Titanic 2012 (inspector alastair ransom)

by Robert W. Walker

  “I thought Reahall respectful of your opinion,” Declan said, looking over his shoulder at the approaching police wagon.

  “Oh yeah…” added Thomas. “He likely just wants to confer with you, Mr. Wyland—on the case.”

  “Confer with me behind bars. Look here, lads, if we’re to have a proper autopsy, we need to be out the back—now! Hurry!” He ushered them to the rear room, past his untidy bedroom, out the back door, and into a smelly dank alleyway. Earlier a light rain had futilely tried to wipe Belfast clean but had only succeeded in making the cobblestones glisten like rocks in a stream—and just as slick. As Ransom rushed the boys, Thomas slipped and turned an ankle and moaned like a cat in heat.

  “Shhhhh… .you’ll give us away!” shouted Declan, completely on board with Ransom’s plan. They heard the wagon pull up to the front door, heard men leaping from the wagon, heard shouting to circle around back. “Is that Reahall’s voice?” asked Declan as Ransom helped Thomas to his feet. With Thomas leaning on Ransom and Declan taking Thomas’ other arm, they rushed off.

  “There—the shadows! Quickly!” whispered Ransom.

  “Hold on,” said Thomas. “Tell me why’re we running from the constable again?”

  “They’ll haul us back to the dormitory for being past curfew, for one,” Declan assured him. “So shhh.”

  “Don’t be naïve, Declan. Mr. Wyland here’s not hiding beneath this stairwell in a dark alley because we are in trouble. Reahall was asking me all sorts of questions about our hired detective here. He’s come to arrest you, hasn’t he?”

  Declan said, “He hasn’t, has he Mr. Wyland. Go on, tell Tommie to push off.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Wyland, tell us, if that’s your real name,” said Thomas.

  “Thomas, Declan… you help me, lads.” began Ransom, “and I’ll get you boys into that morgue. Deal?”

  Declan shook his hand. “Deal.”

  “A bargain for sure,” added Thomas.

  “Now quiet,” Ransom ordered them where they crouched in a black corner behind trash bins.

  Some time had past when from the darkest shadows in the alleyway, Ransom, Declan, and Thomas continued to watch the uniformed officers at rear of the billet come charging round; the Belfast police now surrounded the small house and its street-level apartment—guns drawn. They then listened to the sounds of Constable Reahall’s men break down the front door in dramatic fashion. Reahall then rummaged through the room until he opened the back door and looked down the barrels of six guns trained on him. He uselessly asked, “No one’s come out this way?”

  “No one, sir!”

  “’Cept that is… you, sir.”

  “Find the basement, search the walls! I want that man!”

  It was half an hour before Ransom felt it safe enough to slip from the shadows and for the trio to make their way down the alleyway and out onto North Queen Street, heading toward the bottom of Antrim Road, passing a ancient cemetery, the Clifton Street Graveyard with its entry facing them. A sudden noise behind them, a lorry pulled by a horse startled them and made Ransom slip into the cemetery for cover, but it became a moment of mirth for the university boys.

  They soon passed Henry Place, continuing onward down Clifton, making their way toward the hospital. In doing so, they must pass the Crumlin Road Gaol, Constable Raehall’s old stone fortress of a prison. There they saw the hub-bub of frustrated men who’d worked late into the night, first at the shipyards and inside Titanic, and then at Detective Wyland’s residence.

  The better part of valor may well have been to back away and go around the cemetery or through it, but Ransom instead led them to the rear of the courthouse instead. “You know the streets well,” said Declan.

  “I make it my business to know the lay of the land.”

  They quickly closed in on the impressive red-brick hospital which had the aspect of a cathedral among the densely packed, terraced residential houses surrounding the medical facility.

  Once again the young interns had walked ahead of Ransom to guide him to the separate facilities turned over to the university for dissection and surgery, this separate morgue for university use only. Ransom strained to hear what the boys were whispering about.

  “He’s going to make a wonderful witness, Declan—a wanted man, Declan. Are you listening to me, Declan?” complained Thomas in his friend’s ear. The boys walked quickly now, slowing occasionally to look back over their shoulders to check on Alastair’s progress.

  Ransom habitually looked over his shoulder as well but he did so for possible attacks on him. An old habit cultivated as a cop in Chicago, a habit that he’d thought himself ready to give up, but apparently not. He’d been fooling himself to think he had finally run far enough. Now all he could think of was hanging for a crime he hadn’t committed, and how much that would please all his enemies in Chicago—like his boss at the time, Kohler, the Chief of Police—and the man who’d set him up for a hanging.

  As they found the hospital grounds, the street lamps became fewer and farther between, and soon they were approaching the darkened, locked up basement that the boys pointed to, guiding Ransom to the lock. “How will you get us in?” asked Declan.

  “Watch me.”

  Ransom worked a sliver of metal he always kept on him into the lock, and in an instant, he had the lock turning but the door would not budge. He fumbled about, a blush of embarrassment coloring his jowls and making him thankful for the deep shadow here so the boys could not see his shame as he knew he didn’t have the necessary torsion wrench to get past this door. “There’s good security here, boys. No way I can get through this door. Sorry. Best we all go home.”

  “But there must be a way in.” Declan held up one of Ransom’s picks.

  “There’s no way to work this lock with the tools I have, son. Sorry.”

  “Surely you have other means of breaking and entering—a man of experience?”

  “All right and yes, Declan, I do have other means.”

  “Then what’re we waiting for?” asked Thomas. “Someone’s going to spot us here.”

  Ransom stared momentarily at Thomas. “Come along. Follow me closely, fellas.”

  The interns shadowed the detective to the grassy area beside the door and stone steps leading to this back entryway. “What’re you doing?” asked Thomas at the same time that Ransom, using an elbow with his coat wrapped about it, suddenly broke a window, making the boys leap.

  “You’ve broken the window,” said Declan.

  Ransom snorted and said, “You are a bright one. All right, one of you climb through and open the door.”

  “That’s it? This is your clever way to get us inside?”

  “Declan is elected,” said Thomas.

  “Me? Why me?”

  “You’re smaller, more compact. Careful climbing over those test tubes, by the way. Try not to break anything.”

  Ransom looked at Declan, the boy’s face having dropped. “You do want to learn what the victims can tell us, right?”

  “Thomas encouraged his friend. “If we don’t go in and have a hard look, Declan, we are merely flailing around in the dark.”

  Ransom added, “May’s well be back inside that detestable mine shaft without a lantern—and Thomas, I wish to apologize to you, young man.”

  “For what?”

  “Well… what with so much going on, I’ve been remiss in failing to offer my condolences on the loss of your uncle.”

  Thomas stood stunned for a moment, unsure how to respond. “Thank you, Mr. Wyland, but at the moment, I just want to know precisely what killed him. I want to know what to tell my aunt.”

  “Understood.” Ransom and Thomas watched Declan climb though the window and into the darkness where the three bodies lay in waiting.

  “No sign of the missing Pinkerton man, Tuttle eh, Thomas?”

  “None whatsoever, but it’s a big ship.”

  “And it leaves for sea trials tomorrow, and following that, it’s off to Southampton, and f
rom there to America.” They had walked back to the door, and it swung open under Declan’s power. He held up a lit oil lamp and waved them inside.

  They rushed in and closed the door behind themselves. Declan led Ransom and Thomas through this closet-sized back anteroom and into an interior where they felt safe to turn on the electric lights, filling the room with brightness. In fact, the electricity lit up a huge operating theater. Along a large back wall refrigerator units stared back at them.

  “I’ll never get over electric light, fellows,” Ransom said as he gazed about the well-lit room.

  “Bodies are in there,” said Declan, pointing at the wall of doors.

  Ransom covered his nose with a handkerchief. “From the smell of things here, I’d say your coolers need a good repairman.”

  “The refrigerator units are fine; it’s these particular bodies, Mr. Wyland. They smell of sulfur if you ask me.”

  Each of the unusual bodies discovered tonight was pulled from its unit, and using leather gloves going up to their elbows, the boys placed each of the oddly light bodies onto a steel slab designed specifically for dissection. Directly over the table hung lights on swivel arms, magnifying glasses on another swivel arm, a hose to keep a constant flow of water to run off excess fluids and blood to a drainage pipe that took such unwanted matter to the floor and the sewer pipe at their feet. Meanwhile, Thomas switched on a huge machine in one corner of the room, and a lulling whoosh answered—air conditioning. Belfast’ Sirocco Works factory had pioneered air-conditioning for hospitals and such rooms as this to create Plenum ventilation, which nowadays was being applied to all such interiors dealing with medicine. Nearby Victoria Hospital had been the first building of such size to enjoy air-conditioning some six years before. Humdity control and choice of temperature. How wonderful, Ransom thought, trying to imagine a time when any hotel or home might enjoy this advanced industrial technology.

  The night’s work stared at the excited young interns, who seemed—as Ransom took in their long, doubtful gaze into one another’s eyes—to be thinking of their efforts as having the potential of becoming a monumental and complicated failure. At the very least, the secretive night work would surely prove difficult and time consuming. Ransom had certainly thought so as Thomas pulled open the cold storage unit where his uncle’s body lay in repose. Both Declan and Ransom held back, allowing Thomas a moment alone with his Uncle Anton’s corpse.

  The light illuminated three bodies now lying beneath sheets on three slabs in the wide open space of the operating theater. Looking around and up, Ransom studied the impressive operating theater and the large gallery where students like Thomas and Declan would be perched on a normal day to observe an autopsy conducted by Bellingham or another faculty member. He could just imagine the boys intent on watching every cut, every organ lifted during an autopsy from on high, safely behind the glass, but here they were on the front lines, dealing with God knows what, putting fear aside to determine cause of death, while disappointed in Bellingham for not guiding them this night.

  The room brought back bad memories for Ransom. Being a police detective in Chicago with his reputation, he’d on more than one occasion gone under the knife, his life saved twice by the famous Dr. Christian Fenger during emergency surgery. The same doctor who failed to save that contemptible priest, Father Franklin Jurgen.

  Ransom cautiously went to each body in turn and slipped the sheet from each distorted face. McAffey, looking like the dead beast from the mine with his horrid grimace and barred teeth. O’Toole, looking nearly the same, and Fiore, who had somehow retained the look of a pleasant little fellow despite the rigid grimace distorting his features. Ransom recognized the grimace as a natural phenomena of traumatic death.

  “That’s Uncle Anton,” said Thomas who’d remained rigidly frozen in place at Ransom’s side. “What’s left of him. I could tell you so many wonderful stories about my uncle.”

  “Perhaps another time, when we have more of it.”

  “He was such a storyteller… loved to relate a tale over a pint—had such a knack for a twist or shot to the senses at the end!” Thomas laughed to recall a certain moment with his uncle. “Lovely man, wickedly funny and always with a kind word and a broad—”

  “Enough with the sentiments, Thomas! We haven’t time right now,” Declan warned, moving about the room, preparing instruments, “and dawn is fast approaching. Dr. Bellingham is going to come crashing through that door, and when he does—”

  “He’s going to have a cow.” Thomas finished for Declan.

  “And he’s going to want answers. Hell, I want answers! Ready the Petri dishes for culturing samples, Tommie, while I prepare some slides. I want to see this thing under the microscope as soon as we do the incisions on our friend here, Mr. McAffey.”

  “Why McAffey first?” asked Ransom, curious.

  “We—or rather I—suspect he was the first to die of this thing, down in that mine.”

  “That beastie found with McAffey is most likely what contaminated the man,” Thomas explained. “So we begin with him.”

  “O’Toole was with him in the mine,” continued Declan, “but he managed to get out, and Reahall agrees that Anton—Mr. Fiore quite possibly crossed paths with O’Toole sometime later at the shipyard—as both men’s bodies were discovered inside Titanic.”

  “Where inside Titanic? What deck?”

  “Lowest deck. Mr. O’Toole here, he was found stuffed behind a bulkhead in the manner of a ragdoll, jammed between the interior and exterior iron walls. Mr. Fiore was jammed into a locker where he would’ve suffocated had he not died of this black disease.” Declan worked as he spoke. “Constable Reahall’s quite smart to’ve ordered Titanic searched.”

  “Yes—quite brilliant deduction.” Ransom assumed his sarcasm was lost on the young men. Musing further, he said, “Obviously, someone hid their bodies in an attempt to conceal the crimes.”

  “Not clear on that; Reahall says they could have just curled up in there to die.”

  “But the missing Pinkerton agent, this man Tuttle… was not found on Titanic although he was there with others to guard the ship?”

  “We spoke to Tuttle,” said Declan, removing the elbow length leather gloves and putting on the more comfortable and agile white cloth gloves. “Asked him if he’d seen Mr. Fiore. Said he had not.”

  “He was on Titanic, yes,” added Thomas, placing on cloth gloves as well, “Tuttle shouted down to us from what seemed a mile overhead. Can you imagine the lifts on Titanic?”

  “Upper decks near the forecastle and bridge,” Declan narrowed it down. “But he’s disappeared completely now.”

  Thomas was rattling around with instruments and microscopes before finally declaring, “I’m ready.”

  At this point, Thomas and Ransom turned to find that Declan was well underway, having sliced into McAffey with that ready scalpel of his. He had some trouble, however, as the darkened skin was like leather, but in short order, Declan managed to begin a classic Y-incision. Diagonally from each shoulder to the solar plexus, and from there straight down to the navel. The skin ripped like cord wood against the axe—creating a nerve-shattering noise as it split apart. Declan remarked on this, adding, “I can’t believe our teachers and the dean simply want to burn the bodies.”

  “So you’ve said, and by whose authority? I mean who has ordered it?”

  “Local judge awakened by Reahall and on recommendation of Dean Goodfriar and Dr. B.”

  Thomas chimed in with, “But they have no idea what might result from burning the bodies in those ovens.”

  “Yeah… what if this disease is spewed out with ash from those chimneys at the mill and it goes airborne?” asked Declan. “Well… who knows how far it might spread?”

  “They have no idea what they’re dealing with,” added Thomas, but Declan stood frozen, staring into the open carcass he’d begun to autopsy. “Look at this, Thomas. Tell me what you see… or rather what you don’t see.”

  Th
omas went closer to stare into the open chest and abdominal cavity. Ransom looked over Declan’s shoulder. Together, Ransom and Thomas Coogan gasped at what they saw.

  Ransom asked, “Where’re the bloody organs?”

  “And for that matter, where’s the blood?” Thomas wanted to know.

  “The man’s organs are here just… well…”

  “Where?”

  “Camouflaged against the backdrop of his insides—all discolored inside as well as out.”

  “And dehydrated, reduced in size and weight as a result.” Thomas’ voice quivered with his nerves.

  “And bloodless, drained of it along with any bile or fluids usually found in a decaying corpse.” Declan reached deep into the open chest cavity with forceps and easily pulled forth a shriveled heart through the ribcage. He spoke as he did so, taking his eyes off his work for a half second, saying, “Don’t even need the rib cutters to get it through the bones.” His hand unsteady, his forceps banged against a rib, which immediately gave way, informing them of just how brittle the bones had become. It was unnatural.

  This froze Thomas in place. The breaking of normally sturdy bone via a mere bump that would typically cause no more than a casual scrape made Thomas shout, “Damn it! God blind me. Did you see that, Declan?”

  But Declan and Ransom were staring at the tiny, shriveled heart about the size of a plum. Totally deflated. Shriveled ridges and tiny threads that were once major veins like the vena cava now indistinguishable in color and too small to be believed. “What could possibly do such damage in… in…”

  “In so short a time,” Ransom finished for Declan. “To an otherwise healthy man?”

  Declan laid the prune of a heart onto a scale; it weighed a mere third of its normal 300 grams. “No water, no weight,” he muttered, then added, “and the other organs are the same, one after the other.”

  Ransom could not believe what he was looking at. Hiding within the body cavity were the other organs, so shrunken, misshapen and discolored as to be unrecognizable.