‘Five more minutes and then it’s a wrap.’

  ‘Just want to check the leg muscles,’ said Jack. ‘Then I’m done.’

  He looked over the calves and thighs and then examined the knee-caps. Then he stood back from the corpse and made a sign that he’d finished.

  ‘Anything,’ said Tom as he snapped off his gloves.

  Jack shook his head.

  ‘It’s curious. Nothing.’

  ‘Suicide,’ said Tom, less as a question than a statement of fact.

  SEVEN

  Tammy invited Jack back to her office as soon as the autopsy was over.

  ‘Coffee?’

  She left the room for a moment in order to get the drinks from the machine at the end of the corridor. He got up and walked over to the window. The view outside was a picture sliced in two. Top half, a slab of bright blue. Bottom half, the first hills of the scrub, filtered greenish-brown by the window. It hadn’t rained for ten weeks, or that’s what everyone kept saying. It was unlikely to rain for another ten.

  He switched his gaze back to Tammy’s desk. It was as if she’d turned her handbag upside down and tipped out the entire contents. Bobbi Brown lipstick and a Cartier Diabolo pencil. A packet of cough sweets, a credit card and lip balm. There was an envelope with a letter half-sticking out. He checked she wasn’t coming before turning it over. Tammy Fox, 14 Golden Park Drive, Hanford Gap. So that’s where she lived. With husband? She hadn’t mentioned one. He was about to pull the letter from the envelope when he heard her coming back down the corridor. He quickly placed it back on the desk.

  ‘They yours?’ He pointed to the photo of a young boy and girl as she re-entered the room. It stood on her desk in a clear plastic frame.

  ‘Yeah.’ She looked at the picture and smiled. ‘Fran. And Elsie. Five and three. Sweet. But big trouble.’

  He picked up the picture, looked at it more closely. ‘They got mum’s looks alright. He’s got your eyes. And she’s got your nose. Unmistakably.’

  ‘Thanks!’ she said. ‘I’ll take it as a compliment. And you? Any little Jack Ravens running around, helping you track down dead bodies?’

  He shook his head.

  Tammy sat down and placed the two mugs of coffee on laminated mats. Then she picked up a glass of water and poured it very slowly into the flowering orchid on her desk. The flowers were pink, great bell-shaped blooms flecked with yellow stripes.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘what did you make of the corpse? Any clues? Didn’t want to ask while Tom was still there.’

  ‘Amazing,’ he said. ‘And strange. Only confirms what I said last night. Really, I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘But what happened to him? How the hell did he end up like that in the ice?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘No obvious signs of bruising. No abrasions, no cuts. No sign he was involved in a struggle. Bruises were the first thing I was looking for. Even after years in the ice you’d expect some sort of marks.’

  She frowned slightly as he spoke.

  ‘He’s got a strange birthmark. Under here – ’ He pointed to his armpit. ‘Couldn’t get close enough to see what it was. Never seen one like that.’

  ‘But that’s not what – ’

  He smiled. ‘No. Just my curiosity. It’s pretty unusual to see one so regular.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘He must have somehow flash-frozen. It’s the only possible explanation for the state of his body. But even so – ’

  He leaned forwards to reach for his coffee. As he did so, the envelope in his jacket pocket slipped out and dropped to the floor. He bent down to pick it up, then pushed it more securely into his pocket.

  ‘My new ticket home,’ he explained. ‘Carla – is that her name? – she gave it me earlier. Christ, she seems efficient.’

  ‘But you’re not going? Not right away?’

  Jack shot her a look. What did she mean? She’d been at the meeting when Tom had spelled it out. He could hardly have been clearer.

  ‘Of course I'm going.’

  ‘But – ’

  She turned to face him. ‘Can’t you stay on a few days? When’s your new flight?’

  He looked at her again, only this time more sharply. Had he missed something?

  ‘But you were there this morning,’ he said. ‘You heard everything. I can’t do anything more without Tom’s go-ahead. I can’t get involved unless Tom wants me to. And to be honest, until I got here last night I had no idea it wasn’t an official invitation.’

  ‘But -’

  She interrupted him for a second time, but broke off before saying anything more.

  Jack stared at her.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Tom’s made it pretty clear he's expecting me to leave. And unless he has a dramatic change of mind in the next twenty-four hours I'm not sure what else I can do.’

  He paused for a moment, changed his tone. ‘I agree with everything you’ve said. It’s one hell of a strange case. I’ve never seen a body so well-preserved. And I’ve no idea how he could have frozen without the blood cells getting ruptured. That’s the weirdest thing of all.’

  ‘But how did he die?’

  Jack looked at her and slowly shook his head.

  ‘Beats me. But like I said, there’s nothing I can do unless I’m officially employed by Tom Lawyer and the board.’

  He glanced at her and saw a change come over her face. She looked deflated.

  There was a moment’s silence that she filled by pushing back her chair and walking over to the door. She closed it firmly and then turned back towards him.

  ‘Can we meet later?’ she said in a low voice. ‘At your hotel. I’ll come to Logan’s Corner. Six o’clock. There’s something you urgently need to know.’

  EIGHT

  Jack went down to the bar in Logan’s Corner just before six. There was no one else there apart from the barmaid. She was wearing a name badge, Scarlett.

  ‘Yessir, as in O’Hara.’

  He sat at one of the tables in the corner and glanced at the plasma television that was suspended from the ceiling. Boston Red Sox had just scored against the Miami Marlins. He read the text travelling across the bottom of the screen. ‘Breaking News - Wal-Mart Stores Inc. pleads not-guilty to dumping hazardous waste in Florida.’

  Why was Tammy so keen to see him? There’s something you urgently need to know. He doubted it. A proper apology before he left, that was it. She felt bad about everything that had happened.

  He ordered a Kaliber then picked up his phone and looked at the time. Exactly six o’clock. Tammy appeared right on cue. She looked flustered, as if she had hurried in from the car. She was dressed in jeans, ironed white shirt and cowboy boots. It was the first time he had seen her not in a lab coat.

  ‘Not late, am I?’

  Jack shook his head. ‘Not at all. I was early, in fact. What d’you want to drink?’

  ‘Should be on me really. What are you drinking?’

  ‘Oh don’t have this stuff. It’s disgusting.’

  ‘Then why are you drinking it?’

  ‘Alcohol free,’ he said. ‘Better that way.’

  ‘Ah. I need something a whole lot stronger.’

  She ordered a gin and tonic then took off her sungla
sses and sat down, looking round to check there was no one else in the bar.

  ‘You’ve got me intrigued,’ he said, filling the silence that followed. ‘What’s so urgent?’

  He was expecting a smile, but she only frowned.

  ‘Tom’ll skin me alive if he ever finds out,’ she said, glancing behind her to check that the waitress was out of earshot. ‘In fact he’ll kick me out and make sure I never work again.’

  ‘What the hell is it?’ said Jack. ‘Don’t keep me hanging on too long. The suspense will kill me.’

  ‘Ferris Clark,’ she said, speaking so quietly that he had to lean in to hear what she was saying. ‘Can’t you see? They're using him as a human guinea pig. They’ve been planning it all along. There’s been a breakthrough in technology, a major one, just in the last few weeks. They want to bring him back to life.’

  Silence. The only sound was music coming from the bar.

  ‘That’s why they’re desperate to get rid of you. And it’s why they’re so mad at me.’

  Jack looked at her but didn’t say a word. He was struck, most of all, by the fact that he wasn’t even surprised by what she’d just said. In a weird sort of way everything suddenly fell into place. He’d never seen such well-equipped labs as those at ZAKRON. And he also remembered noticing the sign hanging outside the autopsy room. It wasn’t the usual Latin one. Rather, it was the ZAKRON company logo. Turning Death Into Life. And now they were hoping to make it more than a hollow promise.

  ‘Wow.’

  He looked directly at her.

  ‘But how? When? They serious?’

  ‘Deadly. Remember how I told you they’d been working with Plaxon? Developing new technology. Undertaking all sorts of research.’

  Jack nodded. ‘What sort of research?’

  ‘Experiments on mice, blood, transplants, organs, that sort of thing.’

  She was still speaking in a low voice, only faster now.

  ‘Began with a kidney. They removed it from a mouse, injected it with cryo-protectant, froze it. And then surgically reinserted it.’

  ‘And it worked?’

  ‘Perfectly. They’ve done other organs too. Liver. Lungs. Luke’s been in charge of it all. Doctor Gonzales. He’s the brains, not Tom.’

  As Jack listened he was trying to recall his conversation with Professor Reiter in Innsbruck. They’d spoken about transplanting organs, frozen eggs and sperm, about the cutting edge research taking place in America. But Reiter had said it would be another generation, perhaps more, before reverse cryonics would be anything other than science fantasy. Another generation to develop the drugs, the technology, the equipment.

  ‘Remember the cabinets I showed you? The ones filled with phials?’

  ‘In the lab?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s been the breakthrough. They’ve created this stuff called dioximyde. Plaxon developed it. And it’s changed everything. Tom calls it the miracle drug.’

  ‘What does it do?’

  ‘I don’t know the science behind it,’ she said, ‘but it sends vast quantities of oxygen through the blood. At high speed. It’s dioximyde that’s enabled Luke to do all the transplants. And it’s what they’re intending to use on Ferris Clark.’

  Blood. That was another thing Professor Reiter had said. Until science found the means to get oxygen back into the organs – and fast – then resuscitating a cryonically-preserved body would be biologically impossible.

  ‘Jack -’

  She spoke sharply, interrupting his thoughts. Then she looked him coldly in the eye.

  ‘They've got to be stopped. They’ve absolutely got to be stopped. Surely you can see? Ferris Clark may be brain damaged, he may have been murdered. Jesus, the poor guy might even have killed himself. We still don’t have any clue as to how he died. In fact we hardly know the first thing about him.’

  She stopped talking for a moment and took a gulp of gin and tonic. When Jack failed to respond she carried on talking.

  ‘The clients at ZAKRON, the ones we’ve got stored on ice, they chose it, they wanted to be frozen. They're hoping one day in the future we might be able to wake them. And they’re protected by more laws than the Constitution. There’s even laws dictating how they’re looked after.

  ‘But Ferris Clark, he didn’t choose to be preserved. And he certainly didn’t choose to be a guinea pig in some hokey scientific experiment. I hate it.’

  She looked at him again, as if to gauge his reaction.

  ‘ZAKRON was founded by grand-daddy. My dad was its president. Back in those days the company slogan was Death with Hope. How times have changed. Now it’s in the hands of a gangster. And if any of this becomes public knowledge it’ll be the end of ZAKRON. They’ll shut it down.’

  ‘But – ’

  Jack held up his hand to stop her. He was thinking through what she’d said.

  ‘But - it’s - amazing. Can’t you see? Surely you can see? They’ve got the most perfectly preserved corpse. They’ve clearly got the technology, Christ, I’ve never seen such well equipped labs. And now they’ve got this dioximyde stuff. Tammy, they might actually succeed.’

  ‘I know they might actually succeed. And that’s what scares the living shit out of me. It’s unethical. It’s immoral. It’s illegal. And it’s just plain wrong. Poor Ferris Clark. Just imagine -’

  ‘Stop, stop, stop. Hold it a minute, Tammy.’

  There was excitement in his voice and his hands were trembling as he spoke.

  ‘Think of the bigger picture. Imagine what it would mean if they’re successful. Think about all the people who could be saved. All the people who died young, whose lives were cut short. From now on that could all be a thing of the past. Just think of that young girl you were telling me about yesterday. She could have died knowing that as soon as they’d found a cure for her cancer she’d be resurrected and cured. If they succeed with Ferris Clark, Tammy, it changes everything. Absolutely everything. Human life will never be the same again.’

  ‘But – no - - NO - - !’

  She looked at him aghast.

  ‘But Jack, there’s bigger issues at stake. You can’t just resurrect someone cos you’ve decided to.’

  ‘Yes but come on, surely you can see? You’ve got young kids. What if it was you falling sick? You that was dying? Your children left without their mum. Come on. If you had a chance to come back, you’d take it. Think of all those children left without their mothers. Think of all the young people who died too soon. Alice was only thirty-two – ’

  ‘Alice - ?’

  ‘My wife. Alice was my wife. Cancer. Diagnosed in May, dead within six months. Have you ever gone through anything like that? Ever lived through such a nightmare? I’d have done anything, Tammy, anything in the world, if there’d been any chance to get her back. She was young. Beautiful. And then she was gone forever.’

  He fell silent for a moment, swallowing hard. The emotion had got him in the throat.

  Tammy was completely lost for words. This was one outcome she was not expecting at all.

  ‘I got you here to stop it,’ she said. ‘And now you’re saying you’re on their side.’

  ‘I agree that Ferris Clark didn’t choose to be a guinea pig. Of course he didn’t. But this isn’t about Ferris Clark. It’s far, far bigger. It’s about the future of life and death.’

  ‘So you support them?’

  ‘Support them? I wouldn’t miss it for the world.’

  He turned to face her with intense eyes.

  ‘Look, I agree we need to find out who he is. Urgently. That’s the priority. Even if they’re successful in reviving him, there’s a very real chance he’ll have forgotten who he is, how he came to be in the ice. His memory might have been wiped. You’re right in one respect. He’ll need all the help he can get.’

  'But - ?' Tammy slowly shook her head. She couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tammy, but I’m with them all the way. One hundred per cent. If I’d known w
hat they were doing, Christ, I’d have come weeks ago. It’s like I’ve been waiting all my life for this.’

  He paused for a moment.

  'Look, I agree we need to tread with care. Tom and the others, they couldn’t have said more clearly that they don’t want me here. The last thing I want to do is land you in trouble. It’s better they don’t know I’m staying on. If they find out it’ll only get you in even deeper shit.’

  He felt inside his jacket pocket and pulled out the airplane ticket. ‘And although they've bought me this, they didn't cancel my old one.’

  Tammy picked up her glass and drained it, then wiped off the lipstick with a tissue and placed it carefully back on the table. She was lost for words.

  ‘One other thing,’ said Jack. ‘When does it all start? How long have we got?'

  Tammy frowned. ‘Originally it was set for two weeks. Then it was eight days. But last night I heard they want to kick off in four days.’

  ‘Four days.’

  Jack tapped the desk with his pen. He felt suddenly exhilarated.

  ‘When I was on Everest I had less than an hour. And it was minus twenty. And I was dangling off the end of a rope. Yet I still discovered exactly how Mallory died.’

  He smiled. ‘Four days sounds like luxury.’

  Part Two

  NINE

  Jack spent much of the following morning at Logan’s Corner working out a plan of action. Tom Lawyer was expecting him to leave for Las Vegas within the next twenty-four hours. Remaining in Hanford meant changing hotels and finding somewhere discreet to stay. He’d ask Tammy for suggestions.

  He still couldn’t quite get his head around why she was so against the experiment on Ferris Clark. She’d said it was unethical. So was euthanasia, yet plenty of people did that without any scruples. And this was the very opposite of euthanasia. It was about life, not death.

  He turned to the file that she’d given him on the previous evening. It was filled with print-outs, photographs and scans, all relating to various aspects of Ferris Clark’s body. He first looked through the segment scans of the heart, liver and kidneys, then re-checked the X-rays of the spine, paying particular attention to the uppermost vertebrae. If Ferris Clark had fallen headfirst into a crevasse, he’d have expected to see impact damage to the neck, the shoulders and the collar-bone. But there was none.